Tag: Richard Morris Hunt

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Museums Podcasts

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: 150 Years of History on Display

EPISODE 341 Celebrating the history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 150th anniversary year of its founding — certainly one of the strangest years in its extraordinary existence. 

The Met is really the king of New York attractions, with visitors heading up to Central Park and streaming through the doors by the millions to gasp at the latest blockbuster exhibitions and priceless works of art and history. 

And who doesn’t love getting lost at the Met for an afternoon — wandering from the Greek and Roman galleries to the imposing artifacts within the Arms and Armor collection and the treasures of the Asian Art rooms?

The Theodore Weston addition to the Met 1893, J.S. Johnston, Library of Congress

But this museum has a few surprising secrets in its history — and more than a few skeletons (or are those mummies?) in its closet.

WITH Ancient temples, fabulous fashions, classical relics, Dutch masters, controversial exhibitions and the decorative trappings of the Gilded Age.

November 1928, photo courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

AND Find out how the museum building has evolved over the years, employing some of the greatest architects in American history. 

PLUS An interview with the Met’s Andrea Bayer, Deputy Director for Collections and Administration, on the museum’s celebratory exhibition Making the Met 1870-2020. 

How do you launch an anniversary celebration during a pandemic and lockdown?

Listen today on your favorite podcast player:

Opening reception in the picture gallery at 681 Fifth Avenue, February 20, 1872; wood-engraving published in Frank Leslie’s Weekly, March 9, 1872
‘The Barn’, the original Met from Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art
1900, Detroit Pub Co, Library of Congress
The Richard Morris Hunt addition to the Met, 1903, Detroit Pub Co, Library of Congress
The Great Hall, 1907, Library of Congress
The Met in 1920, with the southern wing in place. Museum of the City of New York
The Met in 1983, Getty Images

Some excellent footage from the 1920s of the Met’s Egyptian excavations

The Temple of Dendur. photo by Greg Young
The American Wing sculpture garden at night, photo by Greg Young
Branch Bank entrance, 2012, photo by Greg Young
Washington Crossing the Delaware, taken 2017, photo by Greg Young
Dendur at night, 2018, photo by Greg Young
The Met at Christmas, 2018, photo by Greg Young
The European sculpture garden at night, with views of the original 19th century facade in red brick. 2018, photo by Greg Young

Views from Making the Met (photos by Greg Young):

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FURTHER LISTENING

The Met was a bit behind the times when it came to celebrating Impressionism but New Yorkers could take a gander at the ‘shocking’ output from Europe — as well as examples from the New York’ Ashcan School — at the Armory Show of 1913.

The Met is a twin institution to the American Museum of Natural History which shares a similar origin story.

In the second half of our Fifth Avenue Mansions series, we look at how the wealthy mansions of Fifth Avenue left midtown and headed to the Upper East Side.


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Podcasts

The Stuyvesant, New York’s first apartment building: Imported luxury style for a new middle class

The creation of ‘acceptable’ communal living: The Stuyvesant Flats, at 142 East 18th Street, designed by Richard Morris Hunt, photographed by Berenice Abbott.

PODCAST Well, we’re movin’ on up….to the first New York apartment building ever constructed. New Yorkers of the emerging middle classes needed a place to live situated between the townhouse and the tenement, and the solution came from overseas — a daring style of communal and affordable living called the ‘apartment’ or ‘French flat’.

The city’s first was financed by Rutherford Stuyvesant, an old-money heir with an unusual story to his name. He hired one of the upper class’s hottest architects to create an apartment house, called the Stuyvesant Apartments, with many features that would have been shocking to more than a few New Yorkers of the day.

The building’s first tenants were sometimes well-known, often artists and publishers, and almost all of them with a fascinating story to tell. Listen in to hear about the vanguard first renters of this classic, long-gone building.

I have been unable to find any portraits of Mr. Rutherford Stuyvesant (aka Stuyvesant Rutherford), the man who financed the Stuyvesant for $100,000. However I have found a picture of Mrs. Rutherford Stuyvesant, who doesn’t look like the kind of lady to mettle around in her husband’s affairs. She would not have found the apartments which bore her name very accomodating. Many, many others did. (Courtesy LOC)

The tenacious Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Custer, photo taken in 1876, the year her husband was killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Mrs. Custer moved into Stuyvesant and successfully led her crusade to rehabilitate her husband’s reputation.

Maggie Custer Calhoun, younger sister to General Custer, lived with her sister-in-law at the Stuyvesant before embarking on a successful career as an elocutionist.

The landscape painter Worthington Whittredge also resided here. In fact, he beamed about it in his autobiography: “I was one of the first to subscribe for an apartment in this house, which was to be erected in 18th Street near Third Avenue and Stuyvesant Square.”

Earlier in his career, Whittredge posed as George Washington while Emanuel Leutze painted ‘Washington Crossing The Delaware’. (Worthington is quite comfortable on both sides of the easel The painting below is by William Merritt Chase.)

In its later years, the Stuyvesant was used as the set for a pivotal scene in the Oscar-nominated film noir ‘Kiss of Death’ starring Richard Widmark. Needless to say, this sort of activity very rarely went on at the Stuyvesant.

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