The Gilded Life of Richard Morris Hunt

"""A fascinating and important account of the life and architectural genius of Richard Morris Hunt. So many of Hunt’s remarkable creations have been lost, but in these pages, their beauty and majesty are brought back to life.""—Anderson Cooper, journalist and New York Times bestselling author of Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty ""Sam Watters has composed a thoughtful, complex and startlingly haunting memorial, in images and words, to the life and work of Richard Morris Hunt—the patrician architect who more than any other single builder and taste-maker set the look and feel and architectural tone of the Gilded Age. Alert to what is most aspirational and most troubling about Hunt’s astonishing career, Watters has created a crucial and in many ways definitive account of the master builder of America in its ascendant age.""—Ric Burns, filmmaker, director of the award-winning New York: A Documentary Film ""In the wall of Central Park, on Fifth Avenue, at 70th Street, is a colonnaded exedra and seat. This ornate edifice is the Richard Morris Hunt Monument. Undoubtedly, no other architect in America is commemorated with such magnificence. With The Gilded Life of Richard Morris Hunt: Architecture and Art for an American Civilization Sam Watters explains all the things that make this shrine so well deserved. Aesthetically and culturally, Hunt didn’t just make New York more imposing. Succeeding in a mission to elevate and ennoble American architecture, he transformed the look of the entire nation. With the same erudition, Sam Watters succeeds in showing us how.""—Michael Henry Adams, writer, lecturer, historian, activist, and author of Harlem: Lost and Found"