Richard Morris Hunt

Richard Morris Hunt (1827 to 1895) was an American architect of the nineteenth century and a leading figure in the history of architecture in the United States. Born in Brattleboro, Vermont, he was educated in Geneva and Paris, entered the atelier of Hector Lefuel and became the first American admitted to the architecture school of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. After returning to the United States in the mid 1850s he settled in New York, where in 1858 he founded the first American architectural school at the Tenth Street Studio Building, teaching students such as George B. Post, William Robert Ware, Henry Van Brunt and Frank Furness. His works include the entrance facade and Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Fifth Avenue building, completed in 1902 after his death, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, many Fifth Avenue mansions since destroyed, the Biltmore Estate near Asheville, North Carolina, and the elaborate summer cottages of Newport, Rhode Island.