Last week, in a building designed by McKim Mead & White, I heard Mosette Broderick, an architectural historian who’s written a book about McKim Mead & White, speak.  She debunked many myths about this legendary firm.  Apparently the partners didn’t like each other, didn’t work together, didn’t have much talent, and didn’t care about architecture.  And it was a visionary (and entirely uncredited) draughtsman at the office, James Weaver, who was responsible for the firm’s most celebrated designs.

Broderick took great pains to deflate the image of Stanford White, who might be, with the exception of Frank Lloyd Wright, the most glamorous figure in the history of American architecture.  According to Broderick, White was a promising interior designer who surrendered, in both work and life, to abject sensuality.  Still he is, like Amelia Earhart, a figure whose mythology I want to keep intact.  I’d like to believe that when he was shot to death on the rooftop of Madison Square Garden, it really was a great loss.