The wrought-iron fire screen and other accouterments are Spanish. Suzannah interpreted the White family as she thinks she saw it. Unquestionably it was a statutory rape, because the age of consent was 18, and it was morally rape, because Stanford was immeasurably more powerful than she was and a benefactor on whom she and her entire family were dependent'', ''I don't think Suzannah is doing Stanford credit,'' Claire White said. Here I am on the stairs, a pretty little girl with curly hair, wearing a pretty little dress, watching my dad shovelling coal, and I am happy in the femininity of me and the masculinity of him. He also married Bessie Smith from a prominent Long Island family. New York: Dial Press, 1996. They would sit outside for hours, until finally they had to come in. It was opposite Johnnys field, next to an ancient oak, that I decided to site my house. We have both been pleasantly surprised at how well we enjoy working together. Yet that sense of impending drama was forever unsatisfied, because there was always the intimation in the family that when my grandfather finally told his mother what had happened she took the news in a resigned way, and that my grandfather himself was not utterly surprised by what had happened either. He was a grandson of the architect Stanford White . ''Johnny didn't shoot one of their horses. Robert Winthrop White (September 19, 1921 - September 21, 2002) [1] was an American sculptor and educator who lived for much of his life in St. James, Long Island, New York. From family talk above my head, I gathered in a fractured way that the tide of the movie referred to a velvet-roped swing on which Stanford had pushed a young woman named Evelyn Nesbit. Even before it had been moved onto the foundation, but when it was too late to stop, I sensed that the intrusion of my house was causing tension in the complicated balance of edgy relationships that life on the Place had become. This was originally a farmhouse with no architectural ambitions, Samuel says. While the doorknob is turning, the room, in my memory, is squared off properly, but, as he comes in, it becomes skewed, like a partly collapsed box. As a result, Samuel points out, the Venetian Room escaped the most destructive period in American cultural history. Thus there was hardly a spot on the Place in which Stanford was not implicitly present. Saint-Gaudens and Stanford habitually addressed each other in letters as Darling or Doubly beloved, and signed off with K.M.A., meaning Kiss My AssSaint-Gaudens would sometimes spell it outand he once wrote to Stan, Im your man to dine, drink, Fuck, bugger or such, metaphorically speaking. But Stanfords private world was so fraught with lewd excess that such distinctions lose meaning; in this atmosphere of untrammelled indulgence the question of whether Stanford was bisexual seems irrelevant. But I think it was a displaced body memory, because, as I began to come to terms with my childhood, instead of seeing the silent explosion of the plane in the sky I would experience a sense of interior exploding, an inchoate overload of mixed feelings, including rageagain, a wish to kick viciouslyand all this in chaos, as if blowing out a nervous system too small-gauged to contain it. He suffered from Brights disease, his liver was in terrible shape, and he had incipient tuberculosis. The occasion of these remarks was a review by Gill of Paul Bakers Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White, published in 1989. 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.. Luckily, he has access to free architectural services, jokes Samuel, referring to the role he has played in the restoration. Launching his own firm in the new year after decades as a partner in the award-winning Ike Kligerman Barkley the New Yorkbased designer continues to create houses that elegantly combine modernism with tradition. 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. This was supposed to be a joke, and my grandmother always told it that way. My great-grandmother Bessie Smith White lived next door to us, in the White Cottage, so called because of its color. She shocked New Yorkers with her nudity, as Saint-Gaudens and Stanford had hoped. A portrait of Senator Leland Stanford, Jane Lathrop Stanford, Leland Stanford Jr. taken in 1878. slam his hand down on one of themor perhaps two or three of them if they were close togethersay Do that! and tear off again. To the end, there is this winning rough authenticity in Stanford. Stanford White was born 7 November 1853 in Manhattan, New York, United States to Richard Grant White (1822-1885) and Alexina Black Mease (1830-1921) and died 25 June 1906 Manhattan, New York, United States of gunshot. Although most of what I discovered about Stanfords life was, in some fundamental way, unsurprising to meit was as if the essence of that story had been there on the Place all alongone thing that did surprise me utterly was the conditions of improvidence, of reckless overextension, under which Box Hill came into being. Through large, arched windows, we could see the blue ocean on the other side of the house. My grandmothers brownstone was the only one left on our stretch of Fifth Avenuea majestic specimen with a sweeping stoop and a deeply inset door flanked by three French windows and delicate ironwork balconies. Quite ordinary sounds hurt thema radio on the beach, for example, or a truck rattling on the road, or we children getting raucous. The analyst had suggested that she speak to her sisters about it. Her parents, Daisy and Winthrop Chanler, were social lions and knew all the choicest people (Henry James, Bernard Berenson, Edith Wharton, and even Theodore Roosevelt), and Laura knew Stanford before she knew my grandfather, Larry White. Yet architecture pervades the family. To this day, the creations of Gilded Age architect Stanford White define New York City: the Washington Square Arch, Judson Memorial Church and the Players Club, among many other wonders . He was always fussing, clipping, arranging: he was good at creating spotsa column in a sun-catch, a statue among pines on a hill. He designed many houses for the rich, in addition to numerous civic, institutional, and religious buildings. I transferred my feelings of sadness about Johnny to his field; there was something superb about it in the echt way that Johnny was superb. 