Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

The Cooper-Hewitt Museum was founded in 1897 by the grandchildren of wealthy New Yorker Peter Cooper. Today, the museum is a branch of the Smithsonian Institution, and it houses one of the world's largest collections of historical and current design. It is also the only exhibition space in America devoted solely to this subject. The outside of the Upper East Side building, once the residence of Andrew Carnegie, resembles a Georgian country house.