Carnegie Mansion/Cooper-Hewitt Museum

Summary

• Carnegie Mansion, the home of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in New York City. The sixty-four-room mansion was built by Andrew Carnegie and his wife, Louise Whitfield Carnegie, who wanted a spacious, comfortable, and light-filled home in which to raise their young daughter, Margaret. The house was also planned as a place where Carnegie, after his retirement in 1901, could oversee the philanthropic projects to which he would dedicate the final decades of his life. From his private office in the mansion, Carnegie donated money to build free public libraries in communities across the country and to the improvement of cultural and educational facilities in Scotland and the United States.
• The mansion was designed in the Georgian style by the architectural firm of Babb, Cook & Willard, and completed in 1901. The property includes a large private garden, a rarity in Manhattan. The house includes many innovative features. It was the first private residence in the U.S. to have a structural steel frame and one of the first in New York to have a residential Otis passenger elevator. The house also had central heating and a precursor to air-conditioning. The building received landmark status in 1974, and in 1976 reopened as Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution.

Subject

• Carnegie Mansion (New York, N.Y.)
• Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration
• Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Category

Historic Images of the Smithsonian

Contained within

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 95

Contact information

Institutional History Division, Smithsonian Institution Archives, 600 Maryland Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20024-2520, SIHistory@si.edu

Date

c. 1930s?

Restrictions & Rights

No restrictions

Topic

• Museum buildings
• Houses
• Architecture
• Grounds
• Architecture, domestic

Place

New York (N.Y.)

Form/Genre

• Photographic print
• Exterior

ID Number

73-9927

Physical description

Color: Black and White; Size: 10w x 8h; Type of Image: Exterior; Medium: Photographic print

Full Record

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