Stanford figures just lightly as a friend to the children and later the business partner of Archie and Wintie, the two oldest orphas. They all inspire me, older and younger designer/non designer. . It was occupied by my grandparents, Lawrence and Laura White, when I was a child. Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Personal life 4 References 5 External links Early life [ edit] ''Is Suzannah blaming the alleged acts of incest by her father and uncle that came later on some latent effect of Stanford's own sexual debauchery or on the Chanlers' insanity?''. She had begun her project with the preconception that Stanford was a charming, charismatic figure, who had had affairs, yes, but was no worse than many, and had done nothing that a sophisticated person would find untoward. The tumbleweed repeated is an actual tumbleweed from the HC Cattle Company belonging to Cy's family ranch. Shortly after you turned onto it from the public road, it passed through a circular clearing, also lined with rhododendrons, called the Rond Point. A good example is his approach to the design of the libraries at the various clubs he builtlike New York's Metropolitan Club, which was founded in 1891 by J.P . Detailed hand-written notes describe the places that certain objects have traveled to . We said it wasnt nothing, and she, in her turn, burst explosively into tears. The True History Behind HBO's 'The Gilded Age' - Smithsonian Magazine Along with working on projects they have a line of wallpaper which includes their Tumbleweed collection inspired by the tumbleweeds that blow across the west. It was in that charged quiet that he occasionally sat down at the Steinway and played. He was also a family man and Evelyn knew there was little hope for marriage. As described by Avenue Magazine, Evelyn detailed how White had drugged her champagne, and how she was assaulted in her sleep after she passed out. I cannot be quite sure what happened next, but as I go through this part of the vision I feelin the presentan uncontrollable impulse to kick, and what I discern through my wincing and kicking feelings is that my father reached up and poked me between my legs. Again, I knew this, but I had forgotten it: it was information I had pushed aside, as if to protect myself from the continual encroachment of family associations. Just before Christmas in 1988, my sister Madeleine, who was living in Europe, called each of us sisters and asked that we meet by ourselves over the holidays. (This was a view that many composersStravinsky among themshared at the time.) Her parents had tossed her a challengea challenge that she roundly deserved for having such grandiose ideas. This feeling of soundness in the past was comforting to me as a girl, and far more than fiscally: it translated into a sense of being borne up by a reliable foundation. White arrived on the Island as a result of his marriage to Bessie Smith, a descendant of Richard (Bull) Smith, the ''bullrider'' who gave Smithtown its name. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. One cousin, from the Emmett family, also of established Long Island ancestry, related to the Whites through the Chanler line, said: ''I don't doubt that what Suzannah has written is true. Stanford White was one of New York's great architects. For some reason, however, after the call my aversion lifted, and I did a little research about Stanfordthe first in my life. Mario Bellini Cab lounge chair, 1970s, offered by Villa Vintage etc. Mayflower Descendants FamilySearch Her ''Death of the Orange Trees'' (1963, Harper & Row), about an established family's fall from grace, was not warmly received in the White family. In 1897, when he was in particularly difficult financial straits, he ordered extensive improvements to a hideaway above F.A.O. Schwarz, on West Twenty-fourth Street: he put in a marble mantel that had to be raised on the outside of the building and brought in through the window; he also had the famous swing attached to the high ceiling by red velvet ropes. She shocked New Yorkers with her nudity, as Saint-Gaudens and Stanford had hoped. Johnny looked good with a gunthe brown stock and the metal barrel rested naturally in his strong brown arm. There was also a bed in the studio; some interludes there were more intimate than others. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. It was as if the crash had already happened. Another recollection that partially escaped the cloister walls was of lying in bed in the corner bedroom and seeing the glass doorknob turning. The White Family in America | SpringerLink All rights reserved. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Through large, arched windows, we could see the blue ocean on the other side of the house. '', To Ms. White, the inclusion of the affair in a book meant to be a memoir seems contrived, an attempt to use a forebear's notoriety. Sometimes he would jump up in the middle of the night and rush down to the piano to compose some music that had come into his head. It was a kind of cave, where an adult could stand, where the light was colorless and gray, and there, sunk in the mulch and dulled by nearly a century of sediment, were eight fragments: four lions; two medallions, one of them with a fishlike creature embossed in the center, the other with a flower; and two leafy marble formations in an Ionic motif. Later, when my mother said, Johnny threatened me with a gun, nobody paid any attention, as if the words were somehow unable to cut the air. But Stanfords most famous building, and the one that most precisely reflected his extravagance and his