Richard Morris Hunt

Richard Morris Hunt (October 31 1827–July 31, 1895) was a preeminent figure in the history of American architecture. Born in Brattleboro, Vermont, Hunt was the son of Jane Maria Leavitt, born to an influential family of Suffield, Connecticut, and Hon. Jonathan Hunt, a U.S. congressman whose own father was the lieutenant governor of Vermont, and scion of a wealthy and prominent Vermont family. Richard Morris Hunt was the brother of the Boston painter William Morris Hunt, and the photographer and lawyer Leavitt Hunt. (Hunt was named for Lewis Richard Morris, a family relation, who was a U.S. Congressman from Vermont and the nephew of Gouverneur Morris, an author of large parts of the U.S. Constitution.) Following the early death of his father, Hunt's mother took the family to Europe, where they remained for more than a decade, first in Switzerland and later in Paris. In 1846 Hunt was the first American architect to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and was regarded well... full article at wikipedia