Stanford White in Saint James, New York. (houses by architectural firm McKim, Mead and White founded in 1879)

Most of McKim, Mead and White's architectural commissions are clustered in predictable centers of money, power, and society, such as New York City, Boston, and Newport. At the same time, a significant body of their work is also found in Saint James, a village on Long Island's North Shore, fifty miles from New York City. On seven sites, separated by less than two miles, McKim, Mead and White created designs that span the history of the firm and delineate the ties of friendship, marriage, and family of Stanford White.

Saint James is part of an area first settled by the English…