ebullience, was Madison Square Garden, which stood at Twenty-sixth Street near where Fifth Avenue and Broadwayor high society and caf societycrossed. We sat tentatively, and a little awkwardly, around Madeleinewe had no precedent for talking together in a serious wayas she told us that shed been seeing a psychoanalyst in France, and that she had told her shed been sexually fondled by our father at night when she was a child. Stanford White : Letters to His Family : Including a Selection of On what he calls the Sheraton-style sideboard of no particular importance are a bronze fish from a fountain Stanford designed for Box Hill and a cast of a 16th-century Florentine bust. On one occasion White was completing business calls at the community telephone in the store when a lightning storm raged and hit the telephone wires. One wet November day, seven years after my mother had shown me the fragments in the Rond Point, I was crouching in the woods just below the place where the Rhododendron Drive burst out into the fields on its way up to Box Hill. I was trying to determine exactly the right site for a house. The one period in which Stanford was frequently a topic around Box Hill was in 1955, when The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing was released. Exclusive: How HBO Almost Lost Succession, At the 'White Lotus' Premiere with Beatrice Grann. In the nineties, Stanfords spending was seriously out of control. Founder of NES CREATIVE and NES FILMS. White's most significant contribution to New York City and American architecture was vision, says Bach. She wanted to talk to us about our childhood, she said. A year later, my grandfather died of a heart attack. The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family brother. There, at the bottom of the stairs, were the life-size wooden Baroque lions: my grandfather was always shooing us children off when we sat on them, because we might break their backward-curling tails, which we did. The source of the dread was the very geniality of the architecture: its delicacy, its glow, its seductiveness. One house not open to the public is Stanfords own weekend residence, Box Hill, in Saint James, on the north shore of Long Island. When they toured museums together she would be horrified at the fast pace he took on his way through the galleries she was lingering in. For Stanford, every surface was an opportunity, and few opportunities were neglected, his great-grandson writes. They had the fortune of working with the talented team at Commune Design before starting their own firm. Just as frequently, however, she says that because of the scandal of White's adulterous affairs and death, her great-grandfather was never spoken about at the house. My grandfather, who was Stanfords only child, and an architect, toohe had joined his fathers firm as a young manwas often down there in the drive, tending to the rhododendrons with a special clipper on a pole. She was beautiful, with her fair skin and greenish eyes. The ''Beauty'' chapter, devoted to sexual exploits, recounts White's penchant for showgirls. Stanford White Wikipedia Republished // WIKI 2 Jul 14, 2013 - Explore atara's board "stanford white", followed by 3,227 people on Pinterest. He was laid out in the parlor at Box Hill, a room of angels and ornaments, red velvet and gilt. White's acquisitions were guided by McKim's wishes, a rare illustration of his aesthetic judgement, as well as a reflection of White's effective decorating eye. Stanford White Architecture: List of Stanford White Buildings - Ranker Stanford White 1853-1906 - Ancestry The story of Stanford Whitehis scandalous affair with the 16-year-old actress Evelyn Nesbit, his murder in 1906 by her husband, the millionaire Harry K. Thaw, and the hailstorm of publicity that surrounded "the trial of the century"has proven irresistable to generations of novelists, historians, and biographers. Stanford generally went after girls, but there may have been boys, too; it is hard to say. If you couldnt afford tapestries, you would have paneling, and if you couldnt afford paneling, you would use Spanish leather. Bobby and Claire lived with their four children in another farmhouse over by the cluster of barns. This arrangement is typical of Beaux-Arts design, in which the landscape is an extension of the architecture, and the smallest detail is connected to the vision of the whole. Birth of Richard Mansfield White. ''You have to look at the whole man to judge him and you have to look at a whole family to judge it, too. My grandfather was my first corpse, and when I left the room I saw my mother coming down the stairs into the front hall with tears streaming down her face: she didnt use a handkerchief or wipe them away with her hand; she was just letting them stream, and her black hair was loose and streaming, too. Founder of NES CREATIVE and NES FILMS. Although he married 22-year-old Bessie Springs Smith when he was 33-years-old, he famously had an "affair" with 16-year-old Evelyn Nesbit when he was in his 40s. Paul Jay's son, Florian Jay, having studied at the School of Fine Arts at Hunter, is a fabricator in metal, who, along with his own pieces, has worked for sculptors Louise Bourgeois, Keith Sonnier and Dennis Oppenheim . His creations can be found outside New York City. In addition, as the cost of moving and reconstructing the house streaked beyond the original estimates, my husband and I were under growing financial stress, which we tried to ameliorate by doing work on the house ourselves. Peter White said Ms. Lessard had sent copies of the book to every family member. Peter White