White, Stanford (1853-1906)

White, Stanford (1853-1906)

White, Stanford, 1853-1906

Born in New York City, White learned architecture under H. H. Richardson, later moving to Paris where he lived with the family of the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. In 1872 he joined the office of Gambrill and Richardson in Boston and worked on the design for Trinity Church, Boston. In 1879, along with two old architecture friends, he formed the influential practice of McKim, Mead & White. He was usually responsible for the interiors of their designs with the ornamentation and decoration. He was a man of enormous creative energy with truly eclectic tastes. In New York his two surviving works—the Washington Square Arch and the Century Club—both display marvelous Renaissance ornamentation. He designed the old Madison Square Garden in 1889 for which he commissioned a statue of a nude Diana for the cupola that scandalized New York. In the tower itself he built an opulent private apartment and roof garden that became notorious for his extra-curricular goings-on. He was finally shot and killed there by the jealous husband of his lover, Evelyn Nesbit Thaw. His religious architecture includes the early medieval design of Saint Paul's Episcopal Church, Stockbridge, Massachusetts (1883-84) and the Renaissance revival Judson Memorial Church in Washington Square in New York City (1888-1893), and the colonial revival Congregational Church in Naugatuck, CT (1901-03).

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