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Suzannah Lessard Dies at 81; Stanford White Descendant Who Wrote a Haunting Family Memoir
Suzannah Lessard Dies at 81; Stanford White Descendant Who Wrote a Haunting Family Memoir
Growing up in a family of secrets, on a compound designed by her great-grandfather, made her a writer who investigated the built world with a wary eye.
Suzannah Lessard in 1996, on the balcony of the Players club in Manhattan, designed by her great-grandfather Stanford White. Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
By Penelope Green
Published Feb. 7, 2026
Updated Feb. 9, 2026
Suzannah Lessard, an author and writer for The New Yorker who examined the ways in which people are marked by place — and the ways in which they, in turn, mark the landscape — and whose best-selling memoir, “The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family,” explored the dark history of Mr. White, the Gilded Age architect who was her great-grandfather, died on Jan. 29 in Manhattan. She was 81. ... Ms. Lessard’s death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of endometrial cancer, Noel Brennan, her wife, said.
Ms. Lessard grew up in an extraordinary landscape, on a rambling compound that her family called “the Place” — much of it created by Mr. White — in St. James, a hamlet on the North Shore of Long Island, where her ancestors had settled in the 17th century. ... The extended White clan was artistic and aristocratic, the family tree dappled with Astors and Smiths. Ms. Lessard, her five sisters and their parents lived in a 19th-century farmhouse known as the Red Cottage. It had sloping floors, patched plaster walls and a fraught atmosphere, largely created by her father, who required quiet for his work as a composer, as well as other, more brutal concessions from his daughters.
The centerpiece of the compound was Box Hill, a gabled confection designed by Mr. White, who was famous for the Beaux-Arts palaces that he and his firm, McKim, Mead & White, created for America’s newly minted merchant-royals in the late 19th century — and for the scandal of his death. ... In 1906, while attending a musical performance on the roof of Madison Square Garden, one of the many Manhattan monuments of his design, he was fatally shot by Harry K. Thaw, a mentally unstable millionaire from Pittsburgh whose 21-year-old wife, the showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, had been sexually assaulted by Mr. White when she was 16. ... Mr. Thaw’s trial ended in his acquittal on the grounds of insanity, but it was mostly a referendum on Mr. White’s rapacious appetites, particularly for young girls, breathlessly covered by the press as the “trial of the century.” The scandal and Mr. White himself were rarely mentioned at the Place, although his fame and artistry permeated that seductive geography.
{snip}
Mr. White in an undated photograph. In 1906, he was shot and killed by Harry K. Thaw, the husband of Evelyn Nesbit, a showgirl raped by Mr. White when she was 16. Bettmann/Getty Images
{snip}
“Underneath the entrancing Stanford White surface is predation,” she wrote. “Behind the aesthetic sophistication of a Stanford White interior is the blindly voracious, irresponsible force, both personal and that of a whole class, a whole nation out of control.” ... Ms. Lessard had never previously spoken about how her father had visited her in her bedroom when she was a child. Yet on New Year’s Day in 1989, one of her sisters called a meeting of the siblings and, one by one, each sister confided that she, too, had experienced sexual encounters with their father. ... Over the years, each had tried to convince herself that the encounters weren’t abuse — that their childhoods had been safe and that their father’s behavior was somehow normal. Their memories, finally voiced, gave Ms. Lessard “a sense of something like the sound barrier breaking,” she wrote, “a psychic reverberation.” ... She added: “With it, the world cracked open, and inside was the world.” ... Until then, she told The New York Times in 1996, when the book was published, the writing had felt like a form of torture or madness.
{snip}
Ms. Lessard in 2018. “She took a long time to write,” a colleague said. “She would examine an idea like a jewel. Christine Burrill
{snip}
Penelope Green is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 9, 2026, Section B, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Suzannah Lessard, 81, Who Wrote A Haunting Family Memoir, Dies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Growing up in a family of secrets, on a compound designed by her great-grandfather, made her a writer who investigated the built world with a wary eye.
