On February 29, 1960, the last legal obstacle to Huntington Hartford's proposed Gallery of Modern Art at 2 Columbus Circle was removed when the Court of Appeals refused to hear the remaining shoe-store tenant's appeal and the store vacated the site. The decision mattered because it allowed demolition and construction to proceed on Edward Durell Stone's controversial museum commission, an attempt by Hartford to create a New York showcase for an alternative canon of modern art. The project eventually opened to the public on March 21, 1964, displaying Hartford's collection, including works by Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, Turner, and Salvador Dali, and later became the New York Cultural Center before its conversion for the Museum of Arts and Design.
The decision enabled one of New York's most debated postwar museum buildings to move from proposal to construction.
