Stanford White

Stanford White (September 11, 1853 - June 25, 1906) was an American architect and 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 design principles embodied the "American Renaissance". His personality outshone his partner Charles Follen McKim now seen as every bit White's equal as an architect, and his scandalous sex life eclipsed everything, for those who have no taste for architecture.

McKim, Mead and White

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.

Related Topics:
Henry Hobson Richardson - Richardsonian Romanesque - McKim, Mead and White

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He built 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). He also built Cocke, Rouss, and Old Cabell Halls at the University of Virginia and rebuilt The University's Rotunda in 1898 after it burned down three years earlier. His garish recreation was later corrected back to Thomas Jefferson's original design for the United States Bicentennial in 1976.

Related Topics:
Madison Square Garden - 1890 - Madison Square Presbyterian Church - New York Herald Building - 1894 - The Bowery - Washington Square Arch - 1889 - Century Club - New York City - Wardenclyffe Tower - University of Virginia - Rotunda - Thomas Jefferson - Bicentennial

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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.

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Even 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 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. 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, 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 gregarious, he had a large circle of friends and acquaintances, many of whom became clients.

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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.

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