The St. Guilhem Gallery of The Cloisters, Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York
Restoration of the St. Guilhem Gallery

Designed to house John D. Rockefeller's collection of medieval art in 1938, this famous museum is a complex of four ancient cloisters.  The St. Guilhem Gallery houses the twelfth century artifacts from the Benedictine Abbey, St. Guilhem le Desert, in the south of France.

Easton Architects was asked to reinterpret the Gallery, which is the only cloister in the museum with a protective roof and ceiling.  A new roof with a hipped glass skylight has been designed with a low slope to make it invisible from the ground.  A new laylight design better reflects the proportions and intention of the space, allowing more natural light to filter into the room, documenting the passage of time through the changing pattern of sunlight-daily and seasonally.  The project calls for the complete exterior restoration of all walls, roofs, copings and flashings to insure a watertight environment.  This complicated and challenging project received unanimous approval from all regulatory review agencies.

The complex is a local NYC Landmark, listed on the State and National Registers, and a National Historic Landmark.