A founding partner in the legendary architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, Stanford White designed numerous urban masterpieces, including Judson Memorial Church, Washington Square Arch, Madison Square Garden, the Players, Metropolitan, and Colony Clubs, and now-vanished palazzi for a remarkable list of clients that included the Whitneys, the Vanderbilts, the Pulitzers, and the Stuyvesant Fishes.

In the years since White's death, he has been both reviled as "depraved" and praised as "the greatest designer that this country has ever produced." This amusing, scholarly, and elegant account of White's love affair with, and legacy to, New York City provides compelling evidence in support of the latter view.