The Gilded LIfe of Richard Morris

Celebrated internationally in the nineteenth century as America’s premier architect, Richard Morris Hunt (1827–1895) is best known for his opulent Gilded Age Vanderbilt mansions, including Biltmore, the Breakers, Marble House, and other landmark works. Yet the impact of Richard Hunt on American culture after the Civil War ranges far beyond his lavish palaces. In The Gilded Life of Richard Morris Hunt, historian Sam Watters reveals the architect’s remarkable influence in creating the institutions and their conventions that transformed Old World traditions into his generation’s idea of an American civilization, through architecture, interior design, sculpture, painting, and the ardent advocacy of artisan trades. The first American to study at the renowned École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Hunt cultivated a transatlantic network of wealthy, influential men and women during a period of class revolution. Feeling their establishment values and industrial fortunes threatened by the laboring, imm