Stanford White's house for Payne Whitney in New York City - architect

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2002 by Jenil Sandberg

McKim, Mead and White was unquestionably the preeminent American architectural firm in the late nineteenth century. Together, the three partners, Charles Follen McKim (1847-1909), William Rutherford Mead (1846-1928), and Stanford White, created domestic, civic, and religious buildings in a wide range of historical styles, from Queen Anne to Georgian to Renaissance-inspired classicism. White, often considered the most decoratively minded of the partners, designed many of the most impressive and influential interiors of the era, particularly in the domestic realm. One of his finest mature works was the residence of Payne and Helen Hay Whitney at 972 Fifth Avenue in New York City, now the building of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. White designed and oversaw the execution of all the interiors in the house, which was still being built at the time of his death. These interiors exemplified the prevailing taste of wealthy New Yorkers and reflected a uniquely American expression of European styles.

From the earliest days of his architectural career, White concentrated on the design of domestic interiors. (1) By the 1880s, McKim, Mead and White had become the architectural firm of choice for the elite of New York society and White was able to secure clients with large amounts of money to spend on new residences and extensive remodeling. Among his many commissions were houses for such clients as Whitelaw Reid (1837-1912), Henry William Poor (1844-1915), and Ogden Mills (1825-1910). At the same time that he worked on the Payne Whitney house, White was busy building other mansions in New York City, including ones for Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt Jr. (nee Virginia Fair, d. 1935), and Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911).

Although American architects frequently had a hand in the interior decoration of their buildings, starting in the mid-nineteenth century popular cabinetmaking and decorating firms such as Herter Brothers, Pottier and Stymus, and Leon Marcotte were often called in to create the interiors. With the death or retirement of their principal partners in the mid-1880s, however, the creative vitality of these decorating firms declined, and they increasingly executed the designs of architects instead of their own. (2)

Conversely, architects were becoming better educated and increasingly professional--McKim, for instance, attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The American conception of the architect as total designer had its roots in the arts and crafts and aesthetic movements but it was codified by Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman Jr. in their influential book The Decoration of Houses, published in 1897, in which they described "house-decoration as a branch of architecture." As a designer of interiors, White maintained control over all of the firms hired to execute his designs for woodwork, metalwork, textiles, and upholstery In essence, this shift represented the fusion of formerly separate professions, namely architect and decorator, into a single creative entity White took this one step further and acted as a dealer in antiques, selling his clients objects from his own collection.

At the Payne Whitney house, White worked under very favorable circumstances indeed: his clients were members of a well-established wealthy New York family who had few fixed ideas about what the building and interiors should look like. The residence at 972 Fifth Avenue was commissioned in late 1902 as a wedding present from Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne (1839-1917) for his nephew Payne Whitney upon his marriage to Helen Hay4 Colonel Payne contributed more than $625,000 to the cost of the fashionable Fifth Avenue house, but he left the design choices in White's able hands.5 The foundation of the five-story house was laid in 1902, and work on the architectural shell progressed through 1903.6 By January 1904, the house was still not roofed in, but White was already planning the interiors. (7)

The public spaces on the ground floor were unusual, both architecturally and decoratively The dome over the entrance hall and the main staircase (see P1. III) was constructed by the New York firm of R Guastavino and Company which used a laminated vaulting system. (8) The layered tile vaults, also used in McKim, Mead and White's Boston Public Library, allowed for extremely thin, shallow vaults of great strength. The technology dated back to ancient times and had been used in many large-scale public buildings, such as Grand Central Terminal in New York City but it was relatively unusual in a domestic setting. (9) White utilized a half-arch support for the main stali; and, more notably a broad shallow dome for the entrance hail. Supported by a circle of paired marble columns, the tile courses of the dome were ornamented with a trompe-l'oeil trellis painted by James Wall Finn (see Pls, I, III) a muralist of note in the first years of the century. (10)

Coupled with potted plants and a central fountain, the illusionistic ceiling made the entrance hail an airy gardenlike setting (Fig. 1). The fountain was composed of several joined parts, including turtles carved by the American sculptor Adolph Alexander Weinman and a fragmentary male figure recently attributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (P1. V). (11) It is highly unlikely that White recognized the sculpture as the work of the Renaissance artist, but it nonetheless contributed to the hospitable atmosphere of the entrance hall.