Stanford White - Tapa dura

Richard Harding Davis used to complain because-when speaking of Stanford White-he found it necessary to ex- plain what White was not before telling what he was: the greatest designer, and probably the greatest architect, this country has ever produced. Had White died in bed, with his family and his friends about him, there would have been no word of dispraise. He stood at the head of his profession; he was not yet fifty-three; great things were expected of him. But he allowed himself to be murdered, on a roof garden, by a Pittsburgh ne'er-do-well. Now "murder," as every newsboy knows, is the greatest word that can be put into a headline. Even in small type it sells. And shouted from every street corner ...The newspapers made the most of White's murder. Thaw, the murderer, stayed on the front pages from June 25 to July 13, 1906, returning on January 23, 1907, the first day of his first trial. He was pictured as in some sort a hero, the defender of his home. White was the villain of the piece. Davis, speaking as one who had been for fifteen years in the newspaper business, said: ttl have never known an attack to be made upon anyone as undeserved, as unfair, as false, as the attack upon White." In their search for motives, in their eagerness for circu- lation, in their shameless greed, the newspapers despatched detectives and reporters to interview valets and chorus girls, bell boys and waiters.