Isabella Stewart Gardner hired Boston-based architect Willard T. Sears (1837-1920) to oversee the design and construction of her museum. Sears had designed many buildings in Boston, and Mrs. Gardner was doubtless the most difficult client he ever had, judging from these excerpts from his diary for the period during which the building was under construction.

John Evans called today with the drawing for the stone doorway of Mrs. Gardner's house, and said that he would have nothing further to do with her work owing to her pitching into his men yesterday. He would not be bothered by her any further...

Sullivan said she called him a liar and he would not do any more work for her, but after a while I prevailed on him to keep on...

Mrs. Gardner changed her mind in regard to the arrangement of the triple arch windows at the west end of the Gothic Room today after they had been built part way up, and had them rebuilt...

She insisted one of the wood panels had been placed bottom end up, but later said it was all right. She wanted me to discharge all of the plasterers and hire new men. She repudiated all of the plumbing fixtures, saying that they were not at all what she had selected and that she would not have them....

The electric light wiring men objected to entering the conduit on the Worthington St. side of the house and she told them she would not have it elsewhere, that she would use candles...

She said that she had directed Mr. Letson to discharge the floor layers for mimicking her when she spoke to them for not working....

I told her that I had not obtained a permit from the City [for the carriage shed], that I was afraid that the City would not give one if asked for. She said, "Go ahead and build it without a permit, if the City stops me I will not open my museum to the public."

Quoted in Eye of the Beholder: Masterpieces of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, ed. by Alan Chong, Richard Lingner and Carl Zahn (Beacon Press, 2003).