McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm based in New York City. The firm came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York.
The firm's founding partners, Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), William Rutherford Mead (1846–1928), and Stanford White (1853–1906), were giants in the architecture of their time, and remain important as innovators and leaders in the development of modern architecture worldwide. They formed a school of classically trained, technologically skilled designers who practiced well into the mid-20th century.[1] According to Robert A. M. Stern, only Frank Lloyd Wright was more important to the identity and character of modern American architecture.[2]
Across the United States, the firm designed buildings in Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. Outside of the United States, the firm developed buildings in Canada, Cuba, and Italy. The scope and breadth of their achievement is notable, considering that many of the technologies and strategies they employed were nascent or non-existent when they began working in the 1880s.[3]
William Rutherford Mead, a cousin of president Rutherford B. Hayes, went to Amherst College and trained with Russell Sturgis in Boston. McKim and Mead formed a partnership with William Bigelow in New York City in 1877.
White was born in New York City, the son of Shakespearean scholar Richard Grant White and Alexina Black Mease (1830–1921). His father was a dandy and Anglophile with no money, but a great many connections in New York's art world, including painter John LaFarge, jeweler Louis Comfort Tiffany and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.
White had no formal architectural training; he began his career at the age of 18 as the principal assistant to Henry Hobson Richardson, the most important American architect of the day and creator of a style recognized today as "Richardsonian Romanesque". He remained with Richardson for six years, playing a major role in the design of the William Watts Sherman House in Newport, Rhode Island, an important Shingle Style work.
White joined the partnership in 1879, and quickly became known as the artistic leader of the firm. McKim's connections helped secure early commissions, while Mead served as the managing partner. Their work applied the principles of Beaux-Arts architecture, with its classical design traditions and training in drawing and proportion, and the related City Beautiful movement after 1893. The designers quickly found wealthy and influential clients amidst the bustle and economic vigor of metropolitan New York.[4]
Early developments
The William G. Low House, epitome of the Shingle Style
The firm initially distinguished itself with the innovative Shingle Style Newport Casino (1879-1880) and summer houses, including Victor Newcomb's house in Elberon, New Jersey (1880–1881), the Isaac Bell House in Newport, Rhode Island (1883), and Joseph Choate's house "Naumkeag" in Lenox, Massachusetts (1885–88).[5] Their status rose when McKim was asked to design the Boston Public Library in 1887, ensuring a new group of institutional clients following its successful completion in 1895. The firm had begun to use classical sources from Modern French, Renaissance and even Roman buildings as sources of inspiration for daring new work.
In 1877, White and McKim led their partners on a "sketching tour" of New England, visiting many of the key houses of Puritan leaders and early masterpieces of the colonial period. Their work began to incorporate influences from these buildings, contributing to the Colonial Revival.[6]
The H.A.C. Taylor house in Newport, Rhode Island (1882–1886) was the first of their designs to use overt quotations from colonial buildings. A less successful but daring variation of a formal Georgian plan was White's house for Commodore William Edgar, also in Newport (1884–86). Rather than traditional red brick or the pink pressed masonry of the Bell house, White tried a tawny, almost brown color, leaving the building neither fish nor fowl.
The William G. Low House in Bristol, Rhode Island (1886-1887), demolished in 1962, is today seen as a quintessential expression of the Shingle Style. The architectural historian Vincent Scully saw it as "at once a climax and a kind of conclusion" for McKim, since its "prototypal form ... was almost immediately to be abandoned for the more conventionally conceived columns and pediments of McKim, Mead, and White's later buildings."[7]
The partners added talented designers and associates as the 1890s loomed, with Thomas Hastings, John Carrère, Henry Bacon and Joseph M. Wells on the payroll in their expanding office. With a larger staff, each partner had a studio of designers at his disposal, similar to the organization of a modern design firm, and this increased their capacity for doing even larger projects, including the design of entire entire college campuses for Columbia University and New York University, and a massive entertainment complex at Madison Square Garden, all located in New York City.
McKim, Mead and White gained prominence as a cultural and artistic force through their construction of Madison Square Garden. White secured the job from the Vanderbilt family, and the other partners brought former clients into the project as investors. The extraordinary building opened its doors in 1890. What had once been a dilapidated arena for horse shows was now a multi-purpose entertainment palace, with a larger arena, a theater, apartments in a Spanish style tower, restaurants, and a roof garden with views both uptown and downtown from 34th Street. White's masterpiece was a testament to his creative imagination, and his taste for the pleasures of city life.[8]
The architects paved the way for many subsequent colleagues by fraternizing with the rich in a number of other settings similar to The Garden, enhancing their social status during the Progressive Era. McKim, Mead and White designed not only the Century Association building (1891), but also many other clubs around Manhattan: the Colony Club, the Metropolitan Club, the Harmonie Club, and the University Club of New York.