Suzannah Lessard in 1996, on the balcony of the Players club in Manhattan, designed by her great-grandfather Stanford White. Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
By Penelope Green
Published Feb. 7, 2026
Updated Feb. 9, 2026
Suzannah Lessard, an author and writer for The New Yorker who examined the ways in which people are marked by place — and the ways in which they, in turn, mark the landscape — and whose best-selling memoir, “The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Stanford White Family,” explored the dark history of Mr. White, the Gilded Age architect who was her great-grandfather, died on Jan. 29 in Manhattan. She was 81. ... Ms. Lessard’s death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of endometrial cancer, Noel Brennan, her wife, said.
Ms. Lessard grew up in an extraordinary landscape, on a rambling compound that her family called “the Place” — much of it created by Mr. White — in St. James, a hamlet on the North Shore of Long Island, where her ancestors had settled in the 17th century. ... The extended White clan was artistic and aristocratic, the family tree dappled with Astors and Smiths. Ms. Lessard, her five sisters and their parents lived in a 19th-century farmhouse known as the Red Cottage. It had sloping floors, patched plaster walls and a fraught atmosphere, largely created by her father, who required quiet for his work as a composer, as well as other, more brutal concessions from his daughters.
The centerpiece of the compound was Box Hill, a gabled confection designed by Mr. White, who was famous for the Beaux-Arts palaces that he and his firm, McKim, Mead & White, created for America’s newly minted merchant-royals in the late 19th century — and for the scandal of his death. ... In 1906, while attending a musical performance on the roof of Madison Square Garden, one of the many Manhattan monuments of his design, he was fatally shot by Harry K. Thaw, a mentally unstable millionaire from Pittsburgh whose 21-year-old wife, the showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, had been sexually assaulted by Mr. White when she was 16. ... Mr. Thaw’s trial ended in his acquittal on the grounds of insanity, but it was mostly a referendum on Mr. White’s rapacious appetites, particularly for young girls, breathlessly covered by the press as the “trial of the century.” The scandal and Mr. White himself were rarely mentioned at the Place, although his fame and artistry permeated that seductive geography.
{snip}
Mr. White in an undated photograph. In 1906, he was shot and killed by Harry K. Thaw, the husband of Evelyn Nesbit, a showgirl raped by Mr. White when she was 16. Bettmann/Getty Images
{snip}
“Underneath the entrancing Stanford White surface is predation,” she wrote. “Behind the aesthetic sophistication of a Stanford White interior is the blindly voracious, irresponsible force, both personal and that of a whole class, a whole nation out of control.” ... Ms. Lessard had never previously spoken about how her father had visited her in her bedroom when she was a child. Yet on New Year’s Day in 1989, one of her sisters called a meeting of the siblings and, one by one, each sister confided that she, too, had experienced sexual encounters with their father. ... Over the years, each had tried to convince herself that the encounters weren’t abuse — that their childhoods had been safe and that their father’s behavior was somehow normal. Their memories, finally voiced, gave Ms. Lessard “a sense of something like the sound barrier breaking,” she wrote, “a psychic reverberation.” ... She added: “With it, the world cracked open, and inside was the world.” ... Until then, she told The New York Times in 1996, when the book was published, the writing had felt like a form of torture or madness.
{snip}
Ms. Lessard in 2018. “She took a long time to write,” a colleague said. “She would examine an idea like a jewel. Christine Burrill
{snip}
Penelope Green is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 9, 2026, Section B, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Suzannah Lessard, 81, Who Wrote A Haunting Family Memoir, Dies. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
Tue Jun 25, 2024: On this day, June 25, 1906, the Murder of the Century occurred on the roof of Madison Square Garden.
Thu Nov 9, 2023: On this day, November 9, 1853, architect Stanford White was born.
Wed Nov 9, 2022: On this day, November 9, 1853, architect Stanford White was born.
Tue Jun 25, 2019: 113 Years Ago Today; Murder of the Century on the roof of Madison Square Garden
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