Today, we take you back to a murder that a Bwog Staffer learned about many years ago and cannot stop thinking about to this day.

Editor’s note: mentions of grooming and gun-related death

On June 26, 1906, Columbia’s campus was fairly calm. Most of the student body had left for the summer and Summer Session students were enjoying their time (on a $25 tuition) , studying in Low, taking botany classes in Schermerhorn, and relaxing in Hartley.

Ninety blocks down, the architect of those buildings, Stanford White, was watching a show in the rooftop garden of the second out of four iterations of Madison Square Garden when three shots rang out, killing him instantly.

White was one of three heads of the New York architecture firm McKim, Mead, and White, which designed numerous city icons beginning in 1879, including the Washington Square Arch, the Brooklyn Museum, the Columbia campus… and the second Madison Square Garden, according to Architectural Digest.

Outside of his architectural achievements, though, White hid many dark secrets, including the fact that he preyed on young girls. These accusations only came out a week after his death in a Los Angeles Herald article, but he already had one known victim. Her name was Evelyn Nesbit, and she was famous on her own as a chorus girl on Broadway. According to a 1995 PBS documentary about White, the architect paid for her music lessons and helped her move to a large apartment in 1901 at the age of 16. Nesbit was infatuated with White until another adult man also started a relationship with her. Harry Kendall Thaw was obsessed with both Nesbit and White and allegedly went after women and girls with whom White had been previously involved. He also hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on White’s personal life. Thaw and Nesbit got married in 1903, and soon after, Thaw learned about White’s abuse of his wife and other girls. Adding to his hatred of White, Nesbit would often try to make Thaw jealous by talking about their relationship.

Fueled by his rage, when Thaw and Nesbit attended the same Madison Square Garden show as White in 1906, Thaw was determined to kill Stanford White. 

The ensuing trial was deemed “The Trial of the Century,” with the public barred from the courtroom. Thaw’s lawyers tried to prove him not guilty by reason of temporary insanity, spurred by his anger at seeing White on that night. Nesbit testified about her relationship with White, forever tainting his image in the public eye and leading the jury to a deadlock. A second trial ensued, where Thaw’s attorneys’ new defense was that Thaw had always been insane—his mother even testified that their whole family had a history of “insane behavior.” The defense worked, and Thaw was sent to a psychiatric institute for seven years. 

Immediately after getting out of jail, Thaw divorced Nesbit. As recounted in a Los Angeles Times interview with her grandson, Nesbit  continued acting and began teaching art once her Hollywood career declined, briefly returning as a consultant on a fictionalized version of her story in The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955). 

This Bwog staffer is very intrigued.

Stanford White via Library of Congress