Some of their later, classical country houses also enhanced their reputation with wealthy oligarchs and critics alike. The Frederick VanderbiltMansion (1895–1898) at Hyde Park, New York and White's "Rosecliff" for Tessie Oelrichs (1898–1902) in Newport were elegant venues for the society chronicled by Edith Wharton and Henry James. Newly-wealthy Americans were seeking the right spouses for their sons and daughters, among them idle aristocrats from European families with dwindling financial resources. When called for, the firm could also deliver a house-full of continental antiques and works of art, many acquired by Stanford White from dealers abroad. The Clarence McKay house in Roslyn, New York, was probably the most opulent of these flights of fancy. Though many are gone, some now serve new uses, such as "Florham", in Madison, New Jersey (1897–1900), now the home of Fairleigh Dickinson University.[11]
New York's City's enormous Penn Station (1906–1910) was the firm's crowning achievement, reflecting not only its commitment to new technological advances, but also to architectural history stretching back to Greek and Roman times.[12] McKim, Mead & White also designed the General Post Office Building across from Penn Station at the same time, part of which became the new Amtrak station in 2021.[13]
The original Penn Station was demolished in 1963–1964 and replaced with a newer Madison Square Garden, in spite of large opposition to the move.[14] One of the firm's last major works in the city was the Manhattan Municipal Building (1906–1913) adjacent to City Hall, built following the deaths of both White (1906) and McKim (1909) and the financial collapse of the original partnership.[15]
The firm retained its name long after the deaths of founding partners White (1906), McKim (1909), and Mead (1928). The major partners became William M. Kendall and Lawrence Grant White, Stanford's son.[16] Among the firm's final works under the name McKim, Mead & White was the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Designed primarily by partner James Kellum Smith, it opened in 1964.[17] Smith died in 1961, and the firm was soon renamed Steinmann, Cain and White. In 1971, it became Walker O. Cain and Associates.[18]
Various features including Parade Place on Lookout Hill, Peristyle, Park Circle granite fixtures, Lullwater Bridge, 1895 Maryland Monument on Lookout Hill
former estate of Gilded Age socialite Charlotte Goodridge demolished and reconstructed into five-storey bank designed by McKim, Mead & White, commissioned by Second National Bank.
designed as the architectural twin of New York City's Pennsylvania Station; annex also designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1932. Now contains Moynihan Train Hall
Eastman hired McKim, Mead & White to design the interior of his Georgian Colonial Revival Mansion which was nearly an exact, large scale duplicate of the Robert Root House that was built by the firm in Buffalo, New York c.1894[23]
"The original gable ends were stepped, the pointy 'Gothick' windows were Edwardianized, the wooden porches reconstructed in stone, the tower on the west capped with a conical roof, the forest of delicate chimney pots combined and bulked up, and the reconfigured interior given heavy doses of classical columns, balusters, dadoes, fireplaces and moldings."[26][27]
James Kellum Smith (1893–1961) – a member of the firm from 1924 to 1961; full partner in 1929, and the last surviving partner of MM&W. He primarily designed academic buildings, but his last major work was the National Museum of American History.
Egerton Swartwout of Tracy and Swartwout – both Tracy and Swartwout worked together for the firm on multiple projects prior to starting their own practice.
Robert von Ezdorf – took over much of the firm's business after White's death.
Joseph Morrill Wells (1853–1890) – worked as firm's first Chief Draftsman from 1879 to 1890; often considered to be the firm's "fourth partner", and largely responsible for its Renaissance Revival designs in the 1880s.
William M. Whidden – worked at the firm from at least 1882 until 1888; projects included the Tacoma and Portland hotels in Washington and Oregon, respectively; moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1888 to finish the hotel and established his own firm with Ion Lewis
York and Sawyer – Edward York (1863–1928) and Philip Sawyer (1868–1949) worked together for the firm before starting their own partnership in 1898.
References
Citations
^See Mark Alan Hewitt, The Architect and the American Country House, 1890–1940, (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press: 1990) pages 15–67, for a discussion of their influence.
^White, Samuel (2003). McKim, Mead & White: The Masterworks. New York: Random House Incorporated. ISBN9780847825677.
^Leland M. Roth, McKim, Mead and White, Architects, (New York, Harper & Row: 1985)
^See Vincent Scully, Jr. The Shingle Style and the Stick Style: architectural theory and design from Richardson to the origins of Wright (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press: 1971)
^William B. Rhoads, The Colonial Revival, Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, (New York, Garland Publishing: 1977) pages 594 and 942.
^Scully, Vincent (1971) [1955]. The Shingle Style and the Stick Style. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 153. ISBN 9780300015195.
^Richard Guy Wilson, McKim, Mead and White, architects (New York, Rizzoli: 1983).
^Mosette Broderick, Triumvirate: McKim, Mead & White Art, Architecture, Scandal, and Class in America's Gilded Age (New York, Alfred Knopf: 2010).
^Leland Roth. "Three Factory Towns by McKim, Mead and White". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Vol. 38, No. 4 (1979): 317–347.
^See Samuel G. White, The Houses of McKim, Mead and White (New York, Rizzoli: 1998).
^See Steven Parissien, Pennsylvania Station: McKim, Mead and White (London, Phaidon: 1996).
Baker, Paul R. (1989). Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White. New York: Free Press. ISBN0-02-901781-5.
Broderick, Mosette (2010). Triumvirate: McKim, Mead & White: Art, Architecture, Scandal, and Class in America's Gilded Age. New York: Knopf. ISBN0-394-53662-2.
McKim, Mead & White (1915–1920). A Monograph of the Work of McKim, Mead & White, 1879–1915, 4 vols. New York: Architectural Book Publishing Co.
Reprinted as The Architecture of McKim, Mead & White in Photographs, Plans and Elevations, with an introduction by Richard Guy Wilson. New York: Dover Publications, 1990. ISBN0486265560.
Roth, Leland M. (September 1, 1978). The Architecture of McKim, Mead & White, 1870–1920: A Building List. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities. Garland Publishing. ISBN978-0824098506.
Roth, Leland M. (October 1985). McKim, Mead and White, Architects (First edition). Harper & Row. ISBN978-0064301367.
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