by Simon Baatz
“Never hitherto in New York was seen such a brilliant gathering,” the New York Press proclaimed the next day. “Last night at the Madison Garden was, in a word, a night not to be soon forgotten…. The public spirited men who have furnished the capital for this venture showed their wisdom in intrusting the building of this great amusement hall to architects of the highest reputation, and the result is to be a structure of which they and the public at large may well be proud.”30
Madison Square Garden, according to the New York Times, was not merely an architectural masterpiece, noteworthy for the beauty of its ornamentation, but also a worthy addition to the square, a part of the city already distinguished by its attractive appearance. “Much has been written about this great amphitheatre,” the Times advised its readers, “but it must be seen to be appreciated. Everyone should go and take a look at it, because it is one of the sights of the city.”31
It was the largest building in New York, yet its immense size had not compromised its splendor and majesty. “There is something tremendously imposing,” the New-York Tribune proclaimed, “in its vast dimensions, and, what is more commendable, something exceedingly agreeable in the excellence of its proportions and the impression of combined strength and gracefulness in its constructive details…. The Madison Square Garden will be one of the most admirable places of its kind in the world.”32
No single commission, either before or after, would confer as much celebrity and recognition on Stanford White as Madison Square Garden. McKim, Mead & White had received the commission, but the other partners had played no role in the project, and the glory and success accrued exclusively to Stanford White. His subsequent career extended over three decades and encompassed many significant buildings. None, however, brought more distinction than the landmark on Twenty-sixth Street.
James Gordon Bennett Jr. hired Stanford White to design a new building for the New York Herald newspaper on Thirty-fourth Street. The building, modeled after the Loggia del Consiglio in Verona, included a statue of Minerva above the main entrance and bronze statues of owls on the eaves. After the Herald moved to Thirty-fourth Street in 1895, the building was found to be impractical and was demolished in 1921. (Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University)
Stanford White’s fame as the genius behind Madison Square Garden brought him a series of lucrative commissions in the 1890s. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to hire White to design some new project. James Gordon Bennett Jr., the owner of the New York Herald, one of the city’s most successful newspapers, decided to move his building from Park Row, a short, squalid street close to City Hall, to an uptown location at the intersection of Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street. White’s design, a single-story palace in the Italian Renaissance style, an imitation of the Loggia del Consiglio in Verona, was about as impractical a newspaper building as one could imagine, and rival newspapers gleefully predicted that the Herald would suffer as a consequence. “It is an odd, medieval-looking structure,” the New-York Tribune sneered, “set down in the midst of the surrounding practical Yankee architecture.”33
Few projects in the city in the 1890s promised as much as the construction of a new campus for New York University. The university, originally established in 1831 in a single building in Washington Square and subsequently hemmed in on all sides by a mélange of disreputable manufactories and slum tenements, had led an increasingly cramped existence. In 1892 the chancellor of the university, Henry McCracken, announced that New York University had hired Stanford White to design a new campus on land north of Manhattan, on an elevation adjacent to the Harlem River on the southern boundary of the Bronx.
White’s blueprint, submitted later that year, included a library, an engineering building, sports facilities and a gymnasium, student dormitories, a museum of natural history, a chapel, and buildings for philosophy, languages, and literature. The campus quickly took shape under White’s supervision, and undergraduate instruction moved to the Bronx location in October 1894.
New York University, according to White’s design, occupied a picturesque site on the heights overlooking the Harlem River to the east with a view of the Hudson River and the Palisades to the west. The library building, decorated in buff-colored Roman brick with limestone trim and built around a sky-lit rotunda containing sixteen Connemara marble columns, was the centerpiece around which the other buildings were grouped. The university now possessed the most attractive campus imaginable, one that would enable it to compete successfully with such rival New York institutions as Columbia University and City College.
Other commissions followed rapidly, one after the other, each new project seeming to confirm the brilliance of the architect’s vision. William K. Vanderbilt and J. Pierpont Morgan hired White in 1892 to construct a building for the Metropolitan Club, and White’s design, an imposing palazzo in white marble on Fifth Avenue, opened in 1894. McKim, Mead & White was the firm in New York most closely associated with the city’s aristocracy, and other wealthy coteries provided the firm with similar commissions during the same period. The Harvard Club, the Century Association, the University Club, the Players’ Club, and the Lambs all hired McKim, Mead & White either to modify existing clubhouses or to build new ones.
White’s earlier success in constructing a new campus for New York University also led to commissions from other American colleges and universities. McKim, Mead & White won the competition to design Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and successfully bid on the contract to build a new campus for Columbia University.
Other commissions, less lofty, less aristocratic, but always profitable, flooded in during the 1890s and beyond from insurance companies, banks, hospitals, railroads, and retail stores around the United States. No architectural firm at the turn of the century won more contracts or earned greater profits; and no firm left a more enduring impact on the architecture of New York.