said he had been mistaken by a former classmate as the uncle identified as Bobby. Mar 31, 2021. Anything else you would like to add?Here is a family narrative that my great Aunt Cynthia Jay put together when she put together the art show: "THE LIVELY EYE: five generations of a family in the Arts". My sisters, in contrast, had protection in numbers, or so it seemed to me. The piano room had a wavy wooden floor that pitched down, and the plaster walls were wavy, too. Stanford was shot in 1906, and I was born nearly forty years later, in 1944. I know well the spot on the second-floor landing at Box Hill where my grandfather sat outside his mothers door, waiting for her to wake. ''Johnny didn't shoot one of their horses. Harry Thaw | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers I needed to retreat from it into a kind of feigned innocence, to be a barefoot child outdoors. But if she wants to make it at the cost of her family, then so be it.''. Sally Ann married Nathan Foskett Maynard and moved to Wisconsin. Murder of the Century | American Experience | PBS . Madison Square Garden Theater, where Thaw shot White in 1906. Not really. Stanford White's New York. For a more complete view of this lecture, check out Stanford White Architect, authored by Samuel White and his wife Elizabeth White. The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family Luckily, he has access to free architectural services, jokes Samuel, referring to the role he has played in the restoration. ''Basically,'' Ms. White added, ''I think Suzannah is a polemicist. The columns had fallen down and rotted; some statuary that I had taken for marble as a child (but that under its white paint was plaster) had disintegrated; and the rhododendrons that originally formed the circle had been smothered by chinaberry vines, giving them the blinded, blunted look of a creature fumbling beneath a blanket. From there, a ladder rose to a small balcony around a cupola that supported a large bronze statue of the goddess Diananude, balancing on one foot, bow drawn. Alcoholism, too, figures heavily in the accounts of sexual abuse and, later, the rape of a cousin whom she calls Pamela by another cousin, William. Scandals of real 'Gilded Age' more shocking than HBO show - New York Post Salas O'Brien announced today that Raleigh-based engineering firm Stanford White has joined the company, creating a combined firm of 35 offices with more than 825 team members, 190 registered professionals and clients including the most significant companies, institutions and government agencies in the United States. In addition to familial objections, the book moves between real names and pseudonyms and makes what seem to be impossible conjectures about occurrences outside the time frame. A quality in Stanfords interiors which had caused me to avoid them in the past enveloped me, like a perfume triggering an allergic reaction: a swelling in the chest near the throat, a pressure of tears behind the eyesand, above all, dread. It was like that on the Place: the frightening aspect of things didnt fully register. A consensus appears to agree that the book is well written. However, if they are, they should be dealt with inside the family forum, not in the public eye like so much dirty laundry.''. There were also steep debts to jewellers and florists. He built a large home in hopes that it would be filled with grandchildren whom he could adore, and he was a great friend to many people. Percentages of households who are millionaires: White families15% Black families2% Hispanic families3% Percentages of families who were in debt: Black families18% Hispanic families12% Challenged, he would get out a sketchbook and do thumbnails of all that he had walked by so quickly. The axis of this design was the driveway to Box Hill, which we called the Rhododendron Drive. When, as a young woman, I attended Manhattanville College, in Westchester, for example, the fact that Stanford had designed the interior of the latter-day Norman castle that served as the colleges administration building was not unknown to me, but the knowledge was compartmentalized, remaining at bay in my conscious mind. The passage describes elaborate stag parties and, of course, the well-known sculpture of Diana, said to be modeled after Miss Nesbit. January 3, 2021By the time he died, in 1906, the great American architect Stanford White was well-known for his public buildings in New York and other East Coast cities. . . ''I've always felt her to be a good writer. In recent years, my father sold pieces to pay our college tuitions, and then my brothers and sisters and I took things. (Samuel is one of 11 siblings.) He almost never explained. My mother showed me a way through the chinaberry cover to the interior of one of the rhododendrons. He designed many houses for the rich, in addition to numerous civic, institutional, and religious buildings. At the time of the discovery of the fragments, I had recently married and moved with my husband to Lower Fifth Avenue, drawn to the neighborhood by an uncannily familiar feeling, yet only subliminally aware that Stanfords architecture was all around methat he had designed Washington Square Arch, with the layout of the park beyond it, and Judson Memorial Church, which stood overlooking the south side of the park with its Italianate tower of loggias. As Bach says, His extravagant lifestyle, and lack of discretion or concern for those who were impacted by his actions, despite producing outstanding work, has much in common with some of the high profile, publicity-seeking business and artistic innovators who