By KATHARINE RAMSDEN
On this day in 1906, Player Stanford White died. A leading American architect, he was a partner in the firm McKim, Mead & White, one of the most significant Beaux-Arts architectural firms at the turn of the 20th century. White’s design
principles embodied the American Renaissance, and he designed many houses for the wealthy, in addition to numerous civic, institutional and religious buildings. His temporary Washington Square Arch was so popular that he was commissioned to design a permanent one. White designed several clubhouses that became centers for New York society, and that still stand, including the Century, Colony,
Harmonie, Lambs, Metropolitan, and Players clubs.
On June 25, 1906, White was murdered during a musical performance at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden. His killer, Harry Kendall Thaw, was the mentally unstable heir of a coal and railroad fortune who had become obsessed by White's alleged attack on, and subsequent relationship with, the woman who was to become Thaw's wife, the model and actress Evelyn Nesbit. With the public nature of the killing and elements of a sex scandal among the wealthy, Thaw's subsequent trial was dubbed the Trial of the Century by contemporary reporters.
Katharine Ramsden is a (semi-retired) former journalist and corporate communications executive. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she is a recently new Player, avid reader and one time a cappella singer.
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