Architecture, Adultery, and Assassination: the Legacy of (Summer) West Orange Resident Stanford White
(Since my other cache about the Orange Tornadoes NFL team mentioned that their amateur club predecessors had played in the first World Series of Football at the old Madison Square Garden, I couldn’t resist also creating a cache dedicated to that MSG’s brilliant—and “eccentric”—architect, Stanford White, whose summer home stood on the cliffs along Prospect Avenue, just across Mt. Pleasant Avenue from the parking for this cache.)
Famous/infamous architect Stanford White was, at least in summer, a West Orange resident (and neighbor of General McClellan—more on him in another nearby cache) — atop the ridge of Orange (or First) Mountain. Only a few buildings he designed in our area still remain, including the Orange Library on Main Street (if you’ve ever passed it and thought it looked a lot like Low Library at Columbia University, that’s because he designed them both) and a carriage house for the Auchincloss Estate in Llewellyn Park, the first gated private community in the United States. (It's still a private community — the only way you can get into it is with a pass from Edison NP on Main Street to see Thomas Edison's house.
Unfortunately, the main Auchincloss Estate house has been torn down and replaced, leaving only the carriage house—but you can of course see some of Stanford White's iconic structures in NYC: the Morgan Library and Washington Square Arch.
But back to MSG: if you’ve ever wondered why the “World’s Most Famous Arena” is called Madison Square Garden when it isn’t anywhere near Madison Square, the answer is because it wasn’t always where it is today.
In its original location on 26th Street across from Madison Square Park, MSG was home to performances of operas, orchestras, the Barnum and Ringling Circuses, the World Series of Football (the first ever indoor football games) starring our hometown Orange Tornadoes, and boxing matches — which, being technically illegal at the time, were instead called “exhibitions” or “illustrated lectures.”
When it was completed in 1890 at a then-whopping cost of $3 million, the New York Times declared it “one of the great institutions of the town, to be mentioned along with Central Park and the bridge of Brooklyn," and 17,000 people paid a then-exorbitant $50 a ticket just to be there on opening night.
But this Madison Square Garden—then the largest theater in the world and the second tallest building in the city—is now best known as the scene of one of the most brutal and scandalous public assassinations in the history of New York.
When he designed the second Madison Square Garden in 1890, Stanford White was one of the preeminent architects in New York City, a third of the famed partnership McKim, Mead & White, already responsible for the Washington Square Arch, The Players Club, the Century Club and the Villard Houses.
But Stanford White was also known for his intense love of alcohol and teenage girls, who he liked to take back to his apartment on 24th St. through a specially designed secret back entrance. There he would ply them with copious amounts of wine and then get them to perform for him in a green playroom with a red velvet swing, or an adjacent fully mirrored room (think “50 Shades of White”). One particular girl, 16-year-old actress Evelyn Nesbitt, caught the special fancy of the 47 year-old White, and the two had a brief but intense love affair. (If any of this story sounds familiar, it’s because the events served as the basis for the novel and musical “Ragtime,” as well as the more fact-based Joan Collins movie “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing.”)
Evelyn eventually married a mining millionaire named Harry Thaw, who had serious mental health problems exacerbated by a crippling cocaine addiction. At least in Thaw’s mind, Evelyn never truly moved on from her affair with Stanford White.
On June 25, 1906, Harry Thaw and his wife Evelyn, as well as Stanford White and his wife, happened to all be at Madison Square Garden’s rooftop theater for the opening night performance of “Mam’zelle Champagne.” During the show’s finale, a song appropriately enough called “I Could Love a Million Girls,” Harry Thaw walked up to White in his seat, pulled out a pistol, and shot him three times in the face at point blank range, killing White instantly.
The crowd at first didn’t know how to react, wondering if this was some spectacle or part of the show, as Thaw stood over White’s motionless body, gun in the air, shouting "I did it because he ruined my wife! He had it coming to him! He took advantage of the girl and then abandoned her!" Thaw then simply walked over to the elevator with Evelyn and left.
The papers for weeks were understandably obsessed with the sensational story of the jealous millionaire cuckold murdering the famous architect, who they called “a sybarite of debauchery, a man who abandoned lofty enterprises for vicious revels,” while declaring Thaw’s court case the “Trial of the Century.” (Autopsies would eventually determine that White was not long for this world anyway, suffering from tuberculosis, Bright’s disease, and liver deterioration.)
Showing that what he may have lacked in morals he more than made up for with good business sense, West Orange's own Thomas Edison rushed a quick movie called “Rooftop Murder” about the killing into production, releasing it just a WEEK after White’s death.
Thaw was tried for murder, but claimed justifiable homicide and pled temporary insanity, and the (most likely compromised) jury deadlocked. He was then tried again, found not guilty on grounds of temporary insanity, sentenced to life at Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally insane, escaped, fled to Quebec, returned in hiding to New Hampshire, was recaptured and extradited to New York, tried again, and eventually in 1915 was found not guilty, deemed sane, and set free.
Bad choice. In 1916 Thaw was charged with kidnapping, beating, and sexually assaulting a 19 year-old boy named Frederick Gump, then fled from police, attempted suicide, was arrested, tried, declared insane, and confined in Philadelphia’s Kirkbride asylum—but then freed eight years later when he was again suddenly declared sane and not guilty, most likely because his family paid off the right judges.
As for Stanford White’s Madison Square Garden, despite its beauty, it was never a successful business venture, and in 1925 it was torn down by its mortgage holder, the New York Life Insurance Company, to make way for their new headquarters (to be fair, arguably an even more iconic New York architectural landmark that still stands today).
In an added sad postscript, to build the Madison Square Garden we know today, developers had to first demolish the old Penn Station, which many historians consider to be Stanford White’s—if not all of New York City’s—most impressive architectural masterpiece.
Now for the cache: To find it, be ready for a serious bushwack down a steep, rocky hill (no trails and lots of loose rocks, so watch your step). There are a few knick-knacks inside including a Thomas Edison pin and compass rose geocoin for the FTF!
As BigA800 discovered and helpfully noted in the logs, parking at the only real access point is extremely limited -- guests in the houses adjacent to this spot sometimes park at the pinned parking location (on the shoulder right before the turnout), and I have parked in the turnout, just before the gate to the landscaping area, while exploring this patch of woods with no problems. If both of those options make you uncomfortable, your best bet is to go up the hill a couple hundred yards to the first entrance on your right, the old Marvec office building, which has plenty of empty parking, and walk back down the hill to the woods area.
Congrats to G.O. Cash for the FTF!!!