Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building

Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building. Making the Museum. The original concept for what would become the Electra /Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building came from correspondence between Mrs. Webb and her friend Katharine Prentis Murphy a fellow collector and collaborator on Shelburne Museum's Prentis House . In an April 1953 letter to her children, Mrs. Webb recounted; , She {Murphy} thinks that I should put a fireproof building about the size of the stone house [today the Museum's Vermont House] but one story and in it place the paintings and have it as a memorial to father and Mother. In this way they would be part of our effort here and not lost in the big museum which already have so many fine paintings and that you children would feel that they were part of you all here... I myself had never though of the idea but i do know that the family picture now at the Metropolitan are drifting away from me. It is all the same to me, all I want to do is what you would like. , The Museum chose to honor their founder by designing and constructing the more imposing Electra Havemeyer Webb Memorial Building to share the Havemeyer family collecting legacy and Mrs. Webb own life work. and Mrs Webb's own work