New York Architects in Chicago
The Fortnightly of Chicago
By Megan McKinney
New York’s McKim, Mead & White was one of the great architectural firms in America at the turn of the last century. Although the trio of name partners contributed very little work to Chicago, their few designs are among the city’s favorites.
Charles Follen McKim
Charles McKim was creator of a superb Chicago mansion, the Bryan Lathrop house at 120 East Bellevue Place, now The Fortnightly of Chicago.
Mr. McKim was also one of the architects Daniel Burnham brought out from the East to design a building for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.
Above is Charles McKim’s flamboyant and totally urbane Agricultural Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893.
Photography.msichicago.com
Here is a closer look at the Agricultural Building Main Entrance.
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The partners were left to right William Rutherford Mead, Charles Follen McKim and Stanford White
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Stanford White was many people’s favorite of the trio and designer of many of New York’s most glorious buildings of the era. The above house at 1500 North Astor Street in Chicago was built in 1893 as home for the Chicago Tribune Pattersons.
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Stanford White was the bad boy architect—beautiful buildings but bad behavior—so bad that in 1906 he was murdered by a disgruntled husband.
Evelyn Nesbit
Era supermodel Evelyn Nesbit provided the motive for the murder.
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Stanford White’s Washington mansion for the Chicago Pattersons
Three years before Mr. White’s death, Mrs. Patterson, who had moved to Washington and was sorry to have left her Stanford White house in Chicago, hired the architect to build a second mansion for her in the capital.
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New York, however, was the true center of Stanford White’s talent. Above is his triumphal arch in the city’s Washington Square. Those Classic Chicago viewers who once lived in Greenwich Village will recall walking along beside it twice daily.
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Above is a small image of a favorite Stanford White design in midtown Manhattan, the Villard Houses at 455 Madison Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets.
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And here is Mr. White’s stunning Metropolitan Club at New York’s 1 East 60th Street.
Let’s not forget the original Madison Square Garden, circa 1900. It was on the roof of this design of his that the great architect met the ultimate revenge.
Author photo: Robert F. Carl
