Edward Durell Stone

Edward Durell Stone 1902-78, American architect, b. Fayetteville, Ark. Stone's first major work, designed in the starkly functional International style in collaboration with Philip L. Goodwin, was the Museum of Modern Art, New York City (1937-39). Stone, whose style became more ornate and embellished in the 1950s, won renown for his design of the U.S. embassy at New Delhi (1958). In this building he introduced traditional Muslim motifs, including lacy grille patterns. Stone subsequently applied grillwork to many of his buildings, including the U.S. pavilion for the Brussels World's Fair (1958) and the Huntington Hartford Museum (1962; now the New York Cultural Center), New York City. Among his later works are the Amarillo Fine Arts Museum (1969); the Univ. of Alabama law school (1970); the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (1971), Washington D.C.; and the Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula, Carmel, Calif.

Bibliography: See his autobiography (1962) and Recent and Future Architecture (1967).

Stone, Edward Durell (1902–78). American architect. He absorbed the lessons of the Modern Movement in the 1920s, working on the Rockefeller Center, NYC (1929), where he designed the interior of the Radio City Music Hall. His best International Modernist buildings were the Mandel House, Mount Kisco, NY (1932–3), and (with Philip Lippincott Goodwin (1885–1958) ) the building for the Museum of Modern Art, NYC (1936–9). After the 1939–45 war his work became rather more personal and formal as he moved away from International Modernism, and turned to regional influences. His US Embassy, New Delhi, India (1954), and Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC (1961–71), were axial, symmetrical, and paraphrases of Classicism.

Bibliography

Christopher (1984);
Kalman (1994);
Placzek (ed.) (1982);
Stone (1962, 1967);
van Vynckt (ed.) (1993)