42. Armor hall in Wave Hill, the home of Bashford Dean in Riverdale, New York, as completed and installed in 1930
43. Armor composed of pieces from Chalcis, Euboea, Greece. Italian, ca. 1400 – 1460 and later. Steel, copper alloy, textile, leather; h. 66 ½ in. (168.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bashford Dean Memorial Collection, Gift of Helen Fahnestock Hubbard, in memory of her father, Harris C. Fahnestock, 1929 (29.154.3)
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Hill, his early nineteenth-century house overlooking the Hudson in Riverdale, New York. Dean was uncommonly resourceful in raising funds to support his expensive hobby. He regularly bought entire collections in Europe, kept a few of the best pieces for himself, and sold the rest at auction in New York, at which the Metropolitan, several of its trustees, and Dean’s fellow collectors in the Armor and Arms Club were enthusiastic buyers. He organized and catalogued six auctions at the American Art Association between 1919 and 1928, most of the lots coming from his collection. As a result, the market for antique arms in New York came to rival that of London. In late 1927, shortly after he turned sixty, Dean announced his retirement. The trustees reluctantly accepted his resignation and in recognition of his devoted service to the Museum elected him a trustee. Dean was especially anxious to get on with the building of a Gothic-style
armor hall at Wave Hill to house his collection (fig. 42). He even contemplated the possibility of turning Wave Hill into a Museum annex for armor studies, but that dream was short-lived. He died unexpectedly on December 6, 1928. The Museum’s board adopted a resolution that acknowledged Dean’s many contributions: