In 1901, Broadway chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit met Stanford White, the fabulously wealthy and influential architect who designed Madison Square Garden. They formed a relationship that ended in murder six years later, right in the middle of a crowded performance at Madison Square Garden.
Above: 1905 postcard depicting Old Madison Square Garden. Architect Stanford White designed the entertainment venue, then the tallest building in New York City. Courtesy of New York Public Library.
SHOW NOTES
1901 photo of Evelyn Nesbit. Before she launched a Broadway stage career, Nesbit modeled for photographers in Philadelphia and New York. Courtesy of New York Public Library.
1900 sheet music featuring the “Florodora Sextette." These six beauties stood at the center of Florodora and largely accounted for the musical's success.
Sheet music for the song “We Get Up at 8 A.M.” from the hit musical Florodora. Courtesy of New York Public Library.
1904 photograph of the Flatiron Building, taken by Edward Steichen. Completed in June of 1902, the Flatiron was an early attempt at the skyscraper. Though tall at the time of its completion, the building would quickly be dwarfed by an ever-heightening skyline.
Photograph of the Café Martin, a popular restaurant a short walk from Madison Square Garden. Evelyn Nesbit and Harry Thaw dined at Café Martin the night of the murder of Stanford White.
Poster for Redemption, starring Evelyn Nesbit "and her son Russell Thaw." Not only did Nesbit appear in movies with stories that mirrored events from her life, but she also acted alongside her biological son, Russell.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
---Baatz, Simon. The Girl in the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. New York; Boston; London: Little, Brown and Company, 2018.
---Burns, Ric and James Sanders. New York: An Illustrated History. New York: Knopf, 1999.
---Homberger, Eric. The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City’s History. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998.
---Nesbit, Evelyn. Prodigal Days.
---Nesbit, Evelyn. Tragic Beauty: The Lost 1914 Memoirs of Evelyn Nesbit. Edited by Deborah Dorian Paul. 2006.
---Wallace, Mike. Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898-1919. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
TRANSCRIPT
Just a heads-up before we get started: this episode contains discussion of sexual assault.
Introduction
Evelyn Nesbit was sixteen years old when she met Stanford White, aged forty-seven. She was one of Broadway’s most charming chorus girls. He was one of America’s most celebrated architects. In the early fall of 1901, Evelyn heard the news from fellow performer Edna Goodrich: Stanford White had seen Evelyn’s picture in the New York World and wanted to get to know her. White had clout in the theater industry. Among other projects, he had designed The Players, a private club for show-biz notables founded by megastar Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes. (If you want to know more about their relationship, make sure to listen to our two-part series on John Wilkes Booth.) Stanford White had formed friendships with leading actors and directors at The Players and elsewhere in New York. Simply put, he was the sort of well-connected man whom up-and-coming starlets were dying to meet. Edna invited Evelyn to lunch with her and White, an offer that Evelyn could scarcely refuse.
The day of the luncheon, Evelyn dressed to make a good first impression, picking out an ankle-length white frock and a cream-colored blouse that gave her an airy, youthful look. She and Edna boarded a carriage that deposited them in front of a four-story brownstone on Twenty-fourth Street, a building indistinguishable from neighboring residences. Evelyn suppressed a sense of disappointment, mixed with foreboding, as she stepped out of the carriage. She had imagined a more luxurious rendezvous—a five-star repast at the Waldorf Hotel, maybe. This hunk of stone looked about as inviting as a mausoleum, and for a moment she questioned whether she should even enter. They rang the bell and went inside, taking a dark stairwell up to the second story.
Stanford White, a long-limbed redhead with gray-green eyes, received them at the door. He was joined by a friend, Reginald Ronalds. The four sat down to a convivial lunch, during which Evelyn nursed a glass of champagne. As they laughed and swapped stories, Evelyn relaxed. Ronalds excused himself after the repast, but White encouraged the two young ladies to stay. He had a treat for Evelyn. Buoyant as a balloon on account of the champagne, Evelyn followed him up another stairway to the fourth floor, Edna right behind her.
Stanford opened a door onto a breathtaking sight: a high-ceilinged studio that ran the length of this floor of the building. Red velvet dominated the lavish décor—there were the heavy curtains that blocked out the sunlight, the cushions resting on richly upholstered divans and sofas. Most striking of all was the swing, which hung from the ceiling by velveteen cords. In front of the swing was a large paper screen, stretched taut inside a thin white frame and decorated with a Japanese motif. The screen usually dangled at eye level. However, the frame could be raised and lowered with a pulley, allowing you to lift it high overhead. Walking hand in hand with White, Evelyn went over to the red velvet swing and sat in its padded seat. Edna, meanwhile, operated the pulley, raising the paper screen toward the ceiling. White stood behind Nesbit, placed his hands on her back, and gave her a push—then another, then another. Up she soared, higher and higher, until she could almost touch the paper screen with the tips of her toes. It dawned on Evelyn that they were playing a game, the object of which was to puncture the paper screen with her feet. Over and over again, she came within inches of her target. Edna giggled at her repeated near-misses, and Evelyn joined in. Finally, Stanford White pushed her with all his might, and up she sailed, higher than ever. The paper screen split as her shoes sliced through it.
Evelyn Nesbit’s first encounter with Stanford White led to one of the most shocking murders of the early twentieth century. The homicide caught headlines partly because it happened in one of New York’s most magnificent attractions, Madison Square Garden, designed by none other than Stanford White. Yet the crime also captivated the general public because it threw a light on the rampant sexual exploitation in New York, especially in show business. This is The Art of Crime, and I’m your host, Gavin Whitehead. Welcome to episode 4 of Crimes of Old New York . . .
Murder at Madison Square Garden
From Wanamaker’s to Broadway
Born on Christmas Day in 1884, Evelyn Nesbit grew up in a humble household. Her lawyer-father died in 1892, causing the family to slide into penury over the course of several years. Evelyn’s mother, Florence, lacked formal schooling and had only ever worked as a homemaker, leaving her with little hope of procuring employment. Florence struggled to scratch out a living until, in 1899, the Nesbits relocated to Philadelphia, a major metropolis and the commercial center of Pennsylvania. There, Florence lined up a position as a saleswoman at Wanamaker’s, the city’s most prominent department store. Florence also secured a job for Evelyn, fourteen at the time, who joined the staff as a stock-girl. Neither mother nor daughter took a liking to their work, but, hey, it paid the bills.
Before long, their career trajectories took a hard-left turn. The pretty young Evelyn had long elicited coos of admiration with her dark-brown hair, large hazel eyes, milky white skin, and sweet demeanor. Inspired by her beauty, Philadelphia artists commissioned her to model for them, paying handsomely for her services. In one case, Evelyn posed for a glazier who fashioned stained-glass windows for Philadelphia churches. This craftsperson immortalized the teenaged beauty in technicolor glass as a heavenly angel. Encouraged by her daughter’s success in the city of brotherly love, Florence reckoned that Evelyn could make it as a model in New York. In December 1900, they packed their bags again and relocated to the Big Apple.
Florence’s gamble paid off. Evelyn immediately found work, with her mother acting as her de facto agent. Evelyn modeled for illustrators, painters, photographers, among others, pocketing five dollars per session, the standard rate in 1901. The money she earned sufficed to support the family throughout their first year in New York. Evelyn’s image graced the pages of publications like the New York World and the New York Journal, so it was only a matter of time before this pretty newcomer caught the attention of power players in the entertainment industry. An agent named Ted Marks contacted Florence and guaranteed that he could elevate her daughter to the Broadway stage. Delighted by the idea, Evelyn auditioned for theater manager John Fisher at the Casino Theater. Fisher had reservations about hiring Evelyn—he worried that the authorities might investigate him for child exploitation if he cast a sixteen-year-old in a major role. That said, she could dance well enough, and Fisher figured he could evade police scrutiny if she appeared in a minor part. He offered her a spot as a chorus girl in a musical comedy called Floradora, a role that would bring in fifteen bucks a week. In two years’ time, Evelyn had rocketed from the aisles of Wanamaker’s to the boards of Broadway.
Floradora originally opened in London, running in the British capital for two full years before transferring to the Great White Way. The truly bananas plot revolves around the owner of a perfume factory on Floradora, a fictional island in the Philippines. The factory proprietor, Cyrus Gilfrain, wants the foreman to marry his daughter, but the foreman pines for another woman. The second act flies from Floradora to Wales, where Cyrus happens to own a castle. That Welsh castle is haunted by a ghost, another character claims, and that ghost happens to know that Cyrus stole the deed to his Filipino perfume factory, half a world away. Cyrus admits to having acquired his business by illicit means, the factory is restored to its rightful owner, and harmony reigns as all the young lovers marry their soul mates.
Despite its “Okay-well-that-happened” narrative, Floradora was as much a blockbuster in New York as it had been in London, running for more than 500 performances on Broadway. The show owed much of its popularity to the ineffably gorgeous Floradora sextet, six slim dancers who sashayed onstage with pink suits, black hats, and frilly parasols and sang some of the decade’s most indelible tunes. The women who landed these coveted roles became the objects of intense admiration, and it was just another day at work when they came backstage to find passionate love letters and bouquets of flowers awaiting them in their dressing rooms. Not surprisingly, many of their admirers belonged to the topmost strata of New York society. In the words of biographer William Andrew Swanberg, “Each member of the original sextette married a millionaire.” Stanford White became acquainted with all six performers, and one of them, Edna Goodrich, even introduced him to Evelyn Nesbit. Evelyn and Stanford first ate lunch together six weeks after Evelyn’s Broadway debut.
America’s Master Architect
Born on November 9, 1853, Stanford White came from the house of a failed writer who could not afford to send his children to college. Despite his modest means, Stanford earned an apprenticeship with noted architect Henry Hobson Richardson, which set him on the path to a dazzling career. In 1879, he and two acquaintances established the architectural firm, McKim, Mead & White. The opening of their venture coincided with an economic boom in the United States. As we discussed in our previous episode, Gilded-Age capitalists made millions in the steel, railroad, and oil industries, among others. Many of these industrialists lived in New York and reaped immense pleasure from flaunting their wealth. Some nouveaux riches hired McKim, Mead & White to construct country homes in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut while others desired new homes in New York. White and company were filthy rich in no time. In fact, throughout the 1880s, McKim, Mead & White netted greater profits than any other architectural practice in the United States.
In 1887, Stanford White undertook the most important assignment of his career: the construction of a new building at Madison Square Garden. The commission came from the National Horse Show Association, which signed a contract with McKim, Mead & White to design a new venue for its annual equestrian show. As sole architect, White would propose—and gain permission to build—a much grander structure than originally anticipated.
He completed his masterpiece in 1890. Little more than a box with straight walls, Madison Square Garden was simple as could be when it came to its shape. Its majesty derived from the exterior decorations. Working in the Renaissance Revival style, the architect drew inspiration from the Hospital of the Innocents, a fifteenth-century Florentine orphanage designed by Filippo Brunelleschi. A colonnade ran along the base of White’s building, creating an arcade. This roofed enclosure could shield patrons as they hopped into and out of their carriages during foul weather. White placed six semicircular arched windows above the colonnade. Above these were so-called bull’s-eye windows, circular and smaller than the other openings. These twelve windows allowed light to flood the interior. Furthermore, the façade combined pale yellow pressed brick and creamy terracotta in a way that imbued the entire structure with a certain liveliness, even a levity, as if about to float skyward. Most surprising of all to investors, White added a 300-foot tower with multiple tiers, a wedding cake of a skyscraper that made the building impossible to miss. Atop the tower was a statue of the Roman goddess, Diana.
Stanford White conceived Madison Square Garden at a time when New York architects were thinking—and building—bigger and bigger. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the average edifice consisted of five stories. Trinity Church held the record as the tallest in town, its spire reaching 284 feet into the air. With time, however, more and more corporations made their headquarters on Wall Street, creating a need for more employees and office space. But only so many buildings could fit on the ground, and it soon became clear that the only solution was to build taller buildings. In the words of one journalist, “Confined on all sides, the only way out was up.” Two key leaps forward in modern architecture made this possible: the invention of the elevator in 1853 and the advent of lighter, steel-frame structures that would not collapse under their own weight. At the turn of the twentieth century, New York began its transformation into the sky-scraping metropolis we know it as today. In 1892, the twenty-one-story, wedge-shaped Flatiron sprang up, astonishing the world. One year later, in 1893, French poet, novelist, and critic Paul Bourget captured the sublime grandeur of the city’s heavenward expansion: “Gigantic, colossal, enormous, daring, there are no words—words are inadequate to this apparition, this landscape, in which the vast river serves as frame for the display of still water human energy. Reaching such a pitch of collective effort, this energy has become a force of nature itself. It is the poetry of Democracy, an immense concert. This is not the Parthenon—that little temple on a little hill . . . it is the obscure and tremendous poetry of the modern world, and it gives you a tragic shudder, there is in it so much of mad and willful humanity.”
When the construction crew had laid the last stone, Madison Square Garden became the tallest and most capacious building in all New York. According to a journalist for the New York Times, “Much has been written about this great amphitheater, but it must be seen to be appreciated. Everyone should go and take a look at it, because it is one of the sights of the city.” A writer for the New York Tribune chimed in, “There is something tremendously imposing in its vast dimensions, and, what is more commendable, something exceedingly agreeable in the excellence of its proportions and the impression of combined strength and gracefulness in its constructive details . . . The Madison Square Garden will be one admirable places of its kind in the world.” (It remained a sight for sore eyes until its demolition in 1925, carried out by the new proprietors, The New York Life Insurance Company.)
Madison Square Garden acted as more than a venue for horse shows. Customers could dine in the on-site restaurant before proceeding to one of several other locations. First there was the famous indoor amphitheater, where as many as 7,000 spectators could watch equestrian entertainments, bicycle races, boxing matches, religious revivals, political rallies, and other events. Then there was the ball room and concert hall, where patrons could dance and listen to music. Drama was also in abundant supply. An indoor theater decorated with silk drapery programmed plays year round. In summertime, moreover, musical comedies showed on the rooftop stage. Up to two hundred playgoers could sit at tables near the outdoor proscenium or on elevated benches along the sides of the roof. It was the rooftop theater at Madison Square Garden that eventually became a murder scene.
Benefactor . . .
Less than a week after Evelyn Nesbit went for another ride on the red velvet swing, her mother, Florence, received a letter from Stanford White, a man she had never heard of. He wanted to meet with her in his office, and she accepted. Florence took a shine to the architect right away, considering him gentlemanly and surprisingly invested in Evelyn’s welfare. He invested in several Broadway theaters, White told Florence, and he knew how hard it was for girls like Evelyn to succeed on the Great White Way. He offered to take Evelyn under his wing and do what he could to further her career. White showed generosity toward not just Evelyn but the rest of her family. At the architect’s expense, the Nesbits moved from a dumpy boardinghouse on Twenty-second Street to a suite of apartments at the classier Audubon Hotel on Broadway. He had also opened up new opportunities for Evelyn’s younger brother, Howard, footing the bill for the boy’s enrollment at the Chester Military Academy.
One day, encouraged by her benefactor’s open-handedness, Florence mentioned to him that she might like to visit friends in Pittsburgh. When she insinuated that she might not be able to afford the train ticket, White took the hint and offered to pay for it. He even threw in some pocket money to cover the cost of meals and other purchases. He further vowed to look after Evelyn while Florence was away.
Evelyn saw Stanny, as she came to call him, every single day during her mother’s vacation. He picked her up from the Audubon Hotel in the afternoon and dropped her off at the Casino Theatre for the evening performance of Floradora. Around nine-thirty, once the show had ended, she and some friends piled into a cab and rode on over to Madison Square Garden. There, they took the elevator up to White’s private apartment. Big-name guests, many of them theater people, came and went until the small hours, guzzling champagne and swapping gossip.
. . . Rapist
One afternoon, several weeks after Florence went away, White invited Evelyn to a dinner party at his Twenty-fourth Street townhouse. She accepted the invitation without a second thought. Much to her surprise, however, when she arrived the next night, shortly before ten, she found him alone. None of the other guests had materialized, he explained.
“Oh it’s too bad,” Evelyn replied, disappointed but also bemused by the turn of events. “Then we won’t have a party.”
“They have turned us down,’ White went on, “and probably gone off somewhere else and forgotten all about us. They probably won’t come.”
“Had I better go home?” Nesbit asked, not at all excited to pass the evening alone in her apartment.
“No, we’ll have a party all to ourselves,” White replied with a grin. He placed a hand on her shoulder and guided her to the dining room.
They ate dinner, and Nesbit regaled White with the latest Foradora tattle, expressing a hope that she would retain a spot in the cast when the production transferred to the New York Theatre the coming season. As they chatted, Nesbit and White each emptied multiple glasses of champagne. After dinner, White took his guest on a tipsy tour of the property. As they proceeded from room to room, he wowed her with his collection of European painting not to mention his grand piano—Evelyn took a seat at the bench, ran her fingers along the keyboard, and played a few melodies from Floradora. Most marvelous of all, Nesbit recalled later, was the mesmerizing Mirror Room, a tiny chamber, ten feet by ten, the walls and ceiling covered with mirrors. The floor consisted of imitation glass. In her 1934 memoir, Prodigal Days, Evelyn writes, “The multiple mirrors created an extraordinary effect; you saw yourself repeated in endless vistas, an infinity of reflections.” She saw down on a moss-green sofa in the cramped room and enjoyed another glass of champagne.
Later, the two returned to the dining room, where White took his visitor by the hand and told her that he had one last room to show her. He led her to a hidden door in one corner and opened it. Following White, Evelyn stepped inside a small bedroom, a large four-post bed in the middle of it. Slightly uneasy, Evelyn took a seat on the mattress, and White poured another glass of champagne from a bottle on a nightstand. He handed it to her, and she raised it to her lips. It tasted bitter, and she would have preferred to set it aside. Yet White insisted that she finish it, standing over her as she took one reluctant sip after another. She drank until she felt a throbbing in her ears. A dizziness came over her, and without meaning to, she loosened her grip on the stem of the glass. She had just time enough to place it on the table before she lay back and fell unconscious.
Evelyn awoke to find herself, naked, lying next to Stanford, also naked. She had no idea how long she was out. Propping herself up on her elbows, she glanced downward and spotted splotches of blood on the bedsheets. Nesbit’s screams jolted White out of slumber. He reached out to her as if to caress her, but this only made it worse.
“Don’t cry,” he implored her. “Please don’t. It’s all over.” Fear mingled with shame as tears flowed down her cheeks. “Keep quiet,” he breathed. “It is all over. Now you belong to me. Nothing so terrible has happened.”
Evelyn screamed again and again, pushing him away as he tried to stroke her. “You’re so pretty, so young, so slim,” he murmured to himself, as if unaware of her mounting terror. “I love you because you are so young and slim.” She groped for her clothes, crushed beneath the weight of his eyes on her body. “Don’t tell anybody,” White instructed her. “What would be the use? It would only make trouble for you and for me.”
Evelyn dressed and returned to her rooms at the Audubon Hotel with all possible haste. It was dark—more than likely well past midnight—but sleep never came to her. Like many girls at this time, she received next to nothing in the way of sex education, but she knew enough to know that Stanford White had raped her. She gazed out the window and watched the sunlight creep onto Broadway. White stopped by the next afternoon. Nesbit let him in without a word.
“Why won’t you look at me, child?” he asked, more bashful than she had ever seen him.
“Because I can’t,” she spat back at him.
In an effort to mollify her, he claimed that these kinds of sexual encounters were common among his friends.
Evelyn looked at him. “Does everybody that you know do these things?” she asked.
“Yes, they all do,” came Stanford’s reply.
As if to test his contention, Evelyn listed the names of several acquaintances, starting with dancers in Floradora and expanding to other Broadway performers. Each one, White assured her with an air of mild amusement, had experienced what had happened to her last night. It was simply part of working in theater. Reasonable women kept their lips sealed about it, White stressed. Only those without any sense of propriety spoke about these interactions with others. Evelyn listened intently, and White sensed that his words were hitting home. Knowing that others—seemingly every young woman she could think of—engaged in sex against their will put Evelyn at ease. White left the apartment confident that he had mended their fractured relationship.
Further Fracture
As difficult as it might be to understand, Evelyn appears to have forgiven Stanford White. In Prodigal Days, she describes the ensuing relationship with the architect as her “first love,” often writing about it in a romantic tone. Following the rape, Evelyn kept seeing him as she had before, kept attending parties at his Madison Square Garden apartment, kept waiting until the last guests had said their goodbyes and then wrapping her arms around Stanny when at last they were finally alone. Sometimes, on cloudless nights, Nesbit and White bundled up in heavy coats, took the elevator to the uppermost floor, and stepped outside onto an open-air platform. From there, they ascended a narrow stairway that led to the peak of Madison Square Garden, the highest point in New York City. White and Nesbit stood side by side at the summit and beheld the metropolis, his arm around her shoulders, the moonlight permitting them to see as far north as Central Park. To the east, they could make out the Brooklyn Bridge, the magnificent suspension bridge that linked Manhattan to the neighboring borough. Amid the cityscape, they could also make out the Statue of Liberty, dedicated by President Grover Cleveland on October 28, 1886. Down at street level, Evelyn followed a stream of carts and carriages with her eye as they threaded their way between buildings. They frequently stayed like this until daybreak, patiently waiting to watch the city wake up.
The romance might have persisted were it not for a discovery that Evelyn made while sitting alone at her lover’s desk. He was working elsewhere, and her eye happened to fall on a little black book. White forbade her to meddle with his papers, but temptation overrode her sense of obedience. Leafing through the slim volume, she read her name along with those of other women, including several Floradora company members. Next to each name, White had scrawled the corresponding birthday. Nesbit recalled that when she turned seventeen, Stanford had surprised her with a diamond necklace from Tiffany’s. Her cheeks reddened, and she sank into her seat as it came home to her on her that she was but one of Stanny’s many women. From this moment forward, the love affair cooled. Nevertheless, Stanford White still provided substantial financial support for Evelyn and her family members, and she sought his advice in difficult situations.
Evelyn’s stage career also wound down. Floradora closed as scheduled in January 1902. Nesbit booked roles that showcased her singing and acting abilities, but none of these productions met with much success. After briefly attending a girls’ school in New Jersey in fall 1902, Evelyn suffered acute appendicitis, checking into a private sanatorium in New York, paid for by White.
Enter Harry Thaw
It was during her prolonged recovery that Evelyn became better acquainted with the man she would marry, trust-fund playboy Harry Kendall Thaw. Born in 1871, Thaw was heir to a multimillion-dollar fortune that his father had made in the freight business. Given his astronomical income of $80,000 a year, Thaw would not have to work a day in his life, and he damn well knew it. More inclined to make wagers at the racetrack and play cards at the clubs than crack a book in the library, he flunked out of University of Wooster in Ohio, withdrew from Western University of Pennsylvania after just one semester, and then finally got expelled from Harvard University. Clearly uninterested in earning a degree or pursuing a proper career, he moved to New York and lived his best dissipated bachelor life, throwing extravagant dinner parties, carousing around town at exclusive bars and restaurants, and showering his sundry girlfriends in diamonds. A familiar face on Broadway, he often dropped by the Casino Theatre dressing rooms, delivering roses to the Floradora sextet. In January 1902, he even crossed paths with one of their co-performers, a chorus girl named Evelyn Nesbit, while dining at Rector’s, tied with Delmonico’s for the hottest eatery in town. (As you may remember from the previous episode, George L. Leslie frequented the latter.) When Thaw wasn’t living large in New York, he was luxuriating in Europe. Beginning in 1894, he made frequent trips across the Atlantic, always sailing with a cadre of servants. At this time, it was customary for moneyed young Americans to tour major cities like London, Paris, and Rome, visit storied ruins, cathedrals, and museums, and hobnob with baronets and the occasional duchess.
Evelyn was surprised to receive so many visits from Thaw in the hospital—the two had met just once before, after all—but he evidently cared for her. Harry went out of his way to alleviate her suffering, cheering her with flowers and doing small favors for her. They became friends, with Evelyn pleased to have elicited such affection, and in February 1903, Thaw invited her to accompany her on one of his European journeys. The doctors had ordered rest and relaxation—she was in no state to resume her schooling or return to the stage—so a tour of Europe seemed like a nice idea. She said yes.
Evelyn and Harry made their first stop in Paris, where Thaw had rented a palatial apartment near the shops and restaurants along the Champs-Élysés. Every day, they went out and about, sightseeing and shopping. The Louvre quickly became one of Evelyn’s favorite destinations. Above all, she adored the sculpture galleries, especially the Winged Victory of Samothrace, an eighteen-foot Greek statue depicting the descent of Nike from the heavens. In contrast, Evelyn could never see the appeal of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa—and that was before the invention of smart-phone photography and the selfie stick. In the evenings, Harry and Evelyn often drove along the Seine, crossing the river at the Pont Neuf and alighting at the finest seafood restaurant in Paris by reputation.
Harry had shown Evelyn a marvelous—even romantic—time in the French capital, and in many respects the trip had brought her and Harry closer together. Yet she could believe neither her eyes nor her ears when he kneeled before her and asked her to marry him. Fumbling for words, she politely declined.
“Don’t you care for me?” Harry asked, hurt. “Don’t you care anything about me?” She assured him that she did, but he pressed the issue. “Tell me, why won’t you marry me?” He had heard tattle about a certain intimacy between her and Stanford White, but he had never imagined that she actually loved him—he was thirty years her senior. But then, how could he be so certain?
“Is it because of Stanford White?” he demanded.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she averted her gaze. “Yes,” she replied.
Evelyn told him everything. In a sense, it came as a relief to talk about the rape—she had not told a soul about it in the two years since it occurred. But whatever benefit she derived from the conversation was tempered by Thaw’s response. He broke down in tears, burying his face in his hands, heaving himself out of his chair, and pacing the room, his shoulders hunched. Almost shouting, he exclaimed, “The beast! The filthy beast! A sixteen-year-old girl! Damn him!”
They talked until dawn, and as daybreak neared, Thaw regained at least some of his composure. Her story had not in any way changed his feelings for her, he insisted. He still wanted to marry her. Overwrought, Evelyn could not bring herself to give him an answer, and he dropped the subject.
Evelyn sailed back to New York City several months later, on October 24, 1903. Word had gotten around that she was keeping company with Thaw overseas, and various acquaintances, including Stanford White, cautioned her to avoid him. He was known around town for a hair-trigger temper that drove him to violence and was also rumored to have a morphine addiction. Perhaps the most disturbing allegations came from Charles Dillingham, a friend of White’s and theater critic turned Broadway producer. Several sources had told Dillingham that Thaw routinely ran advertisements in theatrical newspapers, in which he expressed interest in interviewing actresses for a forthcoming production. When the respondents, usually young women, showed up to Thaw’s rented boardinghouse apartment, he began with seemingly innocuous questions. Were they new to city? Were they living with friends or relatives? If they revealed that they were living alone, Thaw attacked, binding them with restraints and lashing them with a dog-whip. He allegedly scalded one woman with boiling-hot water. Since Evelyn had known Thaw, she had seen no signs of anger management issues or drug addiction, nor did Harry strike as a sexual sadist who preyed on young women. Still, as more and more acquaintances painted Thaw as dangerous and unpredictable, it became difficult to ignore these accounts. When he came back to the Big Apple—he had stayed on in Paris to attend to business matters—Evelyn kept her distance.
Meanwhile, Thaw seethed about Evelyn’s rape at the hands of Stanford White. He had never cared for the architect—he believed that the power broker had barred his entry to several prestigious clubs in New York. But now his dislike hardened into outright hatred, which he voiced in public. He made it his mission to take down White. In February 1904, he even sought the aid of Anthony Comstock, secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. (We’ll hear more about this organization in an upcoming episode.) Thaw told Comstock that White and other wealthy New York roués were enticing young women to their homes and then raping them. Comstock considered Thaw’s reports credible and agreed to help bring the architect to justice.
Months went by without any word from Evelyn, and her prolonged silence puzzled Harry. It was not until they bumped into each other, quite by chance, at the Café des Beaux-Arts on Fourth Street that Harry Thaw learned why. Evelyn reluctantly relayed the hearsay about Thaw’s supposed morphine addiction and sexual predation. He laughed it all off—had Evelyn seen any evidence to back any of this up? They spent months together in Europe, and Thaw had never taken morphine or even talked about it. When Thaw teased out that White was whispering poison into Evelyn’s ears, he responded with recriminations. If anyone was a sexual predator, it was White.
Little by little, Harry regained Evelyn’s trust. In March 1904, not long after this rapprochement, Thaw invited Evelyn to travel Europe again, and she accepted. Thaw’s infatuation with her had not diminished, she realized. After their return to the United States, Harry made renewed marriage proposals as if he were waging a war of attrition, offering his hand again and again and chipping away at Evelyn’s resolve until finally it became impossible to demur. When she finally consented, they married in a brief, nothing-to-see-here ceremony on April 4, 1905. Disenchantment was quick to set in. Born of a humble household, Nesbit never fit in among the ultra-wealthy Thaws—in fact, Harry’s mother, Mary, had originally threatened to withhold his inheritance if he wed the lowborn Evelyn, so ferociously had she opposed the union. (Mary relented when she that Harry would tie the knot with or without his mother’s blessing.) Harry and Evelyn left New York for Pittsburgh, where Evelyn lived in extreme isolation, whiling away her days as she studied French and practiced piano. Within months of the honeymoon, Evelyn was already fantasizing about divorce.
Murder at Madison Square Garden
Very much aware of his marriage’s rapid disintegration, Thaw proposed that he and Evelyn take a trip to Europe at the end of June 1905. They had always had such fun overseas. Before setting sail, they could pass a few days in New York—catch up with friends and visit their old haunts. Thaw also recommended that they attend the opening night of a new musical comedy, Mamzelle Champagne, which would make its debut on the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden on June 25. This event was not to be missed—it would be a highlight on the social calendar of New York’s elite. Ready for a change of pace, Evelyn assented.
On the afternoon of June 25, Mr. and Mrs. Thaw met up with two friends, Thomas McCaleb and Huxtum Bale, sitting down to dinner at Café Martin. From there, they would head to Madison Square Garden. Somewhere on his person, Harry Thaw was carrying a concealed blue steel .22 caliber pistol.
Neither he nor Evelyn knew that Stanford White would be at the play. The last few years had not treated him kindly. Now fifty-two and white-haired, the architect had put on weight, and it took no more than a flight of stairs to wind him. His finances were less robust than they had once been, too. Ironically enough, his crowning achievement, Madison Square Garden, lay at the heart of his money troubles. He had poured much of his own money into the project and served as a director and primary shareholder in the company that owned the property. The entertainment venue had not made the money that investors projected—the main arena and indoor theater were often packed, but the restaurant, concert hall, and rooftop amphitheater underperformed. It did not help that most theaters now clustered uptown, around Times Square, and property taxes were skyrocketing in Madison Square Garden. Despite his financial woes, however, White would try to enjoy himself tonight.
The show had already started by the time Evelyn, Harry, and their friends exited the elevator onto the roof and seated themselves around a table. Mamzelle Champagne was an obvious dud and had already lost the crowd—audience members shifted in their seats, sipped their beverages absentmindedly, and talked among themselves. Thaw soon shared their sentiments and regretted the outing. He excused himself and walked over to the south side of the roof, which overlooked Twenty-sixth Street. He took a seat in an empty chair, next to a wealthy friend of his, J. Clinch Smith. The conversation that followed would seem perfectly normal when it was later summarized in court. Thaw and Smith found Mamzelle Champagne wearisome, and Smith could not fathom why management had chosen it to kick off the summer season. The discussion veered from the arts to the stock market, with Thaw advising Smith to invest in copper, and from there to their preferences for trans-Atlantic travel. At around this time, Thaw scanned the theater and noticed Evelyn looking his direction—she was waving him back over to the table. Thaw said goodbye to Smith and took a side aisle back toward his table.
Evelyn had also had her fill of Mamzelle Champagne. Finally, she could bear the dreariness no longer, nor could her companions. At her urging, the four of them rose before and headed to the exit before the play had ended, Evelyn and Thomas McCableb leading the way. A few steps away from the elevator, Evelyn cast a glance over her shoulder with the intention of exchanging a few words with Harry. Much to her surprise, he was nowhere in sight. Searching the audience for him, she spied a man whose presence had evaded her until this moment: Stanford White, seated at his table in front of the stage. He appeared as underwhelmed by Mamzelle Champagne as everyone else. He was slouching to one side with his left arm resting on a neighboring chair.
All of a sudden, Harry Thaw entered her field of vision. He planted himself directly in front of White and raised one arm. It was not so much with horror as a lack of comprehension that Nesbit saw what Thaw was holding in his outstretched hand: his pistol. A moment passed before Stanford White took notice of Harry Thaw. Seeing his weapon, the architect rose but cannot have made it more than a few inches off his seat. The first bullet struck him in the shoulder, rupturing a bone and slamming him backward. His wineglass toppled from the table, shattering as it fell. Thaw fired again, hitting his target in the face this time, below the left eye. A third and final shot rang out, smashing White’s teeth as it entered his head.
Thaw fired all three shots in rapid succession, killing White instantly. His body slumped out of his chair and onto the floor, a rivulet of blood trickling from beneath him. Thaw stood motionless, his attention trained on his victim. Mamzelle Champagne continued, uninterrupted, many of the spectators convinced that the noise was part of the production. The play was nonsensical, and two characters had just dueled each other. Among the first to appreciate the danger was producer Lionel Lawrence. Watching from the wings, he had witnessed the murder and feared that it might unleash pandemonium. A handful of chorus girls had also seen the bloodshed and fell silent right in the middle of a song, their mouths agape. Spotting them from backstage, Lawrence beseeched them, “Sing, girls, sing! For God’s sake, sing! Don’t stop!” By this time, the orchestra had halted as well, absorbed by the sight of White’s lifeless body. Desperate to proceed as planned, Lawrence called out, “Keep the music going!”
As confusion spread, Thaw lifted the firearm over his head, gripping it by the barrel to indicate, it seemed, that he meant no further harm. Slowly, he strode along the corner aisle to the rear of the auditorium, audience members rising and standing on their tiptoes to see the cause of the commotion. Lawrence finally emerged from the wings, extending his arms. “A most unfortunate accident has happened,” he declared. “The management regrets to ask that the audience leave at once, in an orderly manner. There is no danger—only an accident that will prevent a continuance of the performance.”
No matter what Lawrence would have his patrons believe, this was no accident, and there was no question as to who had murdered White. As playgoers filed out, the fireman on duty, Paul Brudi, rushed at Thaw from behind, disarming him. Moments later, an audience member named Warner Paxton also approached and took hold of the killer. Together, he and Brudi guided Thaw toward the exit, meeting with no resistance from their captive. He was more interested in explaining his actions: “I did it,” he told Brudi, “because he ruined my wife.” Neither Brudi nor Paxton acknowledged this remark, both keeping quiet and clutching his wrists as they escorted him to the elevator.
Evelyn was waiting for him by the way out, her face contorted into a look of unalloyed anguish. When he came within reach of her, she tried to embrace him. “My God, Harry!” she cried. “What have you done? What have you done? My God, Harry, you’ve killed him.” Standing next to Evelyn, Thomas McCaleb cried, “God, Harry, you must have been crazy.” Thaw made no acknowledgement of their distress whatsoever as the shadow of a smile crept across his face. Addressing his spouse, he justified his himself with cool matter-of-factness: “He ruined your life, dear. That’s why I did it.” We’ll hear about the trial that followed after a quick break.
The Court of Public Opinion
Shortly after the shooting at Madison Square Garden, a grand jury indicted Thaw on charges of murder in the first degree. Before he had set foot in a court of law, however, the court of public opinion had considered his case and issued a verdict. Believe it or not, it was in his favor. When word spread that Thaw had shot White for raping his wife, the public applauded the act as a justified honor killing. Every day, as Thaw sat in jail, he opened letters from across the country penned by admirers who praised his courage. New Yorkers overwhelmingly felt the same. Many predicted that the prisoner would go free.
If the public rallied around Harry Thaw, it bid good riddance to his victim. News of Evelyn’s rape encouraged multiple female performers to contact Thaw’s legal team with stories of how White had assaulted them, too. These accounts added credibility to Evelyn’s narrative. Observers did not only vilify White in the harshest terms, but they also linked his misconduct to a larger upwelling of sexual depravity in New York. Rich and famous men like the architect, particularly those with ties to the arts, were abusing women left and right. Anthony Comstock, secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, announced that his organization had unearthed evidence of unspeakable turpitude. Led by photographer James Lawrence Breese, a gang of moneyed older men known as the Carbonites were holding orgies with actresses and chorus girls. These sweaty bacchanals ran their course at Breese’s studio on Sixteenth Street. In response to New Yorks’ alleged sex-offender free-for-all, a minister for the church of Epiphany raged, “These crimes, worse than murder, must be avenged. That there are men of large wealth in this city who have made it a business to denigrate womanhood—backing plays and players and using art studios to procure young girls . . . is a new revelation for the public, a new story that wealth has turned its rotting force to the corruption of innocent girlhood, whose misfortune is their poverty.”
Given the public outcry against White, it’s no surprise that hardly anyone came to his defense. Sculptor Augustus Lukeman numbered among the few exceptions, calling attention to the reticence of the architectural profession: “No voice appears to be raised calling attention to the stupendous loss that has befallen the country in the death of Stanford White . . . Mr. White was not only an artist, a great architect, if not the greatest of his age, but he had a generous spirit which stimulated . . . the taste of the public to a higher standard of beauty.”
Trials of the Century
Despite widespread support for their client, Thaw’s attorneys would not take an acquittal for granted. They contended that Thaw could avoid the death penalty if and only if he pleaded insanity. Thaw balked at the suggestion: “No jury will convict me of any crime when they hear the truth. I killed White because he ruined my wife. I am not crazy.” Nevertheless, over his objections, his legal team moved forward with their original strategy. They sought to prove that Evelyn Nesbit told Thaw in Paris that she had been raped by Stanford White, which greatly agitated him. When Thaw spotted White at Madison Square Garden, he suffered a bout of temporary insanity and committed the murder to avenge his wife’s honor.
The defense’s case depended on one witness more than any other: Evelyn Nesbit. It was not an easy choice for her to testify. It would mean divulging the most intimate of details about her relationship with Stanford White to the public. This she would do in support of a man who had committed murder in front of hundreds of witnesses. But then, Harry Thaw was her husband, and even if Evelyn had never been madly in love with him, social mores dictated that she help her spouse in whatever way possible. She agreed to testify under oath that White had slept with her without her consent.
Evelyn’s unflinching account of her rape fed the media frenzy surrounding Thaw’s trial, with newspapers across the nation reprinting her statements. No detail was deemed unfit for publication, unleashing a moral panic among religious organizations. The National League of Catholic Women happened to be holding its annual convention in Chicago at the time and paused the scheduled programming to demand that Windy City journalists stop publishing Nesbit’s allegations verbatim. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union, a group with more than 200,000 members, likewise decried the publication of Evelyn’s testimony and urged parents to keep newspapers away from their children. Chattanooga mayor William Frierson gave a speech at the local First Baptist Church, fulminating that newsmen were corrupting the nation’s youth. To be clear, most of these critics were not faulting Evelyn for testifying; they were taking journalists to task for publishing her words.
Officials at the highest echelons of the U.S. government, including President Theodore Roosevelt, himself a native Manhattanite, considered the possibility of suing New York papers for the distribution of obscene material, citing a federal law that prohibited the transportation of lewd content over state lines. Others, however, predicted the futility of any such legal action. No jury, it was thought, would issue a verdict against publications as illustrious as the New York Tribune and the New York Times, especially if the newspapers’ alleged offense was the publication of official courtroom transcripts. Besides, by the time politicians, pundits, and religious leaders had worked themselves up into a moral furor, it was senseless to pursue censorship. The sordid details were already in print and readily available.
And run its course it did. On Monday, April 8, Thaw’s attorney, Delphin Delmas, made his closing remarks. To his mind, his client suffered from a breed of madness that any American male could relate to. “It is a species of insanity which been recognized in every court in every State of this Union from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Texas. It is that species of insanity which . . . I ask you to label ‘Dementia Americana.’ It is that species of insanity which makes every American believe that his home is sacred . . . It is that species of insanity that makes him believe that the honor of his wife is sacred.”
With closing statements out of the way, it was up to the jury to decide Thaw’s fate. They generally accepted Nesbit’s account of the sexual assault. Where they differed was the question of Thaw’s mental condition at the time of the shooting. Certain aspects of his behavior certainly appeared rational. Moments before the murder, after all, Thaw had carried on a normal conversation with his friend, Smith. After firing those three fatal shots, he had raised his pistol above his head to indicate that he meant no harm. He then offered repeated explanations for killing White in lucid terms. After much wrangling, the jurors informed the court that they had not reached—and would not reach—a unanimous verdict. To the dismay of virtually everyone involved, a second trial was scheduled.
The retrial proved as much a spectator sport as the first. Again, Nesbit took the stand to detail the events of that night at Stanford’s townhouse. Again, the defense portrayed the architect’s murder as an act of insanity. This time, however, Thaw’s legal team went even further with the insanity angle, calling witnesses who testified to recurring eruptions of erratic behavior—Thaw’s mother, Mary, characterized him as a sullen boy who burst into tears for no discernable reason, howled like a wolf without warning, and caused disruptions at one educational institution after another. After a new jury deliberated, the foreman rose to deliver the verdict: not guilty on the grounds of insanity.
Harry Thaw reportedly smirked at the outcome, but his jaw would hang in disbelief when the judge gave his ruling. Banging his gavel, he declared Thaw a danger to society if kept at liberty and promptly sentenced him to confinement in Mattawan, a state-run hospital for the criminally insane. Known and feared by many New Yorkers, Mattawan housed violent offenders, including notorious murderers. The state legislature never adequately funded the institution, and its overworked and underpaid keepers were more than prepared to use force on the inmates. A deputy sheriff escorted Thaw out of the courtroom, and within a few hours, he was in a car destined for Grand Central, accompanied by a team of police officers in addition to his wife. Neither Thaw not Nesbit uttered a word as they passed Madison Square Garden on the way to the train station. Outside Grand Central, Nesbit threw her arms around Thaw in a teary-eyed farewell, whispering promises to visit when she could. With that, husband and wife parted, and Harry boarded a train for Mattawan asylum. That’s the last we’ll hear of Thaw for now, but I’m saving the rest of his remarkable story for next week’s episode.
Aftermath
Over the next few years, Evelyn’s life improved dramatically. She divorced Harry Thaw and went on to achieve stardom in show business. Making her debut in 1913, she danced and sang in vaudeville, alongside her second husband, Jack Clifford. The duo played to packed houses in New York and sold out shows when they went on tour. Evelyn’s marriage to the philandering Clifford was short-lived, unfortunately, as was her heyday in vaudeville, an art form in decline as silent cinema rose in popularity. But Evelyn was adaptable and easily transitioned to the silver screen, appearing in at least ten films from 1914-22. In some cases, she portrayed characters whose experiences paralleled her own and even starred alongside her young son by Harry, Russell Thaw. A poster for the 1917 drama, Redemption, touts the mother-and-son casting as a major selling point. Sadly, the original negatives for most if not all of Evelyn Nesbit’s films have gone missing. Early films were thought to be useless once their theatrical runs had finished and were often discarded, and that fate may have befallen Nesbit’s pictures. In any case, at the height of her celebrity, Evelyn earned as much as $3,000 a week.
Beginning around 1919, however, Nesbit spiraled downward, driven by drugs. It was in vogue for Broadway performers and others in show business to partake of hard drugs like morphine and cocaine, which ruined countless careers. Evelyn first tried morphine at the behest of an acquaintance, a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Her first high led to full-blown addiction, with Nesbit downing a gram of morphine almost every day. Not long after her introduction to that substance, she took cocaine in Hollywood, while shooting a film entitled My Little Sister. In an interview with the Washington Times, she recalled the prevalence of cocaine out west: “I remember one party at Hollywood where cocaine was served in a big sugar bowl . . . ‘Pass the sugar, somebody,’ would be the remark every few minutes, and all laughed at the joke.” Nesbit was sober by the time of this interview, but her drug habits had still taken a devastating toll. “It cost me $100,000 to be a drug fiend, just in cash alone. And it cost me my friends, my self-respect, everything.” Her mother, Florence, even threatened to take custody of Russell, finally motivating the addict to check into a sanatorium. Though Nesbit overcame her drug problem, she never fully revived her career, scraping by as a cabaret singer. Sponsored by her son, Russell, a successful aviator, Evelyn was finally able to live out her days in a studio apartment in New York. She died in 1967.
The sad tale of Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, and Harry Thaw has surfaced and resurfaced since the shooting at Madison Square Garden. Over the years, authors and screenwriters have taken up the red velvet swing as a metaphor that encapsulates the case. Simon Baatz titled his thorough 2018 book The Girl on the Velvet Swing, a title not so different from that of the 1955 film, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing. (As an aside, Evelyn Nesbit served as a consultant for the picture.) It’s worth dwelling on why the swing has assumed such significance. It's the kind of extravagant plaything that only a man of serious means could install in him home. The sumptuous velvet alone would cost a pretty penny, and the swing would be useless without high ceilings and a wide-open space like the penthouse studio at Stanford White’s brownstone.. It could only exist in a big house, the kind of big house that became more common as skyscrpaers were climbing toward the heavens. The swing also speaks to the troubling sexual dynamics that led to the murder. On the one hand, it underscores Evelyn’s childlike innocence—children mostly swing in swings. On the other hand, it hints at the desire she inspired in White. The scarlet hue is evocative of lust, and the velveteen cushioning cries out to be touched. The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing wrings all that it can from these connotations. In the film, the sex is implied to have been consensual though inappropriate nevertheless, married and much older as Stanford White is. He first kisses Nesbit when she’s sitting on the swing. Later, as the architect pushes her higher and higher, horns and strings swell in the heart-thumping soundtrack while point-of-view shots from Evelyn’s perspective convey a feeling of airborne elation. The rapturous game they play on the swing stands in for lovemaking that happens offscreen. The film clearly sanitizes what happened to Nesbitt, probably in an effort to make the narrative more palatable. There’s more than a whiff of decadence about the velvet swing, in every sense of the word. No wonder it looms large in this story of New York. Few cities were as decadent at the turn of the twentieth century.
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