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The Hunt Collection at the Library of Congress consists of more than 15,000 drawings, photographs, sketchbooks, scrapbooks, rare books, and three-dimensional objects collected and assembled by Richard Morris Hunt from the 1840s until his death in 1895. The collection also contains materials assembled by Hunt's widow, Catharine Clinton Howland Hunt, and by their oldest sons, Richard Howland and Joseph Howland Hunt. The collection's state of preservation and depth is exceptional.
It is important to note that the drawings, print materials, and three-dimensional objects owned by Richard Morris Hunt were categories of collection that Hunt believed should be in an architectural library and museum, as described below. The paper materials were donated, per a codicil to the will of Catharine Hunt, to the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1926. The three-dimensional objects owned by Richard M. Hunt were also transferred at this time as part of a gift by Richard H. Hunt to the AIA. He also donated drawings, photographs, published materials, and a few three-dimensional objects from the office of Hunt and Hunt, founded by Richard and Joseph Hunt after their father's death. In 2010, the AIA closed its Prints & Drawing Collection, then held by the American Architectural Foundation (AAF). The AIA/AAF Collection, which includes materials related to American architects, was then transferred to the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, including to what is known today as the Hunt Collection.
The Hunt Collection includes substantial documentation of the architectural work produced by Richard Morris Hunt and his office. For built and unbuilt projects by Hunt and his office, see the Architectural Work by Hunt and His Office page in this guide.
After the Civil War, Richard Morris Hunt called on his AIA colleagues to found an architectural "Library and Museum of Art” with “models, casts, drawings, photographs, in fact everything referring to architecture and the cognate arts.” Parisian collections and London’s groundbreaking South Kensington Museum (Victoria and Albert Museum from 1899) were his inspiration.
At the time of Hunt’s death in 1895, all the arts for a museum of architecture as Hunt defined it could be found in his private collection, including the material "industrial" art objects he and his wife collected. Per a codicil to Catharine Hunt’s will, Richard’s "library" comprised of books, manuals, periodicals, photographs, drawings, sketchbooks, and other paper materials was transferred by Richard H. Hunt to the AIA in 1926. At that time, Richard M. Hunt's office drawings, scrapbooks, sketchbooks, office drawings by the Hunt & Hunt firm, and materials likely acquired by Richard H. and Joseph H Hunt, and drawings by William M. Hunt and Jane M. Hunt, some probably owned by Richard M. Hunt, were also donated to the AIA, while his heirs.
The print, drawing, and three-dimensional items in the Hunt Collection at the Library of Congress that belonged to Richard Morris Hunt are largely what remain of Hunt’s museum in a public institution. His office drawings, photographs, sketchbooks, scrapbooks, books, and three-dimensional items are still together, assembled by Richard Morris Hunt and his wife to educate and & “refine” the American public through art. For more on Hunt’s museum, see The Gilded Life of Richard Morris Hunt (2024), 59, 99, 115.
