The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art is a museum on Staten Island housing one of the United States' most extensive collections of Himalayan artifacts. It was founded by Jacques Marchais (born Jacqueline Klauber, 1887-1948), who never traveled to Tibet but built a lifelong collection of Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese Buddhist art. The museum, which opened in 1947, was designed to resemble a rustic Himalayan mountain monastery, with terraced gardens and a lotus pond, making it the first Himalayan-style architecture built in the United States. The Dalai Lama visited and praised its authenticity in 1991, and the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.