National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

APPENDIX 2
BIOGRAPHIES OF ARCHITECTS AND DECORATORS
WHO WORKED ON HYDE PARK
Architects
McKim, Mead & White was the quintessential architectural firm of the last quarter of
the nineteenth century and first part of the twentieth. 1442 The three partners came together in
1879. Each partner had a different temperament and style, and together they formed the largest
architectural practice of the time. Their widespread influence was enhanced by the number of
apprentices who passed through their firm and then went out to form their own architectural
practices. The style of the firm encompasses the range of late-nineteenth century styles, from
the Gothic Revival, Shingle and Stick Style to the Beaux-Arts and Colonial Revival.
Charles McKim was a formal classicist. He attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and
worked for Henry Hobson Richardson on Trinity Church in Boston. One of McKim's students
gave this description:
Charles Follen McKim as I first saw him in 1887 was forty years old, about five feet seven in
height, quite bald with a sandy fringe, and a drooping sandy moustache. I heard another
architect of less eminence characterized recently as "Practicing architecture at the top of his
voice" and the description would apply measurably to McKim; he liked to sit down at a
draftsman's table, usually in his hat and immaculate shirt sleeves, and design out loud- as he
did once soon after I entered the office; the room reverberated with architectural terms that
sounded most recondite to a green boy of 20: Cyma Recta; Cyma Reversa; Fillet above; Fillet
below; Dentils, Modillions; and so on. 1443
McKim was the partner-in-charge of the Frederick Vanderbilt Mansion. His classical
discipline is clearly evident in the rigorous design and layout of the mansion.
Stanford White was the third and youngest member of the firm of McKim, Mead &
White. 1444 White was hired to be the decorative expert at the firm and was responsible for most
of the interior decorative and ornamental work. He also designed numerous buildings of all
types ranging from residences to churches to one of his shining achievements, Madison Square
Garden. In addition to designing buildings, interiors, picture frames, cash registers, book and
magazine covers, tomb stones and the like, he also ran a brisk antiques business from the late
1880s until his death in 1906. White would make buying trips to Europe, purchasing virtually
any object that appealed to his aesthetic sensibility. Some of these objects were purchased with
particular commissions in mind, such as the Frederick Vanderbilt house, where McKim gave
1442 On McKim, Mead & White see Roth, McKim, Mead & White, Architects; Richard Guy Wilson, "The
Early Work of Charles F. McKim, The Country House Commissions," Winterthur Portfolio 14 (1979):
235-267; Wilson, McKim, Mead & White Architects; McKim, Mead & White, A Monograph of the Works of
McKim, Mead & White, 1879-1915, (1915-20; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, Inc. 1985).
1443 H.Van Buren Magonigle, "A Half-Century of Architecture, 3," Pencil Points 15 (March 1934), 116.
1444 The most comprehensive biography of Stanford White is Paul Baker, Stanny, The Gilded Life of
Stanford White; Leland Roth, McKim, Mead & White, Architects gives an excellent overview of the firm of
McKim, Mead & White.
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