Richard Morris Hunt (October 31, 1827 – July 31, 1895) was an American architect of the nineteenth century and an eminent figure in the history of architecture of the United States.

[1] Hunt is also renowned for his Biltmore Estate, America's largest private house, near Asheville, North Carolina, and for his elaborate summer cottages in Newport, Rhode Island, which set a new standard of ostentation for the social elite and the newly minted millionaires of the Gilded Age.

[7] In October 1843, out of concern for William's health, Mrs. Hunt and her five children sailed from New York to Europe, eventually settling in Rome.

[10] In October 1846, Hunt entered the Paris atelier of the architect Hector Lefuel, while studying for the entrance examinations of the École des Beaux-Arts.

[13] Hunt would later regale the sixteen-year-old future architect Louis Sullivan with stories of his work on the Nouveau Louvre in Lefuel's atelier libre.

Hunt's first substantial project was the Tenth Street Studio Building, where he rented space, and where in 1858 he founded the first American architectural school, beginning with a small group of students, including George B.

"[17] It was in these early years that Hunt suffered his greatest professional setback, the rejection of his formal, classical proposal for the "Scholars' Gate", the entrance to New York's Central Park at 60th Street and Fifth Avenue.

His conversation was spirited beyond any I remember, loaded with matter, and expressed with the vigour and fury of a member of the Harvard boat or ball club relating the adventures of one of their matches; inspired, meantime, throughout, with fine theories of the possibilities of art.

[26] On April 2, 1861, they married at the Church of the Ascension, on Fifth Avenue at Tenth street,[27] and according to a newspaper reporter, the bride brought a dowry to the marriage of $400,000.

Hunt devoted much of his practice to institutional work, including the Theological Library and Marquand Chapel at Princeton; the Fogg Museum of Art at Harvard; and the Scroll and Key clubhouse at Yale, all of which except the last have been demolished.

Late in life he joined the consortium of architects selected to plan Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, considered to be an exemplar of Beaux-Arts design.

[29] Hunt's design for the fair's Administration Building won a gold medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects.

The last surviving New York City buildings entirely by Hunt are the Jackson Square Library and a charity hospital he designed for the Association for the Relief of Respectable Aged Indigent Females, completed in 1883 at Amsterdam Avenue between 103rd and 104th Streets.

Hunt advocated tirelessly for the improved status of architects, arguing that they should be treated, and paid, as legitimate and respected professionals equivalent to doctors and lawyers.