The mansion on 91st Street from its own lawn: the conservatory, the terrace and pergola, the great hall with its carved oak stair, the works in the design galleries and out on the garden walls.
The Hewitt sisters founded the museum in 1897 as part of Cooper Union, and it joined the Smithsonian in 1967. Since 1976 it has occupied Andrew Carnegie's mansion on 91st Street, built between 1899 and 1902 by Babb, Cook and Willard, with its own garden. It is the only museum in the United States devoted to historic and contemporary design.
Source · Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum ↗
The Georgian brick and limestone mansion set back behind a lawn and iron fence, the glass and bronze conservatory, the Scottish oak entrance hall with organ pipes, the garden pergola of wisteria, the terrace where the summer parties happen. Mood: garden party. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.