An exterior view along Fifth Avenue of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)

(CBS News) And now a page from our Sunday Morning Almanac: October 21st, 1959 … 53 years ago today … a head-spinning day for art lovers.

For that was the day the Guggenheim Museum opened in New York City.

Designed by the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright, the Guggenheim is a curvaceous disruption of Manhattan’s rectilinear street grid, featuring a dizzying rotunda with a spiral ramp.

At first not everyone liked the Guggenheim’s design. One critic even compared it to a washing machine. But in a TV interview during construction, Wright made it clear he didn’t care:

“I’ve heard a lot of that type of reaction and I’ve always discounted it as worthless, and I think it is,” Wright said.

(Source: cbsnews.com)