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The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family

Average customer rating:

Well written and poignant.
Compelling story of a mixed legacy
Fascinating story by a lyrical writer
American History, Angst, Sex, Scandal
A book worth every penny and every minute!

The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family
Suzannah Lessard
Manufacturer: Delta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0385319428
Release Date: 1997-10-06

Amazon.com

In 1906, Suzannah Lessard's great-grandfather, the prominent architect, socialite, and hedonist Stanford White, was sensationally murdered by the husband of a showgirl White had seduced when she was 16. The acquittal of the killer on the grounds of insanity added to the scandalous gossip. In this beautifully written memoir, Lessard, a writer for the New Yorker, recalls growing up on the White family estate on Long Island, where the murder was a taboo subject. She evokes a sense of repressed and dark passion that infected the harmonious landscaping and architecture White had created. She writes of "coldness that may feel like warmth, or violence that presents as lust for life." In this extraordinarily literary nonfiction mystery, Lessard slowly reveals that her family history held more secrets than the murder, and reaches a startling and controversial climax.

Book Description

The story of Stanford White--his scandalous affair with the 16-year-old actress Evelyn Nesbit, his murder in 1906 by her husband, the millionaire Harry K. Thaw, and the hailstorm of publicity that surrounded "the trial of the century"--has proven irresistable to generations of novelists, historians, and biographers. The premier neoclassical architect of his day, White's legacy to the world were such masterpieces as New York's original Madison Square Garden, the Washington Square Arch, and the Players, Metropolitan, and Colony clubs. He was also responsible for the palaces of such clients as the Whitneys, Vanderbilts, and Pulitzers, the robber barons of the Gilded Age whose power and dominance shaped the nation in its heady ascent at the turn of the century.

As the century rolled on, however, the story of Stanford White and Evelyn Nesbit came to be viewed as glamorous and romantic, the darker narrative of White's out-of-control sexual compulsion obscured by time. Indeed, White's wife Bessie and his son Larry remained adamantly silent about the matter for the duration of their lives, a silence that reverberated through the next four generations of their extended family.

Suzannah Lessard is the eldest of Stanford White's great grandchildren. It was only in her 30's that she began to sense the parallels between the silence about her great-grandfather's life and the silence about her own perilous experience as a little girl in her own home. Thus she became drawn to the remarkable history of her family in order to uncover its hidden truths, and in so doing to liberate herself from its enclosure at last. The result is a multi-layered memoir of astonishing elegance and power, one that, like a great building, is illumined room by room, chapter by chapter, until the whole is clearly seen.

Customer Reviews:

Well written and poignant........2005-12-18

Suzannah Lessard is to be complemented on this reflective and perceptive account. The family skeletons are unquestionably out of the closet, as she narrates the heartrending story of Evelyn Nesbitt, Harry K Thaw and her own ancestor's intertwined lives.

If you have read "Ragtime", this is the non-fiction truth behind the tale.

The murder of the brilliant architect - the "White" in McKim, Mead and White, whose clients included the Teddy Roosevelt White House -shocked New York's 400. This book deals not only with the events as they unfolded but also their repercussions in the author's family. Well written and poignant.

Compelling story of a mixed legacy.......2003-08-24

What would it be like to be descended from one of America's most celebrated architects? For that matter, what would it be like to be descended from a man whose lurid, predatory sexual practices were once front-page news?

Members of the Stanford White family have had to deal with those issues for almost 100 years now, since White was gunned down at Madison Square Garden in 1906. For the most part, the White family did not discuss their illustrious pater familias, but Stanford White is ever-present, in all respects, in their collective lives. How the family did (or did not) deal with this mixed legacy would manifest itself over the next four generations.

Suzannah Lessard, a great-granddaughter of Stanford White, addresses this legacy squarely. She does not attempt to suger-coat White's personality, which combines breath-taking artistic genius with a self-indulgent predatory streak that ultimately led to his destruction. Through the book, she weaves multiple tales about her family, which includes stories of mental illness, sexual abuse, and emotional repression. She does this with remarkable candor.

This is a Social Register family. They are related to the Astors, the Winthrops, the Chanlers, the Roosevelts, the Rockefellers, etc. They own a magnificent property, designed by Stanford White, on Long Island. On the surface, it would appear that this family has the world as its oyster. Suzannah Lessard shows that no amount of social prominence and privelage can protect a family from the problems that can face us all.

Fascinating story by a lyrical writer.......2001-10-17

Powerful, lyrical writing builds the story of Stanford White one layer at a time. The writer, his granddaughter, is uniquely qualified to tell the tale of genius gone awry. You'll remember this story long after you finish it -- a sure sign that you've experienced not just a book, but true art.

American History, Angst, Sex, Scandal.......2000-06-02

This book defies a brief explanation. I sensed deep passion in the author as I read her words, a passion for her family's weaknesses and strengths, a passion for knowing herself, a passion for the power of architecture, and a passion for her great-grandfather, the infuriatingly complex architect, Stanford White.

Stanford was generous and careless, creative and self-destructive, maniacally disciplined and utterly irresponsible. While he selflessly gave his heart and soul to his massive stone buildings, he thoughtlessly shattered the hearts and lives of the people around him. Even while he was racked by ill health, he drove himself in his work life AND his recreational life as if he were immortal. He either believed he could never die, or knew he surely must and so didn't care.

The sexual portrait of Stanford can be rather harrowing: The countless love nests he set up around New York; his systematic debauchery of young women (many of whom fell in love with him); the attorneys he hired to hush things up; the endless supply of cronies he found to join him in his nocturnal plundering--his appetites--and his ability to feed his appetites--knew no limits. As for Evelyn Nesbit, the celebrated beauty who arguably played a role in Stanford's murder, I'll just say she wasn't the first girl to ride in his red velvet swing.

Finally, two notes. This author presents architecture, and its impact on the human psyche, in a beautiful, moving way; she breathes life into the bricks of Stanford's buildings. And her depiction of the Gilded Age is superb. It's the stuff of a great trashy Summer novel. Except it's real. And probably still goes on today.

I should also warn future readers that there's a fair amount of incest in this book.

A book worth every penny and every minute!.......1999-05-16

I initially read this book on a library loan as a small part of research for a project I was doing. Now I'm back at Amazon to purchase it. It's one I want to read again in leisure time, to savor, not only for the wealth of history it provides, and the painfully honest look into family self-deceptions, but for the absolutely beautiful writing it offers. The courage she shows in telling this story, and the honest treatment of her family (which I expected her to protect and make excuses for) and painstaking fairness to other characters, sometimes at the expense of her own history, is breath taking. Many of Ms. Lessard's descriptive passages are almost musical in quality, without ever falling to sappiness, and they bleed a depth of insight that one sometimes grasps only at a second glance. Her metaphorical passages are the most beautiful - I will never forget many of them. A joy and a privilege to read. Again.

Average customer rating:

The architect of desire: beauty and danger in the Stanford White family
Suzannah LESSARD
Manufacturer: Trafalgar Square
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OS3MX0

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The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family
Suzannah Lessard
Manufacturer: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NU4MDS

The Architect of Desire. Beauty and Danger in the Stanford Family

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The Architect of Desire. Beauty and Danger in the Stanford Family
Suzannah Lessard
Manufacturer: The Dial Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000I342H6

Average customer rating:

The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family
Suzannah LESSARD
Manufacturer: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GT42OK

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The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family
Suzannah Lessard
Manufacturer: Delta
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N75CUI

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