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. 1851 December 25, 1851. He was the baby of the office, a big, inspired toddler, indulged, angelic, oblivious, tyrannical.. A first hand look into the lives of the elite through a few of the rare surviving letters. I watched her go, and with her went everyone: Stanford and Bessie, my grandparents, my uncles and aunts, my cousins, my parents, my sisterseach of whom would write a version of the family history different from this one. His work on the University of Virginia is considered one of his few misfires. There, in my great-grandfathers charmed hall, the symmetries and harmonies that were the underpinnings of our sense of family blessedness seemed to slip and become skewed and thin, like a stage set gone awry. My grandparents lived in Box Hill in the old style, but the Bobby Whites, and we in the Red Cottage, lived in a bohemian way. Like so many hallmarks of American aesthetics, the shingled residences of architecture firm Ike Kligerman Barkley are casual, individualistic and worthy of being passed on for generations. Stanford White was the son of the essayist, critic, and Shakespearean scholar Richard Grant White. My mother showed me a way through the chinaberry cover to the interior of one of the rhododendrons. And yet, as I learned when I began to excavate the family story, the most curious feature of Stanfords posthumous life in the public eye was that while he remained well known (for a long period, more for the circumstances of his murder than for his architecture), the biographers who sought to dig deep into his life inevitably faltered. A clock with bronze zodiac figures by the great sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens graces a marble wall in the main stairway, which was part of Villards own residence. ''We acknowledge that some of his actions were not good. view all Richard Mansfield White's Timeline. Genevieve's very young daughter is of the sixth generation to be touched by the spirit of Stanford White and the house he built for himself: a mixture of genes and the power of a loaded, strongly visual environment to pass on a lively eye. I think she wants to 'make it' at all costs, even by using the public's prurient interest in the Stanford White legend. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Some of his Long Island creations endure, including the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southampton, site of the U.S. Open this year, and structures in St. James, Roslyn and Huntington. He was a predatory seducer of teenage girls, seeking out actresses or dancers who were from impoverished families. It looks as ifelaborate seductions notwithstandingStanford went through girls pretty fast, along with having several affairs going on at the same time, but he often seduced the girls deeply, so that they fell in love with him and even thought he was going to many them. Quite suddenly, I had a powerful impression of my grandfathers presence, and I was carried back to the front hall of Box Hill as it had been when I was a child. As a child if I stayed home sick from school I would often sew something. Johnny himself had for many years continued to suffer from an infernal combination of vigor and ineffectuality. I obtained it from another family member. The stairwell was open from the third floor, above, to the first floor, below, and hanging from the ceiling of the third floor was an extraordinary contraption of floating objects: a pendulum chain, linking a glass-doored lantern (which lit the second-floor level), an iron curlicue, and, at the bottom, a brass lamp with a bellied base. '', ''Suzannah is talented,'' Claire White said. In the sixties, my grandmother had divided up the Place among her children, and this pasture was part of Johnnys share; we called it Johnnys field. The family had configured itself around her, and in retrospect it seems to me that the change occasioned by her death allowed for the entry into our family life of a kind of revolutionary grace. Our mother bought us dresses that were long, so that we would have room to grow into them, and after we grew out of them they were handed down. Stanford White was one of New York's great architects. Once or twice, he took out his trumpet and played a few measures. Her aura was purely feminine. To the right of the fireplace are a 19th-century European marquetry chest and a bench that is straight out of Salem, Mass., says Samuel, noting that the entire space reveals Stanfords penchant for mixing periods and styles. The walls are covered in quarter-inch strips of split bamboo White also had a penchant for experimenting with unusual materials. The source of the dread was the very geniality of the architecture: its delicacy, its glow, its seductiveness. I believe she suffered a lot. Stanford White, the architect of the Gilded Age who was celebrated in life and notorious after death, is not as famous as he used to be. The main arena could accommodate fourteen thousand people, had a floor that could be flooded for aquatic spectacles, was bright with hundreds of electric lights (still