Queer Places:
Miss Porter's School, 60 Main St, Farmington, CT 06032
Ringwood Manor, 1304 Sloatsburg Rd, Ringwood, NJ 07456
Green-Wood Cemetery Brooklyn, Kings County (Brooklyn), New York, USA
Sarah Cooper Hewitt (October 26, 1859 – October 16, 1930), affectionately known as "Miss Sally," was born in 1859 as the second child of Abram Hewitt, an industrialist and
mayor of New York City, and Sarah Amelia Cooper Hewitt, and she was the granddaughter of industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper. Reared in an environment of immense
privilege, intellectual rigor, and civic duty, Sarah received an elite private education that included study at Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut, and
intensive language tutoring abroad, making her fluent in French. Never marrying, Sarah chose a path of fierce independence and self-determination, channeling her vast
energy into sports, equestrianism, structural management of family properties like Ringwood Manor, and above all, the advancement of art and design education. Alongside
her younger sister Eleanor, Sarah became a pioneering cultural force when they founded the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of
Decoration in 1897, marking the first time American women established a major national museum. Operating on principles of participatory, practical learning for industrial
designers, artisans, and students, the sisters spent decades curating an extraordinary collection of textiles, drawings, and decorative arts through meticulous European
expeditions and high-society patronage. Sarah remained deeply active in the management and financial sustenance of the museum and her community until her death in 1930,
leaving behind a legacy that transformed American design education through what is now the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Within the rich tapestry of Gilded Age New York's cultural elite, Sarah Hewitt and her family maintained close social ties with a vibrant circle of independent women,
artists, and pioneers whose lives intersected heavily with early LGBTQ+ history. Notably, Sarah's mother, Sarah Amelia Cooper Hewitt, hosted a luncheon that served as the
historic meeting place for the theatrical agent and producer Elisabeth "Bessie" Marbury and the legendary interior decorator
Elsie de Wolfe. Marbury and de Wolfe would go on to live openly together as a couple for decades, forming one of the most
prominent lesbian partnerships of the era and anchoring an influential network of creative women that included writer
Anne Morgan. Furthermore, Sarah Hewitt's expansive social network and prominent standing within New York's avant-garde and museum
circles connected her to modernist painter and salonnière Florine Stettheimer. Stettheimer’s famous New York salon famously
provided a rare, welcoming sanctuary where gay, lesbian, and bisexual artists and intellectuals could gather authentically during a heavily policed era. Through her
institutional leadership, patronage, and central position in elite New York society, Sarah Hewitt operated adjacent to—and actively crossed paths with—the trailblazing
queer figures who were radically redefining American domestic design, art, and professional life.
References:
- Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum – Select Bibliography & Research Guides: Comprehensive institutional collections, digital exhibitions (such as Sarah & Eleanor Hewitt: Designing a Modern Museum), and curator-led digital series (Meet the Hewitts and Cooper Hewitt Short Stories) documenting their lives, social circles, and foundation of the museum.
- Ringwood Manor Guest Books (4 Volumes, 1876–1932): Primary source records housed via the Ringwood Manor association and Smithsonian Libraries, containing autographs, poetry, sketches, and logs of the diverse avant-garde and high-society visitors hosted by the Hewitt family.
- Hewitt, Eleanor G. The Making of a Modern Museum. New York: Wednesday Afternoon Club, 1919.
- Bisland, Elizabeth. Proposed Plan of the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration. 1896.
- Hewitt, Edward R. Those Were the Days: Tales of a Long Life. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1943.
- Post, Emily. Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1922 (detailing Gilded Age salon culture and society hostesses).
- Nevins, Allan. Abram S. Hewitt: With Some Account of Peter Cooper. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1935.
- Hellman, Geoffrey T. “A Reporter at Large: No. 9 Lexington Avenue.” The New Yorker (October 29, 1938): 58.
- Chronicle of the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, Vol. 1, no. 3 (April 1937): special anniversary issues detailing the history, founding acquisitions, and network of the Hewitt sisters.
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