Florence Evelyn Nesbit (December 25, 1884 – January 17, 1967),
known professionally as Evelyn Nesbit,
was an American chorus girl, an artists' model,
and an actress. In the early part of the 20th 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.
Her career began in her early teens in Philadelphia
and continued in New York, where she posed for a
cadre of respected artists of the era, including James
Carroll Beckwith, Frederick S. Church,
and notably Charles Dana Gibson, who idealized
her as a "Gibson Girl." She had the distinction
of being an early fashion and artists' model,
in an era when both fashion photography
(as an advertising medium) and the pin-up
(as an art genre) were just beginning their ascendancy.

Nesbit claimed that as a stage performer,
and while still a 14-year-old, she attracted
the attention of the then 47-year-old architect
and New York socialite Stanford White,
who first gained the family's trust then sexually
assaulted Evelyn while she was unconscious.
Nesbit achieved world-wide notoriety
when her husband, multi-millionaire Harry Kendall
Thaw, shot and killed Stanford White on the
rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden
on the evening of June 25, 1906, leading to
what the press would call "The Trial of the Century."