Triumvirate by Mosette Broderick

Author:Mosette Broderick [Broderick, Mosette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-59427-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-10-25T16:00:00+00:00

The club White’s in London. The humorous source of Stanford White’s design for the Century Association. (Illustration Credit 24.4)

The Century Association on Forty-third Street, 1889–91. Stanford White’s father was blackballed at this club. (Illustration Credit 24.5)

The two clubs, the Century and White’s, are mid-block buildings that need to hold their own between neighboring buildings. Both achieve a decorative arrangement of features with a symmetrical balance of the buildings around a large arched window on the second stage of each. Both have a rusticated base, pilaster strips that double on either side of the center of the building, five bays each, round ornament in four of the upper-story bays, and a crowning balustrade. Lost at the Century was White’s famous 1811 bow window. Instead, the Century has a tall central arched entrance. Above the entry at the Century was an open, Italianate loggia formed by a great Palladian window. The resemblance is amazingly close, but the details vary, as do the materials.

At the Century, White had the great Worcester, Massachusetts, builders Norcross Brothers do a granite base. As the building had to be inexpensive, the upper stories were constructed of White’s golden-hued Roman bricks from Perth Amboy Terra Cotta Company. Structural steel strengthened the floors and was supplied by Post & McCord, who became regular steel suppliers to McKim, Mead & White. The building process must have been a nightmare—there is a small note in the firm’s papers listing a bill of $61.25 to George Bayer, who may have been a contractor, but the note indicates “aspirin,” surely a bit of internal humor.

The Century club façade was given over to Joe Wells, who adapted White’s source to an Italian Renaissance set of forms. Wells worked ceaselessly on the Century building, dying just as he finished the loggia. William Mitchell Kendall completed the top of the building, sniffing many years later that Wells was “not a Centurion” like himself, an indication of Kendall’s hostility to Wells, as one did not have to be a member to design a club: “White designed it. Joseph Wells—who was not a Centurion—died after finishing it to above the loggia. I then finished it.” The fine detail at the club is a testimonial to Wells’s design skill.

The Century interior, with its gallery space and dining room, had marble work by James Sinclair, who had done the marble at the Players. The Herter Brothers firm, now run by William Baumgarten after the departure of the Herters, did some decorative work, and the architect’s favored painters, Sarre & LeLacheur, painted the walls in their usual excellent way. McKim, White, and Stratton all thought Sarre, a French-born painter, was the best in the country and would mourn his passing five years later.

The Century club was completed by increasing the membership, raising the dues, and taking out a second mortgage to pay for the building. The city as a whole now had one of the finest and most cheerful clubhouses yet built, one that is still treasured today.

In 1893, the Century

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