Florence Nesbit had scant knowledge of White’s record of accomplishment; she knew only that he was someone important, a man who could use his influence in her daughter’s favor. Indeed White had already demonstrated his generosity in ways that surprised even Florence. She no longer lived at the boardinghouse on Twenty-second Street; Florence and Evelyn had moved that summer, at White’s expense, to a suite of rooms at the Audubon Hotel on Broadway. Her twelve-year-old son Howard, a sickly child who suffered from asthma, no longer needed to endure the dust and dirt of New York; Howard had enrolled, at White’s expense, at the Chester Military Academy, a private school in the country a few miles west of Philadelphia.
And when Florence mentioned that she wished to visit friends in Pittsburgh, White was quick to offer his encouragement. It might be difficult, she had hinted to White, for her to pay the expense of the train ride; but she so desired to make the journey. No matter, White had replied; he would gladly pay for her ticket and would even provide some extra money—pocket money, he had joked—to cover any additional costs.34
But there was one more problem, she reminded him. Who would look after her sixteen-year-old daughter? Whom could she trust to make sure that no harm would befall Evelyn while she, Florence, was in Pittsburgh?
White, speaking now in a slightly less jocular manner, reassured Florence that he, White, would guarantee the child’s safety. Evelyn would live quietly, without distractions, performing each evening at the theater, but spending no time with the young men who so persistently bothered her at the stage door. It was admirable, he told her, that a mother should have such concern for her child; but she need suffer no anxiety while the girl was in his care.35
Evelyn saw Stanford White every day following her mother’s departure. He would arrive at the Audubon Hotel in the afternoon, spending an hour or so with her before escorting her to the Casino Theatre for the evening performance of Florodora. Sometimes, around nine thirty, she would take one of the cabs waiting outside the stage door, usually with some of the other chorus girls, to drive to the apartment that Stanny rented in the tower of Madison Squar
e Garden. His friends—writers, artists, actors, and actresses—would come and go throughout the evening, catching up with the latest gossip, each guest vying with his or her neighbor to relate some sensation that had happened that day in New York.
One evening at one of these parties, toward midnight, as she was preparing to make her departure, Stanny mentioned to Evelyn that an old acquaintance, someone he had known for several years, was interested in having her pose in his studio. Rudolf Eickemeyer was one of the best photographers in New York, Stanny told her, known around town for his portraits of society ladies. His studio was close by, on Twenty-second Street, and Evelyn could visit for a few hours during the day before going on to Florodora in the evening.
Rudolf Eickemeyer photographed Evelyn Nesbit in his studio on Twenty-second Street in the fall of 1901. Eickemeyer titled this photograph Ready for Mischief. Stanford White, also present in the studio during the session, suggested that she wear a Japanese kimono. (Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ds-10596)
Evelyn readily agreed. Every actor in New York needed a set of portrait photographs to find work in the theater, and sooner or later Florodora would end its run. Evelyn would pose for Eickemeyer and receive a set of the prints as her reward.
She met Stanny the next day at the studio. As Eickemeyer and his assistant prepared the lighting, Stanny took Evelyn to the dressing room to show her some silk kimonos, imported from Hong Kong, that he had brought for her to wear. She posed for Eickemeyer in the kimonos, patiently following the instructions that Stanny called out to her. It was more fatiguing than she had previously imagined; but eventually both White and Eickemeyer were satisfied. Then, as she relaxed, relieved that the sitting had finally ended, White mentioned that he was hosting a dinner the next evening at his town house on Twenty-fourth Street. He had invited a few friends, and he would be delighted if Evelyn would accept his invitation to join the party. It did not matter, he told her, that she would arrive after the other guests; they would all know that Florodora did not end until around nine o’clock.36
She quickly agreed. Her mother was away in Pittsburgh, and Evelyn was always reluctant to spend her evenings alone. She had now known White for several weeks and she had never felt the slightest discomfort in his presence. And besides, White had promised her that other guests would attend; it would be foolish, she told herself, to imagine that anything untoward might happen. She had always enjoyed herself at Stanny’s parties and she had no reason to think that the next day would be any different.
2
RAPE
“WHAT DO YOU THINK?” STANNY ASKED, GREETING EVELYN AS SHE appeared in the doorway. “They have turned us down.” He had been waiting about an hour, he explained, but none of his friends had appeared, and it was already almost ten o’clock.
“Oh, it’s too bad,” Evelyn replied, a look of disappointment on her face. “Then we won’t have a party.”
She had come directly from the theater, leaving at the end of the performance to take a hansom to Stanny’s town house on Twenty-fourth Street.
“They have turned us down,” Stanny repeated, “and probably gone off somewhere else and forgotten all about us. They probably won’t come.”
Evelyn was disconsolate at this unexpected news. She had already unbuttoned her coat, and now she removed the fur stole from around her neck; it hung dejectedly from her left hand. It seemed almost too much for her to endure that she should have to spend the remainder of her evening alone in her empty apartment at the Audubon Hotel.
She looked up, turning her face toward Stanny, silently imploring him to salvage something from this unexpected disaster.
“Had I better go home?” she asked, letting the stole slip from her fingers as she placed it on the back of a chair.
