May

May 14, 1968

May 14, 1968 After a judicial review of the Smithsonian Institution/Cooper Union Museum agreement, the Supreme Court of the State of New York rules that the transfer of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Decorative Arts and Design to the Smithsonian could be accomplished and that the museum was legally an entity within the Smithsonian Institution. On July 1, 1968, the Smithsonian officially took over the Cooper Union’s museum, and the museum was renamed Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

The image shows Carnegie Mansion, the home of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Decorative Arts and Design. The 64-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.

Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives