McKim, Mead And White

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. According to Robert A. M. Stern, only Frank Lloyd Wright was more important to the identity and character of modern American architecture.

The firm's New York City buildings include Manhattan's former Pennsylvania Station, the Brooklyn Museum, and the main campus of Columbia University.

Elsewhere in New York state and New England, the firm designed college, library, school and other buildings such as the Boston Public Library, Walker Art Building at Bowdoin College, the Garden City campus of Adelphi University, and the Rhode Island State House. In Washington, D.C., the firm renovated the West and East Wings of the White House, and designed Roosevelt Hall on Fort Lesley J. McNair and the National Museum of American History.

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.

History

Background

Charles McKim, who grew up in West Orange, New Jersey, was the son of a prominent Quaker abolitionist. He attended Harvard College and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, a leading training ground for American artists.

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.

Early developments

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). 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.

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."

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.

Major works

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.

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.

Though White's subsequent life was plagued by scandals, and McKim's by depression and the loss of his second wife, the firm continued to produce magnificent and varied work in New York and abroad. They worked for the titans of industry, transportation and banking, designing not only classical buildings (the New York Herald Building, Morgan Library, Villard Houses, and Rhode Island State Capitol), but also planning factory towns ( Echota, near Niagara Falls, New York; Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina; and Naugatuck, Connecticut), and working on university campuses (the University of Virginia, Harvard, Adelphi University and Columbia). The magnificent Low Library (1897) at Columbia was similar to Thomas Jefferson's at the University of Virginia, where White added an academic building on the other side of the Lawn.

Some of their later, classical country houses also enhanced their reputation with wealthy oligarchs and critics alike. The Frederick Vanderbilt Mansion (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. Clarence Mackay's Harbor Hill (1899–1902), demolished in 1949, 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.

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. McKim, Mead & White also designed the General Post Office Building across from Penn Station at the same time, part of which became an above-ground expansion of Penn Station in 2021. 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.

Later years

In January 1906 the founders were joined by three additional partners: William Mitchell Kendall (1856 – 1941), Burt Leslie Fenner (1869 – 1926) and William Symmes Richardson (1873 – 1931). Each had worked as assistants to McKim, Mead and White, respectively, though they had been delegated executive responsibility for individual projects since 1904. After a 1907 invitation to participate in the competition to design the Manhattan Municipal Building (1915), the new partners reversed the firm's long standing policy against participation in such competitions. Their entry, designed by Kendall, was successful, and the completed building was the firm's first serious entry into skyscraper design.

The firm retained its name long after the deaths of the founders. White was murdered in 1906, McKim died in 1909 and Mead retired in 1919. Kendall and Richardson divided most design responsibilities while Fenner took on the role of chief executive. Architectural historian Mosette Broderick described the design partners thusly: Kendall as "hardworking, dull and mean," Richardson as "the best designer of the three." This summation of Kendall's design skills is contradicted by his buildings, such as the Butler Institute of American Art (1919); his contemporaries considered him scholarly in the way that McKim had been. The recollections of employees such as Royal Cortissoz, however, confirm that his behavior towards his colleagues and subordinates could be actively malicious. Leland M. Roth identified the Racquet and Tennis Club (1918), designed by Richardson, as "the last and best work" of the decade following McKim and White's deaths. Richardson here combined Italian Renaissance precedents, such as the Florentine Palazzo Antinori, with modern functionalism.Leland M. Roth, ''McKim, Mead & White, Architects'' (New York: Harper & Row, 1983): 343-344. The final two partners, Lawrence Grant White (1887 – 1956)–Stanford White's son–and James Kellum Smith (1893 – 1961), were admitted to the partnership in 1920 and 1929, respectively. In its later years the firm maintained its commitment to quality materials and workmanship, but without its earlier creative abilities. In prior years the firm had been unfairly accused of being a "plan factory," a firm which executed generic, repetitive work as quickly as possible, but after about 1920 the comparison came to be seen as apt.

In 1914 the firm was approached by the Architectural Book Publishing Company with a proposal to publish a monograph of the firm's work. New drawings and photographs were prepared for the work, which was published in unbound, large folio installments from 1915 to 1920 as ''A Monograph of the Work of McKim, Mead & White, 1879–1915''. With the exception of some important early works, this publication was focused on neoclassical works from the World's Columbian Exposition forward and served as a means for the later partners to curate their legacy. The ''Monograph'' also had a large influence on architects in the United States, England and elsewhere, for whom it served as a reference work. An abridged ''Student's Edition'' was published in 1925 and in 1952 they privately printed a more limited follow-up, ''Recent Work by the Present Partners of McKim, Mead & White, Architects''. Both the ''Student's Edition'' and the unabridged ''Monograph'' have been reissued, the former by Classical America in 1981 and the latter by Dover Publications in 1990.

Richardson retired in 1921 after a disabling accident and Fenner died in 1926. Teunis Jacob van der Bent (1862 – 1936), a partner since 1909, took over Fenner's management role and died a decade later. Kendall gradually withdrew from the firm during the 1930s and died in 1941, leaving control of the firm with White and Smith. The firm's design efforts after World War II may be summed up by the Mead Art Building (1949) of Amherst College, a memorial to Mead. Mead and his wife had left a large sum of money to Amherst, his alma mater, for the construction of an art gallery. The new building was assigned to Smith, who was college architect and another alumnus. According to Blair Kamin, at this point Smith and his firm "were struggling with the challenge posed by...modernism," resulting in a building which attempts gamely to meld Beaux-Arts and modernist principles but fails at both. Shortly before White's death in 1956, he won for the firm the National Museum of American History (1964) in Washington, DC. His grandson, architect Samuel White, described the commission as " s personal Mount Everest."David W. Dunlap, "The delicate matter of passing the torch," ''New York Times'', November 21, 1999. The museum, among the final works initiated under the name McKim, Mead & White, was designed principally by Smith and Walker O. Cain. Here as at Amherst they attempted to meld traditionalism and modernism with little success. Martin Moeller, then curator of the National Building Museum, described it as "neither convincingly modern nor credibly neoclassical."

