Date: Fri 18-Sep-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: CAROLL

Quick Words:

Stanford-White-architect

Full Text:

AA LEAD SEPT 18: Stanford White On Long Island

(with cuts)

STONY BROOK, N.Y. -- Stanford White (1853-1906) was probably the best-known

American architect of the late Nineteenth Century. As a partner in the

architectural firm McKim, Mead and White, he contributed to nearly 1,000

commissions, including designs for Columbia University's Morningside Heights

campus, New York's Pennsylvania Station, and the Boston Public Library. In

addition to creating some of the most impressive institutional structures of

the Gilded Age, McKim, Mead & White also made its mark in the private world of

domestic architecture.

Through November 1, the Museums at Stony Brook are exhibiting "Stanford White

on Long Island." The display of photographs, architectural plans and

renderings, paintings, memorabilia and other artifacts was organized by Samuel

G. White, the architect's great-grandson; Elizabeth White, associate publisher

at Rizzoli International Publications; and the museums' chief curator, William

Ayres.

Stanford White was born in New York in 1853 and educated in the city's

schools. At 19 he apprenticed with the firm of Gambrill & Richardson. Quickly,

he became the principal assistant to Henry Hobson Richardson, the greatest

American architect of the day. In 1878 White embarked on an 18-month tour of

Europe. On his return to New York in September 1879, he joined Charles Follen

McKim and William Rutherford Mead to form McKim, Mead & White.

In addition to their public commission, the partners had a significant

residential practice, designing houses that ranged from virtual palaces for

the extraordinarily wealthy to relatively simple seaside cottages. A few were

as far away as Texas and California, but the majority were for clients on the

East Coast. A number were built on Long Island, and many of these survive.

Stanford White was the partner in charge of most of the firm's residential

commissions. A fluid draftsman, and a facile and intuitive designer, he saw

houses -- including their contents, their owners, and even their occupancy --

as scenic elements in the performance of life.

He extended the limits of architectural services to include interior

decoration, dealing in art and antiques, and even planning and designing

parties. Outgoing and gregarious, he had a large circle of friends and

acquaintances, many of whom became clients.

On February 7, 1884, at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan, Stanford

White married Bessie Springs Smith, of the founding family of Smithtown, Long

Island. The couple had been introduced by Charles McKim, who was a close

friend of Bessie's sister Cornelia and her husband, Prescott Hall Butler, who

had been McKim's neighbors in New York.

Bessie Smith White had spent her youth in and around Smithtown, and vastly

preferred the country to the city. The newlyweds soon rented a farmhouse near

St James, just across the road from the Butlers. This they would eventually

buy and add to it until it became a substantial country house, known as Box

Hill, with architectural details, furnishings, and landscaping all designed by

Stanford White.

Over the next two decades Box Hill became a laboratory of architectural ideas.

By 1902 White had added three major gables based on the original one, giving

the house its distinctive saw-toothed profile. A refined set of exterior

details -- fluted Doric columns, bracketed cornices -- were incorporated, and

a broad frieze tied the composition together. The final exterior touch was

simple, with a nod to the house's location -- the walls were covered with

pebbledash, a thick coating of beach pebbles pressed into wet stucco. The

interior finishes were even more imaginative. The walls of the entry hall were

finished with split bamboo while the walls and ceiling of the living room were

covered with cane reeding.

The main stair was executed in specially commissioned Guastavino tile in an

elegant celadon green glaze. Each room was filled with works of art from

White's trove of decorative antiques assembled in connection with his

architectural work. The dining room, in contrast, was a study in white, with

the fireplace wall finished in a thousand delft tiles and a monumental bay

window opposite.

Box Hill was a perfect house for summer parties, and Stanford and Bessie White

entertained often. Their guest books, embellished with photographs taken by

Bessie, are filled with the names and images of friends, partners, business

associates, clients -- and lots of Smiths.

In the 1890s, Bessie and her sisters -- Cornelia Smith Butler, Kate Smith

Wetherill, and Ella Smith Emmet -- were all actively involved in architectural

projects in St James and Stony Brook, building or enlarging houses for

themselves and their families and supporting church and school projects in the

community. In each case, Stanford White was the architect.

The Butler house, Bytharbor, which preceded Stanford White's introduction to

Smithtown, was designed by Charles McKim in the late 1870s. The house exhibits

many of the characteristics of the early shingle style with informal elements

such as porches and projecting towers subordinated to the discipline of a

massive gable roof. Over the years McKim and White enlarged Bytharbor and

constructed a number of outbuildings, including a "casino," or playhouse,

complete with an indoor swimming pool, squash court, and a banqueting hall

with a stage for theatricals.

In 1894 Kate Wetherill, by then a widow, asked Stanford White to design a

house for her on the property adjoining Box Hill. The result was distinctive

-- indeed, unique -- a gabled octagonal structure sited at the top of a steel

hill. In contrast to the informality of the shingle style of the Butler house,

Head of the Harbor incorporated the more formal decorative vocabulary of the

Colonial Revival style. The grounds were landscaped with a formal garden and

entrance court, a croquet lawn, and, finally a waterside teahouse with

thatched roof.

