Nominee: Reuben Award for Best Graphic Novel YALSA, Great Graphic Novels for Teens Bringing to life turn-of-the-century New York and the scintillating career of one of its most famous architects, as well as the vices that cost him his life, this true-crime graphic novel tells the story of one of the most scandalous murders of the times. Stanford White was one of New York's most famous architects, having designed many mansions and the first Madison Square Garden; his influence on New York's look at the turn of the century was pervasive. As he became popular and in demand, he also became quite self-indulgent: he had a taste for budding young showgirls on Broadway, even setting up a private apartment to entertain them in, including a room with a red velvet swing. When he met Evelyn Nesbit—an exquisite young nymph, cover girl, showgirl, inspiration for Charles Dana Gibson's drawing The Eternal Question and later for the movie The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing—he knew he was on to something special. However, Evelyn eventually married a young Pittsburgh decadent heir with a dark side who developed a deep hatred for White and what he may or may not have done to her.

Evelyn Nesbit was a popular American chorus girl, an artists’ model, and an actress. In the early part of the Twentieth century, the figure and face of Evelyn Nesbit were everywhere, appearing in mass circulation newspaper and magazine advertisements, on souvenir items and calendars, making her a cultural celebrity. But it was on the evening of June 25, 1906 that she gained worldwide notoriety, when her husband, multi-millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw, shot and murdered architect and New York socialite Stanford White on the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden—leading to what the press would call “The Trial of the Century”. The Harry K. Thaw—Evelyn Nesbit—Stanford White story remains one of the great crime sensations of the Twentieth Century. Stanford White, an enormously rich man of high social position and supposedly blameless reputation, nevertheless led a private life that was at variance with his public reputation. His lavish stag dinner parties were well-known, and later played an important part in the famous murder trial. A gripping read.

The scandalous story of America’s first supermodel, sex goddess, and modern celebrity—Evelyn Nesbit. By the time of her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Evelyn Nesbit was known to millions as the most photographed woman of her era, an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty, and whose innocent sexuality was used to sell everything from chocolates to perfume. Women wanted to be her. Men just wanted her. But when Evelyn’s life of fantasy became all too real and her insanely jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, murdered her lover, New York City architect Stanford White, the most famous woman in the world became infamous as she found herself at the center of the “Crime of the Century” and a scandal that signaled the beginning of a national obsession with youth, beauty, celebrity, and sex.

Baker, working with previously unpublished materials, breathes new life into this legendary man who dominated American architecture at the turn of the twentieth century and gained infamy in the sensational manner of his death and the subsequent trial of his murderer. 50 black-and-white photos.

The story of Stanford White--his scandalous affair with the 16-year-old actress Evelyn Nesbit, his murder in 1906 by her husband, the millionaire Harry K. Thaw, and the hailstorm of publicity that surrounded "the trial of the century"--has proven irresistable to generations of novelists, historians, and biographers. The premier neoclassical architect of his day, White's legacy to the world were such masterpieces as New York's original Madison Square Garden, the Washington Square Arch, and the Players, Metropolitan, and Colony clubs. He was also responsible for the palaces of such clients as the Whitneys, Vanderbilts, and Pulitzers, the robber barons of the Gilded Age whose power and dominance shaped the nation in its heady ascent at the turn of the century. As the century rolled on, however, the story of Stanford White and Evelyn Nesbit came to be viewed as glamorous and romantic, the darker narrative of White's out-of-control sexual compulsion obscured by time. Indeed, White's wife Bessie and his son Larry remained adamantly silent about the matter for the duration of their lives, a silence that reverberated through the next four generations of their extended family. Suzannah Lessard is the eldest of Stanford White's great grandchildren. It was only in her 30's that she began to sense the parallels between the silence about her great-grandfather's life and the silence about her own perilous experience as a little girl in her own home. Thus she became drawn to the remarkable history of her family in order to uncover its hidden truths, and in so doing to liberate herself from its enclosure at last. The result is a multi-layered memoir of astonishing elegance and power, one that, like a great building, is illumined room by room, chapter by chapter, until the whole is clearly seen.

An operatic story of jealousy, obsession, vast fortunes, and moral crusaders set against the glittering backdrop of Gilded Age New York City. When Stanford White, one of the most famous architects of the era—whose mark on New York City is second to none—was murdered by Harry K. Thaw in 1906, his death become known as “The Crime of the Century.” But there were other players in this love triangle gone wrong that would play a part in the incredible story of White’s murderer. Chief among them was the ambitious district attorney William Travers Jerome, who had the opportunity to make—or break—his career with his prosecution of Thaw. Award-winning journalist Mary Cummings reveals a new angle to this incredible crime through Jerome’s story—a story that is ripe for our post-“Serial” era. Thaw was the debauched and deranged heir to a Pittsburgh fortune who had a sadistic streak. White was an artistic genius and one of the world’s premier architects who would become obsessed with a teenaged chorus girl, Evelyn Nesbit. White preyed on Nesbit, who, in a surprising twist, also became a fixation for Thaw. Nesbit and Thaw would later marry, but Thaw’s lingering jealousy and anger toward White over his past history with Nesbit would explosively culminate in White’s shocking murder—and the even more shocking trial of Thaw for a murder that was committed in front of dozens of eye witnesses. The promising young D.A. would find his faith in himself and the law severely tested as he battled colorful crooks, licentious grandees, and corrupt politicians. Cummings brilliant reveals the social issues simmering below the surface of New York that Jerome had to face. Filled with mesmerizing drama, rich period details, and fascinating characters, Saving Sin City sheds fresh light on crimes whose impact still echoes throughout the twenty-first century.