Successors

Smith, the last surviving partner, died in February 1961. The surviving associates, Milton Bode Steinmann (1899 – 1987), Alexander Stevenson Corrigill (1891 – 1961), Walker Oscar Cain (1915 – 1993) and Cornelius John White (1894 – 1962)–no relation to Stanford White–formed a new partnership under the name Steinmann, Corrigill, Cain & White. After the deaths of Corrigill and White shortly thereafter, the firm was reduced first to Steinmann, Cain & White and second to Steinmann & Cain. Steinmann retired in 1967 and the firm continued under the leadership of Cain as Walker O. Cain & Associates. In 1978 the firm was reorganized as Cain, Farrell & Bell to include two new partners, including Byron Bell. In the 1990s Bell changed the name of the firm first to Bell Larson and second to Bell Larson Raucher, acknowledging the contributions of partners Douglas Larson and Alice Raucher. At the turn of the millennium Bell downplayed his firm's relation to its now-distant origins, observing that " 's a different time. That was a giant firm, a major force in the world. Our firm has 10 people." A late work of the firm is Peterson Hall (1999) of the Council on Foreign Relations, a New Classical townhouse on East 68th Street in Manhattan. The firm was later renamed Bell Donnelly and lastly to Byron Bell Architects and Planners in 2012.Byron Bell
" Van Alen Institute, no date. Accessed June 10, 2025.

Selected works

New York City

New England, Upstate New York, and Long Island

New Jersey

Washington, D.C.

Other U.S. locations

Other countries

Notable architects who worked for McKim, Mead & White

* Henry Bacon – worked at the firm from about 1886 through 1897; left with fellow employee James Brite to open their own office.
* William A. Boring – worked at the firm in 1890 before forming a separate partnership with Edward Lippincott Tilton.
* Charles Lewis Bowman – a draftsman at the firm until 1922, noted for his large number of private residences throughout Westchester County, New York including Bronxville, Pelham Manor, Mamaroneck and New Rochelle.
* A. Page Brown – worked with the firm beginning in the 1880s; went to California, where he was known for the San Francisco Ferry Building.
* Walker O. Cain – worked at the firm; he took it over in 1961 and renamed it several times.
* J.E.R. Carpenter – worked at the firm for several years before designing much of upper Fifth and Park Avenues, including 907 Fifth Avenue, 825 Fifth Avenue, 625 Park Avenue, 550 Park Avenue and the Lincoln Building on 42nd Street.
* John Merven Carrère (1858–1911) – worked with McKim, Mead & White from 1883 through 1885, then joined Thomas Hastings to form the firm Carrère and Hastings.
* Thomas Harlan Ellett (1880–1951)
* Cass Gilbert – worked with the firm until 1882, when he went to work with James Knox Taylor; later designed many notable structures, among them the George Washington Bridge and the Woolworth Building.
* Arthur Loomis Harmon – later of Shreve, Lamb and Harmon.
* Thomas Hastings (1860–1929) – of Carrère and Hastings, worked with McKim, Mead & White from 1883 through 1885.
* John Galen Howard (1864–1931)
* John Mead Howells (1868–1959)
* William Mitchell Kendall (1856–1941) – worked with the firm from 1882 until his death.
* Harrie T. Lindeberg – started at the firm in 1895 as an assistant to Stanford White and remained with the firm until White's death in 1906.
* Austin W. Lord – worked with the firm in 1890–1894 on designs for Brooklyn Museum of Arts and Sciences, the Metropolitan Club and buildings at Columbia University
* Harold Van Buren Magonigle (1867–1935)
* Albert Randolph Ross
* Philip Sawyer (1868–1949)
* 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.
* Robert Storer Stephenson (1858-1929) — began his career at the firm and in 1882 went on to found Stephenson & Wheeler, which designed the mansion at Edgerton Park and the Brewster Building, among many others.
* Egerton Swartwout of Tracy and Swartwout – both Tracy and Swartwout worked together for the firm on multiple projects prior to starting their own practice.
* Edward Lippincott Tilton – helped design the Boston Public Library in 1890 before leaving with Boring.
* 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

General and cited bibliography

* Baker, Paul R. (1989). ''Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White''. New York: Free Press. .
* Broderick, Mosette (2010). ''Triumvirate: McKim, Mead & White: Art, Architecture, Scandal, and Class in America's Gilded Age''. New York: Knopf. .
* 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. .
* 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. .
* Roth, Leland M. (October 1985). ''McKim, Mead and White, Architects'' (First edition). Harper & Row. .

External links

McKim, Mead & White in Buffalo

McKim, Mead & White Architectural Records Collection
at the New-York Historical Society

Brooklyn Museum Building Online Exhibition

McKim, Mead & White architectural records and drawings, c. 1879–1958
held by the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mckim, Mead, And White

1872 establishments in New York City
19th-century American architects
20th-century American architects
American neoclassical architects
American railway architects
Architects of the Boston Public Library
Beaux Arts architects
Defunct architecture firms based in New York City
Historicist architects