Richard T. H. Halsey

It was the good fortune of R. T. H. Halsey to be able to devote eighteen years of his life entirely to his interests as antiquarian and collector. Long before his retirement from business in 1924—he had been a governor of the New York Stock Exchange since 1900—he was well-known as a bibliophile and an authority on early American craftsmanship and art. The American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum, with its series of beautiful and authentic interiors, is largely the result of his taste, energy, and research. He became a trustee of the Museum in 1914. Among his own collections was one of rare caricatures of our Revolutionary period. In 1925 he served on a special committee on the renovation of the interior of the White House. He was at the age of seventy-four still playing lawn tennis, a game that he and other pioneers had introduced into this country when he was in his teens. At the time of his death he had made his home in New Haven for eight years and was a research assistant at the Yale University Library.

Geoffrey Parsons
1942 Century Memorials