Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes

Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (April 11, 1867 – December 18, 1944) was an American architect. Stokes was a pioneer in social housing who co-authored the 1901 New York tenement house law. For twenty years he worked on The Iconography of Manhattan Island, a six-volume compilation that became one of the most important research resources about the early development of the city. His designs included St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University and several urban housing projects in New York City. He was also a member of the New York Municipal Arts Commission for twenty-eight years and president for nine of these. Education and marriage He was educated at St. Paul's School, Concord, and Berkeley School in New York City before graduating from Harvard in 1891. He later took post graduate courses at the School of Mines, Columbia University and then Italy before studying for three years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He married Edith Minturn — daughter of Sarah Susannah Shaw and Robert Bowne Minturn, Jr. — in 1895 at La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada. They lived in Paris whilst Stokes continued his studies. A friend sponsored their portrait Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Phelps Stokes, by John Singer Sargent, as a wedding gift. Edith also served as the artist's model for a well-known sculpture, Statue of the Republic by Daniel Chester French, and a portrait by Cecilia Beaux. She was President of the New York Kindergarten Association. She was the aunt of Edie Sedgewick, who was named after her. Architectural work He founded an architectural firm, Howells & Stokes, with a partner, John Mead Howells, in 1897. Their first commission was the University Settlement Society building at 184 Eldridge Street, New York. Howells and Stokes were active in New York, but also opened an office on the West Coast in Seattle, designing many of the Metropolitan Tract buildings during the 1910s. The partners parted company on amicably terms in the mid-1910s. Their work had included the Baltimore Stock Exchange; University site development, Seattle; American Geographical Society Building, New York and the Turks Head Building, Providence. Howells continue to design skyscrapers, including the Tribune Tower and Daily News Building, New York, in collaboration with Raymond Hood.