White of Mckim, Mead and White

Abstract

Stanford White, and Charles Follen McKim were the two major design contributors within the firm of McKim, Mead and White, and William Rutherford Mead was an invaluable organizer and administrator. There are major individual biographies of both McKim and White dating from 1929 and 1931 respectively, but both need updating with regard to the availability of additional research material and changing attitudes toward architectural design over the last hundred years. White's contribution was stylistically different from that of McKim and although the firm attracted at least 785 design com-missions covering all building types, there is a closer affinity stylistically, irrespective of building type, throughout White's work even though there is no evolved progression from one style to another. The Romanesque Revival style, for example, was utilized by White in early and late work and the Romantic-Classical revival used by White in 1890, was the style of his last work, the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, N.Y., completed in 1908, two years after his death. "White of McKim, Mead and White," therefore, analyses White's work in relation to that of the firm as well as clients, builders, innovative specialists, fellow architects, artists and especially sculptors, Augustus Saint-Gaudens was a lifelong friend, and collaboration between White and Saint-Gaudens, plus a host of other notable contemporary sculptors provides two chapters. Three other chapters are devoted to stylistic developments in addition to another on his early offerings; a list of works is tabulated by building type after the bibliography.