Famous Buildings Tour – The New Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum Addition, Boston, MA

January 12, 2012, 5:35 pm
Filed under: Trips to Famous Buildings

The new addition to the Isabella Stuart Gardner art museum will open to the public on Jan 19, 2012 so I thought that I would include some pre-opening photos of the new addition to supplement my upcoming visit to the site. To those unfamiliar with the museum or its history, it opened in 1903 as a repository for Mrs. Gardiner’s collection of art and antiquities. The original museum faces the Fenway and was designed by architect Willard P. Sears. Construction lasted from 1899 to 1901.

1903 Gardner museum

The museum opened to the public on Jan 1, 1903. Mrs. Gardner used the building as both a house and a museum, making the fourth floor her personal residence. Today the museum is probably most infamously known for the famous art heist that occurred in 1990 in which 13 valuable Dutch Masterworks were stolen from the walls and remain missing to this today. The heist was believed to be an inside job and the whereabouts of the stolen pieces remain a mystery. Equally famous is the museum’s courtyard with its splendid gardens.

Courtyard

The new 70,000 sq ft addition was designed by Renzo Piano at a cost of $114 million dollars. Included in the new addition are a concert hall, gallery spaces, entrance lobby, restaurant, offices, stair tower and a greenhouse. Below are photos of the new addition.