Richard Howland Hunt

Who was Richard Howland Hunt?

Richard Howland Hunt was an American architect and member of the notable Hunt family of Vermont, who worked in partnership with his brother Joseph Howland Hunt in New York City, as Hunt & Hunt. The brothers were sons of the first American Beaux-Arts architect, Richard Morris Hunt. Richard practiced in his father's office until the elder Hunt's death in July 1895, and continued, not without initial resistance on the part of trustees, to carry out his father's designs for the central block of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After a brief interval, the brothers formed a partnership in 1901 that was only terminated by Joseph's death in 1924.

Richard Howland Hunt, the older son, studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where his father Richard Morris Hunt had studied. In 1887 Richard Howland Hunt joined his father's offices, first as a draftsman and later an associate. In the interim following his father's death he attracted wealthy clients and built residences such as the Margaret Shepard house at 5 East 66th Street, now housing the Lotos Club.