The Matilda Young Papers include a 1932 version of the unpublished memoir of Alva Vanderbilt Belmont. A 1917 version of this memoir is in the Huntington Library, San Marino, C.A.

See the Office of the Secretary Records, 1870 to the Present.

* The N-YHS Digital Collections External
* The N-YHS Library Manuscript Collections External

* The RIBA Collections External
* The RIBA Library External

* VHS Archival Collections ResourcesExternal
* VHS Digital Resources External
* VHS Hunt Family Papers, 1758-1908 External

(Proquest document ID: 1010422148)
Abstract: Architecture was essential to the radical transformation of pilgrimage by the Catholic clergy in nineteenth-century France. To show how pilgrimage churches clericalized and modernized the devotions centered on sacred sites, this dissertation analyzes three important examples: Jacques-Eugène Barthélemy's Basilica of Notre-Dame de Bonsecours in Rouen (1840–44), Hippolyte Durand's Basilica of the Immaculée-Conception at Lourdes (1862–72), and Victor Laloux's Basilica of Saint-Martin in Tours (1886–1925). In the process, this study reveals the Catholic context of nineteenth-century French ecclesiastical architecture. Pilgrimage churches were paid for by the private donations of Catholics and their construction was overseen by priests: they were less determined by the government architectural bureaucracy than other churches.
Notre-Dame de Bonsecours is a landmark of the beginning of the Gothic and Marian revivals during the July Monarchy. Influenced by Catholic authors and architects, the parish priest chose to give the basilica a thirteenth-century style, and a coordinated decoration that put Bonsecours at the forefront of the regeneration of religious art. In the midst of rapid industrialization, he and the donors sought to recreate an ideal medieval social order structured according to Christian principles. The Basilica of the Immaculée-Conception demonstrates the endurance of Catholic theories of the Gothic in the Second Empire, as well as a new preoccupation with economical church construction. The basilica evoked both twelfth-century churches and nineteenth-century mass production, thereby complementing the clergy's promotion of the pilgrimage to Lourdes as a continuation of medieval traditions and a modern spectacle. Erected above the grotto of the apparitions, the basilica reinforced the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and its ultramontane and legitimist implications. In contrast, the Basilica of Saint-Martin is proof of the influence on the clergy of Christian archaeology. A liberal bishop chose to evoke the fifth-century church that had stood on the site of Martin's tomb, in opposition to an intransigent lay group that wanted to rebuild the eleventh-century church that had stood there. While the lay project expressed a counter-revolutionary narrative of expiation, the built church connoted early Christianity and reflected a shift among the faithful towards accepting the Republic. This dissertation argues that, owing to their distinctive patronage model, pilgrimage churches expressed more clearly than other churches the evolving politics of French Catholicism.

(ProQuest document ID: 304650773)
Abstract: Between 1850 and 1870 thirteen New York area art collectors constructed art galleries in their homes. As specialized domestic spaces dedicated to art, these galleries embodied their owners' attitudes toward their collections in their design, decoration, and installation. An analysis of these galleries and the role they played in the public and domestic lives of their owners provides fresh insights into the social significance of art and art collecting in mid-nineteenth-century America.
The study begins with a discussion of the theoretical arguments for the inclusion of art in an ideal nineteenth-century American home. Contemporary theories regarding environmental influences on character were highly relevant to the formation of America's residential art galleries and are explored through contemporary advice manuals, architectural plan books, housekeeping manuals, and popular magazines.
Chapter Two examines the early nineteenth-century art collectors who most directly influenced New York's mid-century residential gallery owners. The contributions to domestic art installations made by Thomas Jefferson, Luman Reed, Samuel Ward, William Coventry Waddell, and Robert Donaldson are all discussed.
Chapters Three and Four present a chronological overview of the domestic galleries built In the New York metropolitan area between 1850 and 1870. These include those of Samuel Townsend, Edwin Clark Litchfield, Elias Lyman Magoon, Marshall Owen Roberts, August Belmont, William Wright William Henry Aspinwall, John Taylor Johnston, John Wolfe, Alexander Turney Stewart, William and Caroline Astor LeGrand Lockwood, and George Merritt. Ten of these gallery collections are catalogued in the appendix
Chapter Five explores the expressive aspects of mid-century residential galleries. Using seven galleries as case studies, tins chapter analyzes surviving visual and written documentation and concludes that mid-century residential gallery owners understood artworks primarily as illustrations of meaningful ideas and employed their collections to articulate personal values.
The study concludes with a consideration of the residential gallery's contributions to the emerging social significance of the visual arts in mid-nineteenth-century America. Both the formation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the introduction of the visual arts into New York City's public schools are briefly discussed.

