As a museum, the Cloisters is unique in New York as its collection extends to include the architecture of the building that houses it. The second of the Metropolitan's museums, the structure is an ensemble of four cloisters and three chapels brought to New York from Europe. The collection is founded on American sculptor George Gray Barnard's personal holdings of medieval objects. Barnard had established a medieval art museum in Upper Manhattan, but constantly prone to financial mismanagement, he was forced to sell his preliminary medieval museum to John D. Rockefeller in 1925 to avoid bankruptcy. Rockefeller established the Cloisters as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1938 on the newly purchased land of Fort Tryon Park. This story takes us through the history of the four cloisters that make up the museum.