Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building

The collection is shown in six period rooms relocated from Electra and J. Watson Webb's 1930s New York City apartment at 740 Park Avenue.

[1] Drawing inspiration from Grecian temples, Greek Revival architects adopted the rectangular structure of colonial houses and reoriented it so that the triangular gables would run parallel, rather than perpendicular, to the road.

Anchoring the pedimented facade with a heavily columned, often two-storied porch, and sometimes flanking the main gable with mirroring wings, such as in the Memorial Building, architects achieved the proportion and symmetry of the ancient structures that inspired them.

Bronze castings of exotic animals by French artist Antoine-Louis Barye can be seen in the Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building.

Barye spent hours at the Paris zoo sketching the anatomy of animals to accurately reproduce them in bronze.

The European painters still represented by the collection include Rembrandt van Rijn, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt.

A brilliant technician who used broad strokes of paint as comfortably as he did minute dabs of color, Manet explored ideas about light that set the stage for the Impressionist movement.

It includes examples of the most sophisticated urban furniture produced in the nation as well as many simpler pieces made by country cabinetmakers for use in rural homes.

The popularity of carved decoration and elaborate upholstery, characteristic of the period, can be seen on the furniture displayed in the parlor of the Lighthouse and on the promenade deck of the Ticonderoga steamboat.