The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family

360 Pages·1997·53.155 MB·English

by  Suzannah Lessard

THE
ARCHITECT
of
DESIRE
BEAUTY DANGER
AND
in the
Stanford White
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SUZANNAH LESSARD
31445 $24.95U.S./$34.95 Can.
SUZANNAH LESSARDgrew
up on Box Hill, the LongIsland estate builtby her
great-grandfather, Stanford White, the premier
architect and social impresario ofthe GildedAge.
In 1906, on the rooftop theatre ofthe original
Madison Square Garden, ^liite was shot dead by
the Pittsburgh millionaire Harry K. Thaw, whose
wife, the showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, White had
seduced when she was sixteen. The highly
publicized scandal, and the "trial ofthe century"
that ensued, came to be mythologized in our
culture and made ever more glamorous and
romantic as the century rolled on. But on Box
Hill, where four generations ofthe Stanford White
familylived side by side, a tension-filled silence
-nu.T-
surrounded the eminent, charismatic figure in
the family past.
Lessard is the eldest ofStanford White's
great-granddaughters. It was only in her thirties
that she began to sense the parallels between the
silence about her great-grandfather's life and the
silence about herown perilous experience as a
little girl in her own home. Thus she became
drawn to Stanford's story and, by extension,
the story ofher clan in orderto uncover its
unacknowledged truths and to recognize the
unacknowledged truths ofher own life. As she
delved deep into her family's past, one thing
became unassailably clear: that behind both the
family's silence and the romantic mythology that
surrounded her great-grandfather's life lay an
untold narrative ofsexual compulsion gone out
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THE
ARCHITECT
of
DESIRE

THE
ARCHITECT
of
DESIRE
BEAUTY DANGER
AND
in the
Stanford White
Family
SUZANNAH LESSARD
THE DIAL PRESS
Published by
The Dial Press
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
The lines from "Diving into the Wreck," from DIVING INTO THE WRECK: Poems 1971-1972 by
Adrienne Rich. Copyright 1973 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Reprinted by permission ofthe
author and W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Excerpts from STANNY: TheGildedLifeofStanford Whiteby Paul R. Bakerare reprintedwithpermission
ofThe Free Press, a division ofSimon & Schuster. Copyright 1989 by Paul R. Baker.
Quotations by Charles McKim are from The Life and Times ofCharles Pollen McKim by Charles Moore;
Houghton Mifflin 1929.
QuotationsbyEdwardSimmonsarefromFrom SeventoSeventybyEdward Simmons. Harper& Brothers,
New York, 1922.
Quotations by H. Van Buren Magonigle are from "A Half-Century of Architecture: A Biographical
Review," by H. Van Buren Magonigle; Pencil Points, IS (March 1934).
Quotationsby Evelyn Nesbit are from ProdigalDays: The UntoldStoryby Evelyn Nesbit; Julian Messner,
Inc., New York, 1934.
The quotation by Brendan Gill is reprinted by permission ofthe author. Copyright 1990 by Brendan
Gill. Originally in The New Yorker. All rights reserved.
ExcerptsfromthepersonalmemoirsandcorrespondenceofBessieSmithWhite, LawrenceGrantWhite
and Laura Chanler White appear courtesy ofGuy G. Rutherfurd, Morris & McVeigh.
Excerpts from Family Vista by Margaret Chanler Aldrich and the correspondence ofMargaret Chanler
Aldrich and J. Armstrong Aldrich appear courtesy ofthe Rokeby Archives.
Excerpts from poems by Claire Nicolas White appear courtesy ofthe author.
Endpapers: Freehandrendering by Starford White on sepia print construction documentfor Box Hilland
surroundings. CourtesyAveryArchitecturalFineArts Library, Columbia University in the City ofNew York.
Photo editor: Vincent Virga
©
Copyright 1996 by Suzannah Lessard
All rights reserved. No part ofthis book maybe reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic ormechanical, includingphotocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without the written permission ofthe Publisher, except where permitted
by law.
The trademark Dial Press® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and elsewhere.
Library ofCongress Cataloging in Publication Data
Lessard, Suzannah.
The architect ofdesire : beauty and danger in the Stanford White family / by Suzannah Lessard.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-385-31445-0
1. Murder New York (N.Y.) 2. White, Stanford, 1853-1906. 3. Nesbit, Evelyn, 1884^1967.
4. Thaw, Harry Kendall, 1871 1947. I. Title.
HV6534.N5L395 1996
364.1'523'09227471 dc20 96-17159
CIP
Book design by Julie Duquct
Manufactured in the United States ofAmerica
Published simultaneously in Canada
November 1996
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
BVG
NOTE TO THE READER
The names of some of the individuals in this
book have been changed to protect their privacy
or the privacy of their famihes.