a novelty in those days), and had a huge skylight that could be opened to the air. (He can easily walk to three others: the Washington Square Arch, the Century Association and the Judson Memorial Church. On Grand Street, we came upon the monumental neoclassical faade of the Bowery Savings Bank, which was designed by Stanford in 1892. After I woke up, I recognized that the scene had about it an atmosphere of serene catastrophe which was profoundly familiar. ''I didn't really understand the point of the Chanler story in a book supposedly about Stanford White,'' one relative said. Even after he was hooked on buying excessive quantities of luxurious clothing that he couldnt afford (silk shirts in exotic colors, moosehide shoes), he might show up at a formal dinner with tails thrown over workaday trousers at the last moment. They were more like a form of compulsive consumption. The censorious judgment of Stanford at the time of his death came to be seen as a reflection of Victorian prudery, hypocrisy, and navet. In June 1880 . This was an architecture of stability and security, of lawfulness, of institutional justice. Stanford White (1853-1906) of Long Island Many people are familiar with what happened to Stanford White (husband of Bessie Smith of the Bull Smith line), the gilded architect of the gilded age, who made buildings to take your breath away and who was shot to death by an enraged husband. She laughed, but her feelingsgasping fear, followed by reliefwere still fresh. She never responded. The murder trial of Thaw, husband to gorgeous young showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, was the first to take on the description Trial of the Century. The courtroom revelations of Whites brutal seduction of Nesbit when she was 16 shocked and horrified America. Stanford White was 30 years older than Evelyn. Roslyn Church in Roslyn was his last architectural effort before his death in 1906. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. It was not merely that my old sense of safety was undercut by my new understanding; rather, I recognized that what I had taken for safety was in truth something else. There are curtains in our house that were meant for a client but the shade of blue was slightly off (it was for us too and we dyed them pink for our girls room). Cynthia White Jay has two sons in the field-in St. Louis and New Zealand-and a third son who is a landscape architect. Another writer, Claire Nicolas White, Ms. Lessard's aunt by marriage, said the book was dangerous in many ways. I don't envy Suzannah her current position.''. . The gilded and coffered ceiling inside the bank had a skylight at its center, with panes of deep-yellow glass. Mr. White said Ms. Lessard had not respond to comments by family members. Suzannah Lessard is the eldest of Stanford White's great grandchildren. The replacement Diana was five feet shorter, slimmer, and smaller breasted, and was made in part from plaster casts taken by Saint-Gaudens from a models living body; this one stood directly on the swivelling orb, balancingalmost leapingon the ball of one foot, with the other outstretched behind, about to absorb the powerful recoil of her fully drawn bow. Its mirrored walls were topped with a cornice of basket-weave metal sporting delicate porcelain roses. Stanford had a great interest in built-ins, what Samuel calls the middle zone between architecture and furniture, as evidenced by a sideboard, which is integrated into the wainscoting but stands on legs. This recessive quality coexisted with the energy, the brashness. The marriage had fallen apart quickly, however, and Johnny had deteriorated rapidly after that: he was now living in a tiny apartment in the cow barn, eating meals at my grandmothers house twice a day. My mother, Mary, was a singer, a mezzo-soprano, and my father, Frank, was a composer from a Western working-class family; my mothers brother Bobby was a sculptor, and his wife, my Aunt Claire, was a poet. 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. His father, Richard Grant White, was a cranky bohemian who fancied himself an English gentleman yet was blackballed from the Century Club and was chronically broke and in debt, who had studied to be a doctor and also passed the bar but was, in practice, a music critic, a Shakespearean scholar, a linguist, a lecturer, a cultural gadfly, a sonneteer and an employee of the Custom House, wrote Suzannah Lessard, the great-granddaughter of Stanford White in her bestseller The Architect of Desire. For a long time, when I tried to move past this point in my memory, what came to my mind was a picture, observed without emotion, of an airplane exploding in air, and body parts flying. It is a curiosity of my life that I have, repeatedlywithout any conscious choice or even full consciousness on my partended up in environments replete with family history. From the outside, it was plain and unspectacular. Part of HuffPost Home & Living. She was beautiful, with her fair skin and greenish eyes. A five-minute visit from him left you limp with the reaction from the strain of trying to follow his thought as his fingers flew. By the turn of the century, Stanford was in deep financial trouble, but he continued to expand Box Hill: he added the barns and the stables, the icehouse, the pump house, and planned a fancy pergola for the Box Garden. The details of Nesbits trauma were coaxed from her at court to help build a defense for her mentally unstable husband. It ought to be only aesthetic. ''She layers them one over the other. Here was a picture of my grandfather as a young man, standing at the site of the destruction of his fathers best work, salvaging bits.
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