Metropolitan Museum of Art Building

Interior, Gallery 700 (Charles Engelhard Court) of the American Wing, 1980, renovated 2007-2009; north end of the court, Neoclassical facade of the Branch Bank of the United States, originally located on Wall Street; The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is by area one of the world's largest art galleries. The building is on the National Register and Landmark designation. In 1872 a High Victorian Gothic building was completed by Vaux and Mould; it was not well received and within 20 years a new Beaux-Arts plan engulfed the Vaux building. The Beaux-Arts Fifth Avenue facade, Great Hall, and Grand Stairway were designed by architect and Met trustee Richard Morris Hunt, but completed by his son, Richard Howland Hunt in 1902 after his father's death. The wings that completed the Fifth Avenue facade in the 1910s were designed by the firm of McKim, Mead & White. The modernistic glass sides and rear of the museum are the work of Roche-Dinkeloo. Kevin Roche has been the architect for the master plan and expansion of the museum for the past 42 years. As of 2010, the Met measures almost 1⁄4-mile (400 m) long and is more than 20 times the size of the original 1880 building. Source: Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (accessed 9/6/2015