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Architecture, Interiors, and Architectural Models

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The property that the Blisses acquired in 1920 and which they would later name Dumbarton Oaks had a central block dating to 1801 and an early nineteenth-century orangery. However, both had undergone extensive mid-nineteenth-century additions and renovations. The Blisses restored these buildings in a Georgian Revival style in 1921–1923 and added a Music Room in 1926–1928. They also created a Jacobean Revival Library in 1921, now called the Study, and installed two room interiors in 1931 created for them by the designer Armand Albert Rateau in Paris. After their gift of Dumbarton Oaks to Harvard University in 1940, they commissioned Philip Johnson to design the galleries for the Robert Woods Bliss Collection of Pre-Columbian Art in 1960–1963. In 2003–2005, Dumbarton Oaks built a new library designed by Robert Venturi.