The houses of McKim, Mead & White

Abstract

With nearly one thousand commissions executed between 1879 and 1912, McKim, Mead & White was the architectural firm of choice of the most prestigious projects of the era, including the redesign of the White House and the Mall in Washington, D.C., and the campuses of Harvard and Columbia Universities. Among its residential clients were many of the most powerful figures of the Gilded Age-Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Pulitzers-for whom the firm built splendid summer cottages in Newport and throughout Long Island and the Hudson valley and sumptuous town houses in Boston, Washington, Baltimore and New York. More than thirty houses are presented here, their exteriors and interiors elegantly recorded in lush new color photographs. The book also provides the first look at the recent restoration of the Isaac Bell house in Newport and newly reinstalled Venetian room at the Payne Whitney house, now the French Cultural Services, in New York City.