Stanford White
Stanford White (New York, September 11, 1853 - June 25, 1906) was an American architect the celebrity partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of formal and informal houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings. His personality outshone his partner Charles Follen McKim now seen as every bit White's equal, and his scandalous sex life eclipsed everything for those who have no taste for architecture.The interesting part of Stanford White's career began as the principal assistant to Henry Hobson Richardson, the greatest American architect of the day, creator of a style we 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.
He helped to build the second Madison Square Garden (1890), The Cable Building- the Broadway cable car power station (611 Broadway 1892) Madison Square Presbyterian Church, the New York Herald Building (1894), Washington Square Arch (1889), and the Century Club, all in New York City. He also helped in the development of Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower (which was his last design).
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. They 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.
Even in his "informal" shingled cottages, there were usually double corridors for separate circulation, so that a guest never bumped into a laundress with a basket of bedlinens. Bedrooms were characteristically separated from hallways by a dressing-room foyer lined with closets, so that an inner door and an outer door gave 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, like a theater foyer, like a theater set with appropriate historical references. He extended the limits of architectural services to include interior decoration, dealing in art and antiques, and even planning and designing parties. If White could not procured the right antiques for his interiors, he would sketch neo-Georgian standing electroliers. Outgoing and gregarious, he had a large circle of friends and acquaintances, many of whom became clients.
White had a major influence in what has become known as the "Shingle Style" onf the 1880s, on Neo-Colonial style, and the Newport cottages for which he is celebrated.
He designed and decorated spectacular Fifth Avenue mansions for the Astors, the Vanderbilts (in 1905), and other high society families. His Washington Square Arch still stands (see illustration). He was noted for his womanizing and installed the notorious red velvet swing in his bachelor-like apartment in the "Giralda" tower at old Madison Square Garden, where he entertained young chorines.
He was shot and killed by Harry K. Thaw, the jealous millionaire husband of Evelyn Nesbit, a popular actress and artist's model, whom White had seduced when she was 16. William Randolph Hearst's newspapers had a field day.
Books: the "White literature"
Books: architecture
(accessible bibliography to come)Fictional works based at least in part on the Thaw/White murder
External links