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Wikipedia / Edward Durell Stone

Edward Durell Stone (March 9, 1902 – August 6, 1978) was an American architect known for the formal, highly decorative buildings he designed in the 1950s and 1960s. His works include the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City; the Parliament House of Pakistan in Islamabad; the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Ponce, Puerto Rico; the United States Embassy in New Delhi, India; The Keller Center at the University of Chicago; the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the EcoTarium, formerly known as the New England Science Center in Worcester, Massachusetts; and the campus of Windham College (which became Landmark College) in Putney, Vermont.

Early life

Stone was born and raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He attended the University of Arkansas, where he joined the Sigma Nu fraternity, Harvard and M.I.T., but did not earn a degree. In 1927, he won the Rotch Travelling Scholarship, which afforded him the opportunity to travel through Europe on a two-year stipend. Stone was impressed by the new architecture he observed in Europe, buildings designed in what would come to be known as the International Style. He returned to the United States in 1929 and took up residence in Manhattan.

Career

Hired by the architectural firm of Schultze and Weaver, he designed interiors for the new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. He subsequently worked for the Associated Architects of Rockefeller Center and became the principal designer of Radio City Music Hall.

Stone was an early advocate of the International Style. His first independent commission was the Richard H. Mandel House, in Mount Kisco, New York (1933). This was followed by the Ulrich Kowalski house, also in Mt. Kisco (1934), and the Albert C. Koch house in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1936). In 1936, Stone was chosen as associate architect for the new Museum of Modern Art in New York City, designed in collaboration with Philip L. Goodwin. Stone also designed a private residence for MoMA president Anson Conger Goodyear, the A. Conger Goodyear House, in Old Westbury, NY (1938). Both the Richard H. Mandel House and A. Conger Goodyear House are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

At the outset of World War II, Stone enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was promoted to the rank of major and served as chief of the Army Air Force Planning and Design Section. Returning to New York after the war, Stone was commissioned to design the ten-story El Panama Hotel in Panama City, Panama (1946), the University of Arkansas Fine Arts Center in Fayetteville (1948), and the 850-bed Hospital del Seguro Social del Empleado in Lima, Peru (1950).

Stone's career and personal life were in deep flux by the end of the 1940s. His alcoholism led to the failure of his first marriage. After their 1950 divorce, Stone had retreated to Paris where he was living in a houseboat on the Seine, drinking, and doing little work when his friends Allan Jacobs and Hans Knoll came to retrieve him to help sober him up for an opportunity to design an embassy building through the Foreign Buildings Operations (FBO) of the United States.

By 1953, the Architectural Advisory Committee, which advised FBO on which established or rising American architects to employ for the massive Cold War embassy building program, included architect Henry R. Shepley, Ralph T. Walker and Pietro Belluschi. Stone knew Shepley and Walker from his student days at the Boston Architectural Club, and Shepley had given Stone an early project. Ultimately, Shepley vouched for Stone and convinced the committee and FBO that he had reformed and possessed the talent and dedication to complete an embassy project, and a contract to design an embassy in India was eventually signed in March 1954.

The Embassy of the United States in New Delhi, India (1959) would become Stone's best known work and make his career. Tasked with creating a modern building that respected the architectural heritage of its host country, he designed a temple-like pavilion on a raised podium. Frank Lloyd Wright called the embassy one of the most beautiful buildings he had ever seen, and it won a first honor award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Subsequent commissions such as the Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, California (1955), the Stuart Pharmaceutical Company in Pasadena, California (1956), and the United States pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (1957), repeated elements originally designed for the embassy. The Stuart building and World's Fair pavilion both won awards from the AIA, and Stone was elected to the Institute's College of Fellows in 1958.

Described as romanticist, Stone's ornate designs brought him commercial success. By the 1960s, his firm was among the largest architectural practices in the United States, with over 200 employees and offices on both coasts. Buildings from this period include the North Carolina State Legislative Building in Raleigh (1960), the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology in Nilore (1961), the National Geographic Society building in Washington, D.C. (1961), the Museo de Arte in Ponce, Puerto Rico (1961), the uptown campus of the University at Albany (1962), the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. (1962), the General Motors Building in New York City (1964), the PepsiCo World Headquarters, in Purchase, New York (1967), and the EcoTarium in Worcester, Massachusetts, the Florida State Capital complex in Tallahassee, and the Standard Oil building (now known as the Aon Center) in Chicago, Illinois (all 1970).

