Thaw believed White had hired people to kill him and started carrying a gun, although White was likely completely unaware of Thaw’s vendetta against him. Thaw accused White of ruining Nesbit, and he may have even focused his attention on her because of her previous relationship with White. Thaw was obsessed with White’s previous relationship with Nesbit and how White took her virginity via the rape. Even before he met Nesbit, Thaw resented White, who he thought had blocked Thaw’s acceptance in social circles such as membership in the Knickerbocker Club, and for being a womanizer who preyed on young women. S haw was mentally unstable and was known for his eccentricity. Several years later, Nesbit married Harry Kendall Thaw, son of a Pittsburgh coal and railroad baron and heir to a $40 million fortune. The motive for this murder was an event that took place about five years earlier, when the 47- year old White raped 16-year old actress, Evelyn Nesbit, after plying her with liquor through intermediaries. The trial for his scandalous murder, which would come to be known as “the trial of the century,” took place at the Jefferson Market Courthouse, now the Jefferson Market Library. While White was a highly acclaimed and respected architect and partner in the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, his life, according to The Nation, illustrated “the frittering away of genius,” ending in his murder on June 25, 1906. Mark’s Historic District, so we consider him a bit of a local boy.īut he has one additional, darker connection to the neighborhood.

He was also raised at 118 East 10th Street in the East Village’s ‘Renwick Triangle’ in the St. Architect Stanford White (Novem– June 25, 1906) designed many of New York City’s most beautiful Gilded Age buildings, including the Washington Square Arch and Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village and NoHo’s Cable Building, as well as other landmarks like the Players Club, the Metropolitan Club, Gould Memorial Library, the Bowery Savings Bank Building, and the original Penn Station.

American Eve by Paula Uruburu