Stanford White

White, Stanford, 1853-1906, American architect, b. New York City; son of Richard Grant White. In 1872 he entered the office of Gambrill and Richardson in Boston, at the time when H. H. Richardson was at the peak of his fame. There White worked upon the design for Trinity Church, Boston. After studying in Europe, he entered (1879) into partnership with C. F. McKim and W. R. Mead, a firm that was to affect the course of American architecture over a long period. White had a passionate love of beauty; his special talents were for the decorative elements of a building and for its interior design and furnishing. He also possessed a wide knowledge of antiques. Among the buildings executed by the firm, those that are commonly ascribed as his individual accomplishments include the second Madison Square Garden, Madison Square Presbyterian Church, the New York Herald Building, Washington Arch, and the Century Club, all in New York City; only the last two still stand. These buildings illustrated his characteristic concentration upon rich and graceful effects and especially upon beautifully sculptured Renaissance ornament. White was shot and killed in Madison Square Roof Garden by Harry K. Thaw because of his love affair with Thaw's wife, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw. After his death the firm continued to design buildings in his style that later were erroneously attributed to White himself, e.g., the Harvard Club, New York City.

(born Nov. 9, 1853, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died June 25, 1906, New York City) U.S. architect. He trained with Henry Hobson Richardson. In 1880 he formed an architectural firm with Charles F. McKim and William R. Mead that soon became the most famous in the country, known especially for its Shingle-style country and seaside mansions. The firm later led the U.S. trend toward Neoclassical architecture. White's design for the Casino (1881) at Newport, R.I., exhibited his characteristic use of gracefully proportioned structures and Italian Renaissance ornamentation. His New York commissions included Madison Square Garden (1891) and the Washington Arch (1891). A versatile artist, he also designed jewelry, furniture, and interiors. An extrovert noted for his lavish entertainments, he was shot to death at Madison Square Garden by Harry Thaw, the husband of the showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, with whom White had had a love affair.

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Stanford White (November 9, 1853 – June 25, 1906) was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found to this day in places like Sea Gate, Brooklyn. His design principles embodied the "American Renaissance". In 1906 White was murdered by millionaire Harry K. Thaw, leading to a widely-reported trial.

Birth

Stanford White was the son of Shakespearean scholar Richard Grant White and Alexina Black Mease (1830–1921).

McKim, Mead and White

A quote by Stanford White:

Two men set off to build a dream; for one it ended with a scheme.

The other saw the scheme as part and portion of the work of art.

For the one the dream was finished when;

the drawings were done. He laid down his pen.

The other made the dream complete; with bricks and mortar and concrete.

Some argue that an architect; should stick to plans and not erect.

But we prefer to build our plans; not trusting them to others’ hands.

If our approach to some is new; submit this history for review

‘Twas in the 16th century; the Vatican sought to build, you see.

They hired a master builder who; would draw the plans – then see it through.

Stanford White's architectural career began as the principal assistant to Henry Hobson Richardson, the greatest American architect of the day, creator of a style recognized today as "Richardsonian Romanesque." In 1878, White embarked for a year and a half in Europe, and when he returned to New York in September 1879, he joined Charles Follen McKim and William Rutherford Mead to form McKim, Mead and White.

White designed the second Madison Square Garden (1890; demolished in 1925), The Cable Building—the Broadway cable car power station (611 Broadway, 1892), Madison Square Presbyterian Church, the New York Herald Building (1894; demolished), the First Bowery Savings Bank, at the Bowery and Grand Street, 1894, Washington Square Arch (1889), Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square, and the Century Club, all in New York City. He helped develop Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower (his last design). White designed the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland (1887), now Lovely Lane United Methodist Church. He also built Cocke, Rouss, and Old Cabell Halls at the University of Virginia and rebuilt The Rotunda (University of Virginia) in 1898 after it burned down three years earlier (his re-creation was later reverted back to Thomas Jefferson's original design for the United States Bicentennial in 1976). He also designed the Blair Mansion at 7711 Eastern Ave. in Silver Spring Md now being used as a Restaurant.

McKim, Mead and White also designed the American Academy in Rome, which crowns the Gianicolo hill, and looks across the city to the Villa Medici and the Borghese gardens. An imposing edifice, the American Academy is built in the style of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the north and south wings of which McKim, Mead, and White designed in 1911.

Homes and cottages

In the division of projects within the firm, the social and gregarious White landed the majority of commissions for private houses. His fluent draftsmanship was highly convincing to clients who might not get much visceral understanding from a floorplan, and his intuition and facility caught the mood. White's Long Island houses have survived well, despite the loss of Harbor Hill in 1947, originally set on in Roslyn. White's homes are of three types, depending on their locations: Gold Coast chateaux, neo-Colonial structures in the neighborhood of his own house at "Box Hill" in Smithtown (White's wife was a Smith), and the South Fork houses from Southampton to Montauk Point.

Among his Newport "cottages", Rosecliff (for Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs, 1898-1902) adapted Mansart's Grand Trianon, but provided this house built for receptions, dinners and dances with fluent spatial planning and well-contrived dramatic internal views en filade.