exploit media attention today.. Are there members of your family in design as well?Yes, I have a lot of relatives that are descended from Stanford that are in design especially in my current generation, but definitely in past generations as well. Stanford White, one of many characters in HBO's new series The Gilded Age, was part of a deadly love triangle involving model Evelyn Nesbit and coal and railroad scion Harry Kendall Thaw. I saw how futile my little brushstrokes werea barely measurable attempt to make progress in an endeavor that, even if successful, seemed now to be a mistake. Why was it so difficult to grow up in the great architects family? If it was raining in February, she would be thinking aloud about how dismal it must have been in February for the Setaukets, and then we would all be sad. This recessive quality coexisted with the energy, the brashness. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. I might, for example, remember an incident yet have no feeling about it, or I might simply seal it off in the cloisternot remember it at all. Harry Kendall Thaw (February 12, 1871 - February 22, 1947), son of Pittsburgh coal and railroad baron William Thaw, brother of South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club member Benjamin Thaw. There are carved wooden doors at Box Hill that were meant for the Morgan Library, but the client changed their mind and wanted brass doors instead. Tell us about your ethos? I was lucky enough to interview Genevieve White Carter, one of the talented descendants of the iconic architect Stanford White. My grandfather was elegant, even in his overalls and an old, crumpled hata tall man, a robust man, yet one girded in an armor of privilege and cultivation, through which little evidence of a life of feeling escaped. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. ''I thought,'' Peter White said, ''there was information about Stanford White in the book -- his thoughts, his intentions, his private moments -- that none of us could claim to know, least of all Suzannah, who was born 38 years after his death.''. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. It ought to be only aesthetic. ''There are some nice turns of phrase in her book. The murder and the circumstances surrounding it became a sensational ongoing newspaper story, with Stanford Whites sex life at the center of it. Many of Whites houses remain standing, and more than a few are open to the public, including a Washington, D.C., mansion that is now a residential hotel, a Manhattan townhouse that became a French cultural center and several Newport showplaces that offer tours. There was, I knew, a word for every little turn and variation in the highly articulated environment of the bank. Stanford kept his supply of girls flowing, sending notes and gifts and flowerscourting, luring, seducing, drawing them in. In one section, ''Rokeby,'' Ms. Lessard recounts details about her maternal grandmother's family, the Chanlers. I could snicker about the nuns in the pink marble with my friends as if I had no association with it, without a sense of duplicity. Starting at age 18, Stanford apprenticed with the acclaimed Romanesque revival architect Henry Hobson Richardson. I think she wants to 'make it' at all costs, even by using the public's prurient interest in the Stanford White legend. He didnt get there until the wee hours of the morning, however, and decided not to wake her. The partners knew of people that were household names for me as a child, like Corita Kent. In combination with this charm in the Bowery Savings Bank, there was also the power of the neoclassical tradition, in which every aspect of the interiorthe sure proportions, the sensuous, well-chosen marble, the pilasters, the columnswas working toward the effect of the whole, an effect of strength and authority. Johnny himself had for many years continued to suffer from an infernal combination of vigor and ineffectuality. After all, they were not Stanford White.''. 119, McKim, Mead & White was planning a handsome new mansion for Henry A. Taylor at No. Often, that personality is defined by the purpose of the space and the cross-section of people using the space. Out at Box Hill, the laborers were not being paid and were threatening to sue. There was, in any event, a feeling of numbers in the Red Cottage, of babies coming one after another, and, later, of knees and shins and feet of different sizes: I know my sisters bodies nearly as well as I know my own. As a result, Samuel points out, the Venetian Room escaped the most destructive period in American cultural history. On Grand Street, we came upon the monumental neoclassical faade of the Bowery Savings Bank, which was designed by Stanford in 1892. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Another of Alida's daughters, Jennie Lessard, is a Master Goldsmith and known jewelry designer, and a granddaughter is currently an architectural student. But the McKim, Mead & White partner also designed more than 100 residences, including some of the great shingle-style mansions of Long Island and New England and structures whose classical forms are reminiscent of his civic . I then wrote to her to advise her of the mistakes. On the far side of the Rond Point there was a Propylona glorIous tall structure of white wooden columns, placed in a shallow curve, supporting a terra-cotta cast of a Greek frieze. Stanford White's Legacy Lives On With Great-Great Granddaughter Genevieve White Carter I was lucky enough to interview Genevieve White Carter, one of the talented descendants of the iconic architect Stanford White.