Central Park In Bronze

Location: 71st Street and Fifth Avenue

Artist/Designer: Daniel Chester French, sculptor; Bruce Price, exedra

Materials: Bronze, Westerly granite

Installation: 1898

Funding: Municipal Art Society of New York

 

Richard Morris Hunt (1828-1895) was one of America’s greatest early architects. Although much of his best New York work, including the Lenox Library on Fifth Avenue, is long gone, his brilliance is evidenced in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the base of the Statue of Liberty. Very active in the promotion of arts and the incorporation of art in architecture, Hunt helped found both the American Institute of Architects and the Municipal Art Society.

 

The committee for this memorial to Hunt, which was funded by his many friends and admirers, chose the illustrious Daniel Chester French as the designer. The Beaux-Arts style of the tribute was heavily favored by Hunt in his buildings. In fact, Hunt was the first American architect to graduate from the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In the center of the semicircular bench or exedra is French’s bust of Hunt. Allegorical sculptures on either end of the exedra represent the arts influenced by Hunt: Painting and Sculpture on the left, Architecture on the right. The latter holds a model of the administration building that Hunt designed for the 1893 Columbian Exposition.   

Richard Morris Hunt Memorial