Background
Standford White was born in 1853 in New York, United States.
Standford White was born in 1853 in New York, United States.
The boy attended private schools and studied under tutors, and at the age of eighteen graduated at the University of New York.
When he was nineteen he entered the office of Gambrill & Richardson in New York as a student draftsman, rapidly developed skill in design, and remained as Richardson's chief assistant on many of that master’s most important works, including the Capitol at Albany and Trinity Church in Boston. In 1878 White left for an extended visit in Europe, and after meeting Charles F McKim in France they traveled in congenial companionship through southern France and Spain, with the result that when they returned to New York in 1880 White was invited to join McKim and William Mead in partnership.
During his twenty-five years' membership in the firm his skill in design was manifest in various types of buildings, including the Judson Memorial Church in New York. 1885; Washington Memorial Arch (1889); Cullom Memorial Hall at West Point (1898); several New York Clubs, of which the Metropolitan was considered his "supreme achievement in Renaissance design; ”Library, New York University (1900); Knickerbocker Trust Building (1904); Porch and decorative features of St. Bartholomew's Church, and the chancel of the Church of the Ascension; Madison Square Presbyterian Church (1905), "that Byzantine jewel,” demolished in 1919 to make way for business, a matter of regret to many people, and the Gorhan and Tiffany buildings on Fifth Avenue, two of his most successful works. Earlier, in 1889, White was commissioned by a group of wealthy New York men to prepare plans for the structure known as Madison Square Gardens, and in the 300 foot tower (suggestive of the Giralda Bell Tower in Seville) he built for himself an apartment where he entertained (in lavish style) fellow artists and visiting celebrities.
His artistic skill was also manifest in the design of luxurious urban homes and country estates built for a clientele including the late Harry Payne Whitney, William C. Whitney, Joseph Pulitzer, Stuyvesant Fish, Charles Dana Gibson, Ogden Mills, Robert Goelet, the Astor family, and many others. In still another field White won recognition in designing pedestals for monumental pieces of sculpture, working in collaboration with distinguished artists of his era, John LaFarge, Frederick McMonnies and Augustus St. Gaudens.