Richard Morris Hunt Memorial

You are standing before the Richard Morris Hunt Memorial, a graceful semicircular granite bench known as an exedra that sits along the perimeter wall of Central Park. It was designed in eighteen ninety eight to honor the man often called the Dean of American Architecture. Richard Morris Hunt was the first American to train at the prestigious École des Beaux Arts in Paris, and he spent his life fighting to transform architecture from a trade into a respected profession. The memorial serves as a physical list of the many cultural institutions Hunt helped establish, including the American Institute of Architects and the Municipal Art Society. Flanking the central bronze bust of Hunt are two female figures created by the sculptor Daniel Chester French, who later went on to design the famous seated Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. One figure represents architecture, holding a model of one of Hunt's own buildings, while the other represents the allied arts of painting and sculpture. When the memorial was first placed here, it was intentionally positioned to face the Lenox Library, a landmark structure that Hunt had designed himself. That library was demolished in nineteen twelve, meaning this monument now faces the Frick Collection, which stands on the site where Hunt's work once lived.