Background
Stanford White, son of the noted Shakespearean critic Richard Grant White, was born in New York City on November 9, 1853.
Stanford White, son of the noted Shakespearean critic Richard Grant White, was born in New York City on November 9, 1853.
From 1878 to 1880 White studied abroad, and upon his return he joined the firm led by Charles Follen McKim and William Rutherford Mead, eventually renamed McKim, Mead and White.
Many of the firm's apprentices became the next generation's best architects.
White's first commissions were for houses and monuments.
During the 18806 he built homes on Long Island with Renaissance decoration, Robert Goelet's mansion at Newport, Rhod Island (1883), and many residences for rich clients in New York City.
White designed Madison Square Garden (1890) as a center for spectacular events.
Backed by rich New Yorkers, including White himself, this daring project proved financially unstable, yet it continued for many years to serve a public need.
His design offered color, gaiety, a Spanish exoticism, and consistency in style. During the 18906 White was at his prime.
He was involved with more than 70 projects, from tombs to fashionable men's clubs.
The Metropolitan Club, New York, is outstanding for White's authoritative borrowing of Italian Renaissance and English 19th-century ideas; however, it is less imaginative than many of his residential designs.
At the Military Academy at West Point, White, with the sculptor Frederick MacMonnies, executed the Battle Monument (1896).
White died tragically on June 25, 1906, when Harry Thaw, believing that White had seduced his wife, shot him in Madison Square Garden while White was watching an evening show.
He designed a long series of houses for the rich, and numerous public, institutional, and religious buildings. His design principles embodied the "American Renaissance".
The best tomb is in the Adams Memorial in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D. C. ; its sculpture— a deeply moving, shrouded figure—is by Saint-Gaudens.
White, a tall, flamboyant man with red hair and a red mustache, impressed others as witty, kind, and generous. The newspapers frequently described him as "masterful, " "intense, " "burly yet boyish. "
Quotes from others about the person
The article appeared on August 8, 1906, in Collier's magazine:
"Since his death White has been described as a satyr. To answer this by saying that he was a great architect is not to answer at all…what is more important is that he was a most kindhearted, most considerate, gentle and manly man, who could no more have done the things attributed to him than he could have roasted a baby on a spit. Big in mind and in body, he was incapable of little meanness. He admired a beautiful woman as he admired every other beautiful thing God has given us; and his delight over one was as keen, as boyish, as grateful over any others. "
In 1884, White married 22-year-old Bessie Springs Smith. His new wife hailed from a socially prominent Long Island family; her ancestors were early settlers of the area, and Smithtown, New York, was named for them. Their estate, Box Hill, was not only a home, but also a showplace illustrating the luxe design aesthetic White offered prospective wealthy clients. A son, Lawrence Grant White, was born in 1887