(ProQuest document ID: 303229705)
Abstract: The architectural styles exhibited by the works of Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895) are remarkable for their diversity and finesse. With few exceptions they are also European. Since the early years of the twentieth century Hunt has been ignored and, at times, severely criticized for his European predilections, in preference to design attitudes which could be considered both more original and more American. Indeed, even though Hunt was born an American and periodically proclaimed his patriotism, a basic preference for the sophistication of nineteenth century architectural forms and lifestyles more common to the Continent than to the New World can hardly be denied. But a new and deeper understanding of his stature as an architect and his profound contributions to this field in the United States has long been needed.

(ProQuest document ID: 2359349867)
Abstract: This project introduces 660 Fifth Avenue as a total work of art and through a multidisciplinary framework, examines its aura, as it was originally completed and displayed to guests and members of the press at the time of the Vanderbilt Ball on March 26, 1883. Once completed, 660 Fifth Avenue was possessed as an act of performative identity by social celebrity, Alva Vanderbilt. Further, this project identifies Richard Morris Hunt as a cultural intermediary and arbiter of taste whose singular brand of academically studied, historically referential style, created a desire for a new mode of domestic architecture, which came to define American luxury. This project seeks to explore the potential of American Gilded Age domestic architecture to define taste, create desire, and shape a cultural zeitgeist.

(ProQuest document ID: 304002086)
Abstract: Newport, Rhode Island, is a town rich in history and scenic beauty. During the second half of the nineteenth century, a number of important American writers who lived in Newport wrote of the island's beauty and of the social changes they witnessed in those years. This dissertation explores the interaction of literary and intellectual figures during this period, and the relationship of the locale to the writers' works.
Julia Ward Howe organized an informal outdoor salon, where she entertained reformers, politicians, and artists. Mrs. Howe bridged the gap between intellectual and social circles on the island. With her friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, she organized The Town and Country Club to encourage intellectual activity in Newport society.
Colonel Higginson was charmed by the history of the ancient seaport, and attempted to portray the town's local color in his Oldport fiction. He was an active member of the community, and served on the school board, where he fought for the desegregation of public schools. Higginson continued his correspondence with Emily Dickinson during these years, and encouraged fellow-boarder Helen Hunt to write.
Henry James studied art in William Morris Hunt's Newport studio. The artist John La Farge, who came to be a close friend, encouraged young James to write. Newport was the scene of happy times spent with his family and Minny Temple, but also of an obscure injury sustained while fighting a fire. In his final years, James's fiction returned to the island; he criticized the changes brought upon the old town by the invasion of the very rich.
A resident of Newport's summer colony from her youth, Edith Wharton enjoyed the summer activities of old New York society, but disliked the watering-place society of Newport's Gilded Age. Like Henry James, she was repulsed by the abrasive manners and ostentatious cottages of America's new millionaires. The charming old town was no longer a haven for artists and intellectuals; style--not substance--was paramount.

(ProQuest document ID: 301844041)

(Proquest document ID: 302662247)
Neither summary nor dissertation available via Proquest.

(ProQuest document ID: 304533784)
Abstract: The image of a refined and aristocratic eighteenth-century held a privileged place in the French cultural imagination under the Second Empire (1852-1870). Addressing issues of historical memory, this dissertation is a broad consideration of the ways in which the elegant rococo style of the ancien régime was appropriated by a wide variety of artists, writers, collectors and others in mid-nineteenth-century France. The rococo style, which was one of the many historical styles popular at this time, had originally been developed during the regency and rule of Louis XV and persisted through Louis XVI's reign. The visual principles of the rococo period, stressing sensuality and grace, and epitomized in the genre of the fête galante pioneered by Jean-Antoine Watteau, appealed to a diverse audience, from the imperial elite to avant-garde artistic circles.
The first chapter explores the ways that eighteenth-century French art was discussed by writers such as Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Charles Blanc and Arsène Houssaye. The second chapter analyzes a cross section of artworks that evoke the rococo era in contrasting manners. These include Franz-Xaver Winterhalter's imperial portraits, Ernest Meissonier's meticulously rendered genre scenes, Adolphe Monticelli's vigorous reinterpretations of fête champêtres, Charles Chaplin's portraits of languid young women in eighteenth-century guise, and Jean-Bapstiste Carpeaux's sculpted memorial to Watteau. The third chapter examines ways in which reflections of the previous century could be found in ceremonial and leisure activities under the Second Empire, as well as in fashion and interior design. This chapter also contextualizes early Impressionist works in terms of how the interaction of figure and landscape provides a link to the past, even while capturing the character of modern life. The last chapter investigates four different examples of how eighteenth-century art was assembled in Second Empire exhibitions and collections, including the Goncourts' homes in Paris and Auteuil, the celebrated 1860 exhibition of the "école française ancienne " on the Boulevard des Italiens, the Empress Eugénie's 1867 exhibition in honor of Marie-Antoinette held at Petit Trianon at Versailles, and the bequeathal of Louis La Caze's collection to the Louvre, which was particularly rich in eighteenth-century petit maîtres.

(ProQuest document ID: 304342876)
Abstract: This study is about a serious problem for the U.S. in the nineteenth century--urban conflagration--and how improved buildings contributed to solving it. Buildings improved in the sense that they became more fire resistant, a function of the materials used to build them as well as how the space inside was arranged and the presence of automatic fire suppression equipment. These were technological developments. In this century of great technological change, the "industrial revolution" in building construction resulted to a large extent from the effort to make buildings fireproof.
What made a building fireproof first and foremost was the materials of construction. Wood, a cheap and versatile material, was the principal one for framing the interiors of ordinary buildings. In fireproof buildings, in contrast, no wood was used constructively; all the materials were noncombustible. Consequently, fireproof buildings also were very expensive compared with alternatives and few Americans opted to build them. The largest customer for fireproof buildings in the first part of the nineteenth century was the federal government, and it did much to advance the technology.
After the great fires in the early 1870s, fire resistant construction began to receive much attention from architects, building materials manufacturers, engineers, and fire insurance underwriters. New materials were introduced and the technology of fireproof construction developed. It was in the fireproof buildings that the new materials of building construction--iron beams, clay products, and concrete--were introduced, because they were noncombustible. Nevertheless, fireproof construction did not become common until it was made compulsory under city building codes. At the close of the nineteenth century, many cities required that certain buildings--i.e., tall buildings--be fireproof. Eventually more kinds of buildings were required to be fireproof. These laws helped expand the market for fireproof construction materials.
The technologies that evolved from the experiments and hard lessons learned over the course of the nineteenth century were becoming the standard ones for commercial buildings in America's downtowns in the twentieth, and helped bring to a close the era of great conflagrations. After the first decade, the attention of fire safety experts shifted away from the problem of general conflagration and toward the safety of occupants in buildings. (Copies available exclusively from MIT Libraries, Rm. 14-0551, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307. Ph. 617-253-5668; Fax 617-253-1690.)

A Picture This blog introducing newly discovered Ernest Benecke photographs in the Richard Morris Hunt Collection (February 5, 2020).

A Timeless, the main blog of the Library of Congress, introducing Richard Morris Hunt and his collection held at the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division. It also talks about a newly published book, The Gilded Life of Richard Morris Hunt by Sam Watters (September 24, 2024).

A Picture This blog introducing Richard Morris Hunt Collection after the Collection was transferred from the American Architectural Foundation to the Library in 2010 (June 5, 2014).

New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, April 12, 2016, Designation List 487, LP-1208.

A Picture This blog introducing a newly published book "The Gilded Life of Richard Morris Hunt" by Sam Watters (November 26, 2024).

A New York Times article on a building designed by Richard Morris Hunt In NYC's West Village.

Hosted by the Greenwich Historical Society in Cos Cob, Connecticut, author Phillip Dodd discusses the finest examples of Beaux-Arts Architecture associated with the opulence of the Gilded Age (1877-1920) and the stories of those who commissioned, designed, and built them, including Richard Morris Hunt in relationship with his design of the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in New York City. (Event date: September 7, 2023).

Virtual walking tour of the buildings in New York City designed by Richard Morris Hunt, presented by Lucie Levine. (Event date: January 13, 2022).

Newport, RI: Preservation Society of Newport County, May 30 - November 2, 2025.

New York, NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 20 - June 15,1986.
* Information on the book published in conjunction with the exhibition: see The Architecture of Richard Morris Hunt by Susan R. Stein (Editor)
* Metropolitan Museum of Art 1986 Press Release External

Bennington, VT: The Bennington Museum, 2005

Washington, D.C.: The Octagon, the Museum of the American Architectural Foundation, November 15, 2002 - June 1, 2003.
An exhibition of the Statue of Liberty pedestal designs by Richard Morris Hunt, with drawings by engineer Gustave Eiffel and Liberty sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi.

Philadelphia, PA: American Institute of Architects Philadelphia Chapter, 1896.

Palm Beach, FL: Flager Museum, October 14, 2008 - January 4, 2009.

Versailles, France: Château des Versailles. November 19, 2019 - March 15, 2020.
An exhibition including Richard Morris Hunt's Marble House, along with an essay "Versailles Outre-Mer : Architecture et Décoration aux États-Unis" by Sam Watters.
* Exhibition catalog for Versailles Revival, 1867-1937 External

Newport, RI: Newport Art Museum, May 31 - November 14, 2014.
* Information on the book, Very Simple Charm, published in conjunction with the exhibition. External

Washington, D.C.: The Octagon, the Museum of the American Architectural Foundation, 1999.
An exhibition on Richard Morris Hunt's 1853 tour of the Middle East.