Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera was born from a social rejection. In the late nineteenth century, the wealthiest industrialists in New York City were famously barred from buying private boxes at the established Academy of Music. Stung by this exclusion, families like the Vanderbilts and the Morgans decided to build their own opera house, turning a private slight into a grand architectural war between old money and new. The resulting building, which opened in eighteen eighty-three at thirty-ninth Street and Broadway, served as their defiant answer to the city establishment.