The New York City–based modern architect Edward Durell Stone (b. 1902–d. 1978) achieved widespread success during his more than forty-year career. His enormous and prestigious output can be seen on four continents, in thirteen foreign countries, and in thirty-two states. Trained in the mid-1920s, first at Harvard University and then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (he did not graduate), Stone never lost the Beaux-arts bent he developed as a student. The elaborate watercolors he produced as a Rotch Travelling Scholar between 1927 and 1929 are a testament to his artistic sensibility. In the early 1930s, the first of his four phases of production, Stone was intent on trying out the European aesthetic of the first-generation modernists with whom he had been impressed in the 1932 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Disillusioned by its requisite Spartan decoration, however, he began to experiment with vernacular concepts using indigenous resources. He also absorbed the organic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, who became a long-term friend and “personal hero.” By the late 1950s, Stone had synthesized these experiences in his own definition of modernism, which, suitably, has been called New Romanticism due to its decorative implications, and its originality and mass appeal made him an instant celebrity. With his second wife, Maria, he learned to work the fast-growing media to disperse his architecture through print, and, even more, the emergent medium of television. By 1966, Stone was said to have in production work valued at a billion dollars. So prolific was his output that some assumed he would inherit the mantle of Wright. However, as Stone spun out ever more variations of his signature aesthetic—increasingly classical but still with a rich variety of decoration—for corporations, institutions, and governments, he accumulated criticism and sometimes downright rejection. The disparity between the mass approval and critical dismissal of his architecture is illustrated in the contrasting appellations bestowed upon him: whereas J. William Fulbright, the Democratic senator from his native state, Arkansas, baptized Stone a “populist architect,” a Washington Post architecture critic labeled him a “kitsch-monger.” By the time Stone died, memories of his good fortune had faded. Stone’s legacy remained unresolved until the turn of the 21st century when some of his aging buildings began to be reassessed—for restoration, redevelopment, or demolition. Though lost to redevelopment, his building at Two Columbus Circle in New York City generated an extensive debate about his contributions, which, paradoxically, finally gave the architect a formidable presence in the histories of modern architecture. Researchers should be cognizant that current reassessments of his buildings—for maintenance, renovation, redevelopment, or demolition—are continuing to stimulate dialogue about Stone that can be insightful and informative.
