Remembering Stanford White: 100 Years Later

A major anniversary passed, mostly unnoticed, at the end of June… One hundred years ago, on Sunday, June 25, 1906, the triangle between architect Stanford White, his lover Evelyn Nesbit and her husband Harry K. Thaw came to a tragic end when Thaw shot and killed the famous architect. The incident took place in the second Madison Square Garden in New York City, designed by White and completed in 1890.

Stanford White was part of the architectural firm McKim, Mead and White, responsible for a number of notable Victorian-era buildings. New York City’s Municipal Building is among the survivors. However, many have been lost. In fact, the Madison Square Garden building where White was killed was demolished (in 1925), as was the original Pennsylvania Station (demolished in 1964), which sat where the current Madison Square Garden now stands. The later act, of course, causing such ire among preservationists that New York City’s Landmarks Commission was created, and the entire national historic preservation movement that we know today was born. [In recent years I have become fascinated with the old Penn Station and its sad story, and I just bought the books The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station and The Destruction of Penn Station. And I'm trying to find a copy of the History Channel documentary about the station, produced as part of the Trains Unlimited series.]

In Baltimore, White’s notable buildings survive and include the Garrett-Jacobs Mansion, home of The Engineer’s Club, where I once worked, as well as Lovely Lane Church and nearby buildings associated with part of the original Goucher College campus in lower Charles Village, close to where I have lived for most of my adult life... To give you some idea of the age difference between White and Nesbit, she was born in 1884, the same year the well-established White was hired to work on the Garrett home in Baltimore.

The shooting of White by Thaw helped to inspire literature, film and a stage production too… There’s the book and 1955 movie The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, of which Evelyn Nesbit actually served as an advisor, and the novel, movie and musical Ragtime.