Fifth Avenue steps under the MLow banners, then the Great Hall: three domes on their arches, the flower urns, the grand staircase rising to the paintings, the works on the limestone.
The Met was founded in 1870 and opened its first building on this site in Central Park in 1880, designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould. Richard Morris Hunt designed the Fifth Avenue facade and the Great Hall, completed in 1902 after his death under his son Richard Howland Hunt. The fresh flowers in the hall's urns are paid for by a bequest from Lila Acheson Wallace.
Source · The Metropolitan Museum of Art ↗
The Beaux Arts facade with its paired columns and the banners between them, the broad steps and fountains, the vaulted Great Hall with three saucer domes and oculi, the information desk and the five great flower arrangements, the grand staircase. Mood: saturday at opening. 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.