“No, we’ll have a party all to ourselves,” White replied. He placed his hand on her shoulder, ushering her into the dining room and indicating the dinner table laid with plates and dishes. “We will sit down and have some food anyhow in spite of them.”1
Evelyn suddenly realized that she had not eaten that night. She was famished. She chatted absent-mindedly during the dinner, telling Stanny the Florodora gossip and confiding her hope that the company would retain her when the play moved to the New York Theatre later that year.
Stanny listened to Evelyn, prompting her occasionally, saying little, letting her chatter on. Finally, when he realized that she could say no more that might interest him, he asked Evelyn if she would like a tour of the house. He knew that she had been to his studio on the fourth floor; but had she seen the other rooms? There was a great deal he could show her, he suggested, a great many works of art that he had collected.
White led Evelyn to the rear of the building, taking her up a narrow flight of stairs to the third floor. She stepped into a large room, and as White followed behind, he explained that he had obtained the paintings on his most recent trip to Europe.
How lucky he was, she replied, to travel so frequently; it had always been her ambition to go to London and Paris. There was a piano in the room, and Evelyn sat on the stool, playing a few bars that she had recently learned, while White sprawled lazily on a divan, his long legs stretched out in front of him.
Evelyn ran her fingers up and down the keyboard, picking out some tunes from Florodora. She swiveled around on her stool, turning to face Stanford White, seeming to ask his approval of her efforts. He took her hand, saying that there was one more room that she had not yet seen, and led her to the rear, drawing back some curtains to reveal a hidden door that opened into a smaller room.
A large four-poster bed stood in the center of the room. Evelyn advanced shyly, sitting tentatively on the edge of the bed, as Stanny poured some champagne into a glass that stood on a small table. He gave her the glass and Evelyn held it in her hand, watching the champagne effervesce, the bubbles rising rapidly to the surface. She took a sip while Stanny stood looking down at her, watching as she raised the glass to her lips. It tasted bitter, she complained, and she didn’t care to finish it—but Stanny seemed strangely insistent.2
Evelyn drank some more champagne—reluctantly—and sat quietly, watching the bubbles in her wineglass. Stanford White said nothing, still watching her as if he were waiting for some reaction.
A minute went by, then two minutes, and Evelyn started to feel a slight throbbing in her ears. She felt suddenly very dizzy; her wineglass seemed about to slip from her fingers. She reached out to place it back on the table, and as Stanny took it from her, Evelyn fell back unconscious onto the bed.3
She awoke with a sudden start—how long had she been unconscious?—and Evelyn realized that she was lying naked on the bed. Stanford White was lying next to her and he also was naked. She began screaming, and White, alerted by her screams, leaned over to reassure her, telling her not to be concerned.
“Don’t cry,” he said, attempting to calm her. “Please don’t. It’s all over.” He reached across the bed as if to stroke her, but his movement seemed only to heighten her distress.
“Keep quiet,” he spoke softly. “It is all over. Now you belong to me. Nothing so terrible has happened,” he consoled her in a gentle voice, attempting to hold her in his arms to comfort her. “You must not worry.”4
Evelyn shrank from his touch, attempting to push him away. She saw, on the sheet between her legs, splotches of blood, bright red, and her screams became louder and more intense.
“You are so pretty; so young, so slim,” White continued, seemingly oblivious to her screams, talking, as if to himself, about Evelyn’s naked body. “I love you,” he murmured, “because you are so young and slim.”
She fumbled for her clothes, desperate now to hide her body from his gaze. White, still speaking, watched her as she struggled to put on her chemise.
“Don’t tell anybody,” he cautioned. “What would be the use? It would only make trouble for you and for me.”
This must be their secret, he told her; she should confide it to no one; and she should never tell her
mother about this night.
White had started now to put on his clothes also. “Forget it, little girl,” he said as he fastened his boots. “Let us be happy.”5
Evelyn Nesbit returned that night to the Audubon Hotel, to the apartment that she shared with her mother. But it was impossible for her to sleep. She stayed awake until dawn, sitting at the window that looked out over Thirty-ninth Street and Broadway, watching the passers-by go about their nocturnal tasks.
Stanford White called on her the next afternoon. He no longer possessed that boundless self-confidence that had always been his trademark. He seemed abashed, even ashamed; he approached her hesitantly, uncertain that she would listen to his words.
Evelyn received him in silence; she sat staring out of the window, looking across at the apartment buildings on the other side of Broadway.
“Why won’t you look at me, child?” White began.
“Because I can’t,” Evelyn replied abruptly.
He spoke softly, telling her not to worry, saying that everyone did such things all the time. All his friends, all his acquaintances, he said, did such things. There was no need for her to imagine that the events of the previous night had been unusual.
She turned her head to look at him, and White could see in her glance that he had aroused her curiosity.
“Does everybody that you know do these things?” she inquired.
“Yes,” he replied, speaking almost nonchalantly, “they all do.”
Do the dancers in Florodora also behave in that way? Evelyn asked.
The question, posed so innocently, seemed to amuse Stanford White. He smiled broadly, in a manner that suggested he had lost his earlier trepidation, before answering that, most assuredly, all the dancers in the Florodora troupe behaved that way.6