In 1895, while the Wetherill house was under construction, Stanford White took

on a design project for Ella Emmet and her husband. This was the enlargement

of Sherrewogue, the 1688 homestead of another Smith forebear, located directly

on Stony Brook Harbor, a short distance away from the other sisters'

properties. Here White drew on Eighteenth Century American precedents, notably

Mount Vernon, in his design for the interior and for the new wing with a large

gabled porch at the harbor end.

As a member of the Smith clan and its social circle, Stanford White undertook

several non-residential projects in the St James/Stony Brook area in which the

family had an interest. In the late 1880s, there was a perceived need for an

Episcopal chapel in Stony Brook. The Smith family was a major force behind

this project, as Bessie White's mother, Mrs J. Lawrence Smith, donated the

organ and her sisters Cornelia Smith Butler and Kate Smith Wetherill gave the

baptismal font and communion service, respectively. Stanford White provided

the architectural plans and contributed the gold leaf used in the ceiling

decoration.

In St James, Stanford White designed an elegantly simple Neo-classical

schoolhouse, a gift to the community from his sister-in-law, Cornelia Smith

Butler. At St James Church, White created memorial stained-glass windows

commissioned by members of his wife's family. In the churchyard is a small

stele in high Attic style memorializing his first son, who died in infancy.

After Stanford White's death in 1906, his partners created a larger, matching

stone to mark his grave.

By the end of the Nineteenth Century, Long Island's South Fork was slowly

beginning its transition from a predominantly agricultural area into a summer

resort. From the late 1870s to the turn of the century, New York families

looked outward to the scenic and undeveloped landscape around Southampton and

to the east.

In general, the firm's East End designs were more modest in scale and less

ornate than their waterside houses in Newport and along the New Jersey shore.

Many of the houses -- including the William Merritt Chase residence, the

Samuel Longstreth Parrish house, and the Montauk Point Association houses --

featured well-situated and elongated porches, helping to connect outdoor and

indoor environments.

James Lawrence Breese's Southampton home, known as The Orchard, recalled a

Southern plantation complete with elaborate gardens. The painter William

Merritt Chase offered the firm a significant challenge: the incorporation of a

working art studio and a living space in which to raise his family, all under

one roof.

The Montauk Point Association, a group of New York City businesses, was formed

as an exclusive sportsmen's club for hunting and fishing on Long Island's

extreme eastern point. In 1879, the seven members of the group commissioned

McKim, Mead & White to design houses surrounding a large clubhouse. Each is an

individual design, but all were executed in the shingle style with broad

gabled roofs and ample porches overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

The oldest incorporated golf club in the United States, the Shinnecock Hills

Golf Club, was established in Southampton in 1891, the brainchild of a number

of McKim, Mead & White clients and several of their prominent Gilded Age

contemporaries. Stanford White sketched the first plans for a simple

clubhouse, and construction began in the spring of 1892.

Unlike most of the firm's work in the East End, its Gold Coast houses were

often primary residences, intended for more than a simple summer escape. These

designs, which date from the turn of the century, combine the ambitious nature

and decorative restraint of the firm's mature work and reflect a mastery of

European and American precedents. For instance, Clarence Mackay's Harbor Hill,

which was based on the Maisons Lafitte, contrasted sharply with the Colonial

Revival house built for Edwin Dennison Morgan, III, in Wheatley Hills. In

contrast to the East End houses, which were designed for the comfort and

pleasure of the owners and guests alike, the Gold Coast mansions reflected the

ambitions and social standing of their builders.

Truly paradigmatic of Gilded Age luxury on a grand scale, Harbor Hill was the

largest house that Stanford White ever designed. The mid-Seventeenth

Century-style French chateau was sited one of the highest points on Long

Island and surrounded by an estate of more than 600 acres. In the end,

Clarence Mackay spent nearly $6 million (an enormous figure for the time) on

Harbor Hill.

When Katherine Mackay, his wife, conceived of the idea of building a church in

nearby Roslyn as a memorial to her parents, she naturally looked to Stanford

White. For this simple building, the versatile White developed a design that

emphasized the craft of building over elaborate decoration.

The architectural achievements of Stanford White are sometimes overshadowed by

the circumstances surrounding his death. On June 25, 1906, White was fatally

shot by the jealous husband of his former mistress, Evelyn Nesbitt.

Nonetheless the legacy of McKim, Mead & White is very much present in the

libraries, museums, and government buildings they designed for our largest

cities and in the many private houses that are still being enjoyed by their

owners and visitors as they were originally intended.

The Museums at Stony Brook, at 1208 Route 25A, are open Mondays through

Saturdays from 10 am to 5 pm and on Sundays from noon to 5 pm. Telephone

516/751-0066.