Stanford White : Letters to His Family : Including a Selection of Letters to Augustus Saint-Gaudens

White, Claire Nicolas

ISBN 10: 084782022X / ISBN 13: 9780847820221

Published by Rizzoli, 1997

About this Item

Used items may contain, highlighting, writing, and other previous signs of use. Used items may not contain CD's. access codes and other accompanying items when applicable. **MAY BE AN EX LIBRARY COPY**.

Seller Inventory # 36F55030

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Stanford White : Letters to His Family : Including a Selection of Letters to Augustus Saint-Gaudens
• Publisher: Rizzoli
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 084782022X
• ISBN 13: 9780847820221
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 25 ounces

About this title

Synopsis

These letters and sketches by Stanford White were left by Lawrence Grant White, when he died in 1956. He had mounted them in beautiful leather-bound books, each impetuously scribbled letter accompanied by a typewritten transcription. It was so obviously the labor of love and admiration of a son for his father that this alone made them precious.

Review

Reproduced here for the first time, the intimate letters written by Stanford White (1853-1906) reveal much more about the private man than about his public persona as a fashionable Gilded Age architect and socialite. This captivating collection of candid letters, assembled and preserved by the architect's son, span nearly 50 years, from White's childhood to shortly before his untimely death (he was murdered in 1906). Many of the letters appear in facsimile reproduction and include architectural sketches and other drawings from White's travels in the United States, Mexico, and Europe. This volume, which also reproduces photographs and watercolors, adds valuable insight into the life of one of the most prominent architects in late 19th-century America. Of particular interest are the letters penned to the two people White was closest to--his mother and his wife--drawing an engaging, funny, and charming self-portrait. Writing from Paris in 1878, and reproaching himself for not having written sooner, he begins a letter to his mother with, "I ought to have my head punched and be sat on generally."