History
The land was purchased in 1898 in secrecy by Carnegie, further north than most mansions, in part to ensure there was enough space for a garden. He asked his architects Babb, Cook & Willard for the "most modest, plainest, and most roomy house in New York". However, it was also the first American residence to have a steel frame and among the first to have a private Otis Elevator and central heating. His wife, Louise, lived in the house until she died in 1946.
The Carnegie Corporation gave the house and property to the Smithsonian in 1972, and the modern incarnation of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum opened there in 1976. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates handled the renovation into a museum in 1977. The interior was redesigned by the architectural firm, Polshek and Partners, headed by James Polshek, in 2001.
Read more about this topic: Andrew Carnegie Mansion
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)