Richard Morris Hunt (1827-1895), American architect and cultural leader, was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, to a wealthy family of landowners and politicians. His siblings were Jane M. Hunt (1822-1907), a French-educated artist; William Morris Hunt (1824-1879), a Paris-educated artist and educator; Jonathan Hunt (1827-1875), a Paris-educated doctor to the poor; and Leavitt Hunt (1830-1907), a German-educated lawyer and early photographer of the Middle East. Richard was the first American to attend Paris’ renowned École des Beaux-Arts in its architecture section, returning to America in 1855. From then until his death, he worked primarily in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island, as an independent architect, designing landmark projects including the early skyscraper New York-Tribune tower (1875), New York’s limestone Lenox Library (1877), the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty (1886), Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition Administration Building (1893), and mansions for the railroad millionaire Vanderbilt family: Marble House (1892), the Breakers (1895), and Biltmore (1895).

Supported by his international network of architects, artists, collectors, industrialists, and investors (including Charles Garnier, James Lenox, Henry G. Marquand, and Charles F. McKim), Hunt became a juror at the 1867 Exposition Universelle in Paris, President of the Board of Architects of the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, and a founder of the American Academy in Rome. He was an educational and arts pioneer, establishing America’s first École-style atelier (attended by future architects Henry Van Brunt, William R. Ware, Frank H. Furness, and George B. Post), a forerunner to the university programs in architecture at MIT and Columbia University. Hunt was also a founder of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and professional societies that advanced arts necessary for what was known as the American Renaissance.