Lawrence Grant White

Lawrence Grant White (September 26, 1887 – September 8, 1956) was an American architect, a partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, co-founded by his father Stanford White, and for five years the president of the National Academy of Design. Early life Lawrence White, who was known as Larry, was born in New York City in 1887, the only surviving child of renowned architect Stanford White (1853–1906) and Elizabeth "Bessie" Springs (née Smith) White (1862–1950). His only sibling, an elder brother who died in infancy in 1885, was named after his paternal grandfather Richard Grant White, a Shakespearean scholar, husband of Alexina Black (née Mease) White. Larry White's maternal grandparents were John Lawrence Smith (1816–1889) and Sarah Nicoll (née Clinch) Smith (1823–1890), members of the family after which Smithtown is named. An uncle, James Clinch Smith, died aboard the RMS Titanic in 1912. White grew up at Box Hill, a farmhouse converted to an Italianate mansion by his architect father, situated on his parents' 60-acre Long Island estate. In 1906, when he was almost 20 years old, his father was shot and killed by Harry K. Thaw over the father's affair with Thaw's wife, Evelyn Nesbit. Career