Stone also was the architect of the former Windham College in Putney, Vermont. Windham closed in 1978 and its abandoned campus was taken over by the present-day Landmark College in 1985.

Furthermore, Stone also designed Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California. Harvey Mudd College is a highly ranked private liberal arts college, and according to Travel and Leisure Magazine in 2013, is one of "America's ugliest college campuses".

Stone retired in 1974 and died in 1978. Following a New York City funeral his ashes were buried in his hometown of Fayetteville.

Personal life

Stone had five children from three different marriages. His first marriage, to Orlean Vandiver, ended in divorce due to his alcoholism in 1950; they had two children, Edward Durell Jr. and Robert Vandiver. He met his second wife, Maria Elena Torch, on a transatlantic flight in 1953; his continuing struggles with alcohol led to her ultimatum that he credited with keeping him sober for the rest of his life; they married in 1954 and had a son, Benjamin Hicks III, in 1955 and a daughter, Francesca. A combination of the age gap between the two, Stone was 23-years older than Maria, and their mutual infidelities led to a public and messy divorce that was widely reported in New York City where they resided. In 1972, he married a third time to Violet Campbell Moffat, they had one daughter, Fiona.

Honors and awards

Honorary degrees

  • Doctor of Fine Arts, University of Arkansas, 1951

  • Doctor of Fine Arts, Colby College, 1959

  • Master of Fine Arts, Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County, 1961

  • Doctor of Fine Arts, Hamilton College, 1962

Memberships and honors

Architectural awards

  • Silver Medal, Architectural League of New York, 1937 – Guest House for Henry R. Luce, Mepkin Plantation, Moncks Corner, South Carolina

  • Silver Medal, Architectural League of New York, 1950 – A. Conger Goodyear Residence, Old Westbury, New York

  • Gold Medal, Architectural League of New York, 1950 – Museum of Modern Art, New York City (Philip Goodwin, Associate)

  • Gold Medal, Architectural League of New York, 1950 – El Panama Hotel, Panama City, Panama

  • First Honor Award, American Institute of Architects, 1958 – Stuart Pharmaceutical Co., Pasadena, California

  • Award of Merit, American Institute of Architects, 1958 – U.S. Pavilion, Brussels, Belgium

  • First Honor Award, American Institute of Architects, 1961 – U.S. Embassy, New Delhi, India

  • Award of Merit, American Institute of Architects, 1963 – Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, Carmel, California

  • Honor Award, American Institute of Architects, 1967 – Ponce Museum of Art, Ponce, Puerto Rico

Selected works

Gallery

Footnotes

Notes

Citations

Works cited

General references

  • Everett, Derek R. "Modern Statehouses for Modern States: Edward Durell Stone's Capitol Architecture in North Carolina and Florida." Southern Historian, Vol. 28 (Spring 2007): pp.74–91.

  • Head, Jeffrey. "Unearthing Stone." Metropolis magazine, Urban Journal, January 2008.

  • Heyer, Paul. Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America. (New York: Walker & Co., 1966): pp.172–183.

  • Hunting, Mary Anne. "Edward Durell Stone, Perception and Criticism." (PhD diss., Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2007).

  • Hunting, Mary Anne. “Edward Durell Stone.” In Oxford Bibliographies in Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

  • Hunting, Mary Anne. "From Craft to Industry: Furniture designed by Edward Durell Stone for Senator Fulbright." The Magazine Antiques (May 2004): 110–121.

  • Hunting, Mary Anne. “Legacy of Stone: As Campus Buildings Rise and Fall, A Leading Mid-20th-Century Architect's Vision Endures,” Vanderbilt Magazine (Summer 2014): *18–19, 78–79.

  • Hunting, Mary Anne. "The Richard H. Mandel House in Bedford Hills, New York." Living with Antiques.The Magazine Antiques (July 2001): 72–83.

  • Hunting, Mary Anne. "Rediscovering the Work of Edward Durell Stone". Modern Magazine (Spring 2013): 70 and 72.

  • Ricciotti, Dominic. "Edward Durell Stone and the International Style in America: Houses of the 1930s." American Art Journal, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Summer 1988): pp.48–73.

  • Ricciotti, Dominic. "The 1939 Building of the Museum of Modern Art: The Goodwin-Stone Collaboration." American Art Journal, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Summer 1985): pp.51–76.

Two views on 2 Columbus Circle