The Man Who Designed the Gilded Age

    When TD and I were in Newport, we visited an interesting exhibit at Rosecliff about Richard Morris Hunt, the great architect who built many of the Vanderbilt mansion and came to define the Gilded Age. Hunt was a fascinating character who was more than an architect - he was passionate about promoting art and culture in the United States.

    Hunt was born into a prominent New England family and was the first young American architect to study in Paris at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, which was dedicated to teaching a lavish, opulent French national style that was based on classical ancient Greece and Rome blended with French and Italian Renaissance and Baroque.

    After the Civil War in the United States, newly made wealth flourished and the rich sought a lifestyle that expressed their success. Titans like the Vanderbilts wanted to live like European royalty and hired Hunt to create colossal mansions in New York, Newport and beyond. He dipped into his Beaux Arts bag of tricks to create grandiose, aristocratic style houses with colonnades, arches, dramatic entrances, sweeping staircases, and rich, carved decorations and swags. 

The Breakers in Newport. 

   In Newport, Hunt designed the colossal Breakers for Cornelius Vanderbilt II and extravagant Marble House for William K. Vanderbilt and his wife Alva. In HBO's "The Gilded Age," George and Bertha Russell are based on William and Alva Vanderbilt, and indeed some scenes are actually shot at Marble House and the Breakers. In Ashville, North Carolina, Hunt designed for George Vanderbilt the Biltmore estate, which is still the largest house in America. 

The Biltmore in North Carolina. 

Hunt's workroom in Newport. 

        Besides his architecture work, Hunt strongly promoted the arts and culture after the Civil War, and was one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He also co-founded the American Institute of Architects to improve the status of architects, who up until that time had been treated like tradespeople. His final commission before his death was the entrance hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which still offers a magnificent, monumental portal into one of the world's great art museums.  

My picture of the Great Hall at the Met. 

 

   Later, architectural taste began to change and shift away from extravagant European style with its rich flourishes. New York architects like Delano & Aldrich, who worked for the Rockefellers, favored a cleaner, simpler, more conservative style based on Federal architecture that reflected the American democracy. But Hunt will always be remembered for creating the style of the Gilded Age and for his relentless promotion of the arts. "It has been represented to me that America was not ready for the Fine Arts, but I think they are mistaken," he wrote. "There is no place in the world where they are more needed, or where they should be more encouraged."