Edward Durell Stone - Pre-War Period

Pre-War Period

Stone returned to New York City in October 1929, just at the onset of the Great Depression. He had been offered a job while in Stockholm, by Leonard Schultze of Schultze and Weaver, and on joining the firm, Stone designed the main lobby and grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. He then moved on to work in the offices of Reinhardt, Hoffmeister, Hood & Fouilhoux, who were among the architects associated on the Rockefeller Center project. Stone was the principal designer on the Radio City Music Hall, and he worked in conjunction with the interior designer, Donald Deskey. His relationship with Deskey ultimately led to his first independent commission in 1933 for Richard Mandel, whose family owned the Mandel Brothers department store. Stone produced a startling, volumetric modernist home in Mount Kisco, New York, for Mandel, with elements suggestive of the European modernists Erich Mendelsohn and Le Corbusier. The Richard H. Mandel House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

The acclaim generated from this commission led to other prominent residential commissions. Similarly, his work on the Rockefeller Center project also brought him to the attention of the Center's lead architect, Wallace Harrison, and Nelson Rockefeller. When the time came for an architect to be selected for the new Museum of Modern Art, Stone's name was put forth by Harrison, and in turn by Rockefeller, over the objections of Alfred Barr, Jr., the Museum's director. Stone was selected as the design architect for the Museum in association with Philip Goodwin, the only architect on the Museum's Board. It was at this point that Stone formally started his architectural practice, opening an office in Rockefeller Center.

Stone continued to employ the modernist vocabulary for the remainder of the 1930s, but during an automobile trip across the United States in 1940, he began to formulate an approach to design that fused the experience of his Beaux-Arts training, bucolic origins and dissatisfaction with the austerity of modernist aesthetic. A visit to Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin in Wisconsin encouraged Stone to seek new forms that expressed a warmer architecture that was more rooted in American vernacular design.

The onset of World War II interrupted Stone's exploration of this new approach to architecture, and he enlisted in the United States Army Air Force in August 1942. Stone entered the Army as a Captain but was promoted to the rank of Major in November 1943. During his war service, Stone was stationed in Washington D.C. where he was the Chief of the Planning and Design Section. His principal responsibility was the planning of Army Air Force bases. Stone was discharged from the Army in November 1945.