In his "informal" shingled cottages, there were usually double corridors for separate circulation, (illustration, left) so that a guest never bumped into a laundress with a basket of bed linens. Bedrooms were characteristically separated from hallways by a dressing-room foyer lined with closets, so that an inner door and an outer door give superb privacy (still the mark of a really good hotel). White lived the same life as his clients, not quite so lavishly perhaps, and he knew how the house had to perform: like a first-rate hotel, theater foyer, or a theater set with appropriate historical references. White was an apt designer, who was ready to do a cover for Scribner's Magazine or design a pedestal for his friend Augustus Saint-Gaudens' sculpture. He extended the limits of architectural services to include interior decoration, dealing in art and antiques, and even planning and designing parties. He collected paintings, pottery, and tapestries. If White could not procure the right antiques for his interiors, he would sketch neo-Georgian standing electroliers or a Renaissance library table. Outgoing and social, he possessed a large circle of friends and acquaintances, many of whom became clients. White had a major influence in the "Shingle Style" of the 1880s, on Neo-Colonial style, and the Newport cottages for which he is celebrated.

Mansions and social clubs

He designed and decorated Fifth Avenue mansions for the Astors, the Vanderbilts (in 1905), and other high society families. His Washington Square Arch still stands in Washington Square Park, and so do many of his clubs, which were focal points of New York society: the Century, Metropolitan, Players, Lambs, Colony and Harmony clubs. His clubhouse for the Atlantic Yacht Club, built in 1894 overlooking Gravesend Bay, burned down in 1934. Sons of society families also resided in White's St. Anthony Hall Chapter House at Williams College (now occupied by college offices). Pictured at:

Death

During the suggestive chorus song, "I Could Love a Million Girls," at the premiere performance of the musical revue Mam'zelle Champagne at the Madison Square Roof Garden (a building that he had designed 15 years previously), White was shot point blank in the face and killed by Harry Kendall Thaw. Thaw was the jealous millionaire husband of Evelyn Nesbit, a popular actress and artist's model, with whom White had a manipulative and sexual relationship when she was 16 (to his 47). The initial reaction was one of good cheer as elaborate party tricks amongst the upper echelon of New York Society were common at the time. However, when it became apparent that White was dead, hysteria ensued. William Randolph Hearst's newspapers sensationalized the murder, and it became known as the Trial of the Century. Years later, White's son, Lawrence Grant White would write bitterly, "On the night of June 25th, 1906, while attending a performance at Madison Square Garden, Stanford White was shot from behind [by] a crazed profligate whose great wealth was used to besmirch his victim's memory during the series of notorious trials that ensued." White was buried in St. James, New York.

White was noted for his womanizing; he had a red velvet swing installed in an apartment where Nesbit and other girls "in varying degrees of undress" would entertain him, which became a focal point of press coverage of the trial. There are conflicting accounts of whether this swing was in the "Giralda" tower at the old Madison Square Garden, or in a nearby building on 24th Street.

Archives

White's extensive professional outgoing correspondence and a small body of architectural drawings for his own residences are held by the Drawings and Archives Department of Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University. The major archive for his firm, McKim, Mead & White, is held by the New-York Historical Society.

Photo gallery

Fictional works based at least in part on the Thaw/White murder

• The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955 movie)
• The 1975 historical fiction novel Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow was adapted into the two below works:
• The film Ragtime.
• The musical Ragtime.
• "Dementia Americana" - A long narrative poem by Keith Maillard (1994)
• My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon – play by Don Nigro
• La fille coupée en deux – movie by Claude Chabrol (2007)

A fictionalized Thaw also appears in Jed Rubenfeld's 2006 novel The Interpretation Of Murder.

References and further reading

The "White Literature"

• Baker, Paul R., Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White, The Free Press, NY 1989
• Collins, Frederick L., Glamorous Sinners
• Lessard, Suzannah, The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1997 (written by White's great-granddaughter, a Whiting Award-winning writer for The New Yorker)
• Langford, Gerald, The Murder of Stanford White
• Mooney, Michael, Evelyn Nesbit and Stanford White: Love and Death in the Gilded Age
• Roth, Leland M., McKim, Mead & White, Architects, Harper & Row, Publishers, NY 1983
• Samuels, Charles, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing
• Thaw, Evelyn Nesbit, The Story of My Life 1914
• Thaw, Evelyn Nesbit, Prodigal Days 1934
• Thaw, Harry, The Traitor
• Uruburu, Paula, American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, The Birth of the "It" Girl and the Crime of the Century Riverhead 2008

Architecture

• Samuel G. White, with Jonathan Wallen (photographer), The Houses of McKim, Mead and White 1998. Lavish illustrations.
• Wayne Craven, Stanford White: Decorator in Opulence and Dealer in Antiquities, 2005. Stanford White as an interior decorator and a dealer in the fine and decorative arts

External links

• Stanford White Papers,1873-1928New-York Historical Society
• Colorized photo of Stanford White
• Randall's Lost New York City Cable Building is included as a special resource.
• "Stanford White on Long Island" a museum essay on White's residential projects
• "Harry Thaw's trial" Scans of a dinner program with Jurists autographs
• New York Architecture Images-New York Architects-McKim, Mead, and White Firm history with images