Distinguished architect, designer and influential taste-maker. One of five children of Jonathan Hunt, a prosperous lawyer and landowner, who served in Congress and in the House of Representatives in Washington. Richard was educated in the comfortable worlds of New Haven and Boston; receiving his architectural training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, being the first American to attend and graduate from that prestigious institution. Returning to the United States in 1855 he entered into practice in New York City in that year. He was active in the recently founded (1857) American Institute of Architects, later serving as its president until the year 1891, and was prominent in the social life of the City. Hunt helped direct American taste toward European monumentalism, and finally to the Renaissance, invoking the glories of France and Italy. He created an outstanding body of work in his forty years of practice - and many of his buildings today are national treasures. Hunt's numerous projects included New York's Lenox Library; the Tribune Building (one of the City's first skyscrapers); the great Fifth Avenue facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty - Hunt's most celebrated monumental work; the Administration Building for the World's Columbian Exposition, recalling the grandeur of Rome, at Chicago, in 1893; and a great number of remarkable private homes, many commissioned by members of the Vanderbilt family - which includes "The Breakers", for Cornelius Vanderbilt II at Newport, Rhode Island, and "Biltmore", for brother George W. Vanderbilt - the largest house ever built in the United States. Richard Hunt died unexpectedly of heart failure, brought on by gout aggravated by a severe cold, at his summer residence at Newport, while supervising the completion of Cornelius Vanderbilt's mansion, "The Breakers", in July 1895.
Distinguished architect, designer and influential taste-maker. One of five children of Jonathan Hunt, a prosperous lawyer and landowner, who served in Congress and in the House of Representatives in Washington. Richard was educated in the comfortable worlds of New Haven and Boston; receiving his architectural training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, being the first American to attend and graduate from that prestigious institution. Returning to the United States in 1855 he entered into practice in New York City in that year. He was active in the recently founded (1857) American Institute of Architects, later serving as its president until the year 1891, and was prominent in the social life of the City. Hunt helped direct American taste toward European monumentalism, and finally to the Renaissance, invoking the glories of France and Italy. He created an outstanding body of work in his forty years of practice - and many of his buildings today are national treasures. Hunt's numerous projects included New York's Lenox Library; the Tribune Building (one of the City's first skyscrapers); the great Fifth Avenue facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty - Hunt's most celebrated monumental work; the Administration Building for the World's Columbian Exposition, recalling the grandeur of Rome, at Chicago, in 1893; and a great number of remarkable private homes, many commissioned by members of the Vanderbilt family - which includes "The Breakers", for Cornelius Vanderbilt II at Newport, Rhode Island, and "Biltmore", for brother George W. Vanderbilt - the largest house ever built in the United States. Richard Hunt died unexpectedly of heart failure, brought on by gout aggravated by a severe cold, at his summer residence at Newport, while supervising the completion of Cornelius Vanderbilt's mansion, "The Breakers", in July 1895.
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