Post-War Period
Stone reopened his architectural practice in 1945 in a townhouse at 50 East 64th Street in New York City. During this period, he continued to explore vernacular architectural forms, incorporating Wrightian motifs and rustic materiality and fusing it with explorations of modular construction techniques. His commissions during the 1940s were principally single-family homes, but there were notable exceptions.
In 1946 Stone was commissioned to design the 300-room El Panama Hotel in Panama City, Panama. The hotel was completed in 1951 after a lengthy and difficult construction period. The playful modernity of the building and its environmentally sensitive design generated critical interest and the hotel was featured in a January 1952 story in Life.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Stone's role as Chief Design Critic and Associate Professor of Architecture at the Yale University School of Architecture gave him the opportunity to recruit many skilled young staff members for his office. Stone’s avuncular and supportive manner and his ability as an educator and designer created a synergistic office environment that fostered design inquiry and experimentation.
His success as a practitioner of modern architecture and his prominence as an academic, enabled Stone to form bonds with other academics of the era like Walter Gropius (Chairman of the Department of Architecture at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design), Pietro Belluschi (Dean of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning), George Howe (Chairman of Yale University’s School of Architecture) and William Wurster (co-founder of the University of California at Berkeley College of Environmental Design).
Stone would continue to be involved as a visiting critic at other universities, including Cornell, Princeton and Stanford, until the demands of his architectural practice no longer permitted him to do so. He also actively supported the establishment of an architectural program at the University of Arkansas, which was headed by his close friend, John G. Williams. Stone served as a frequent visiting critic and was an early advocate for the architectural school’s accreditation. Stone’s role as an educator was honored in 1955, when the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects awarded him the Medal of Honor, praising Stone as a “distinguished designer of buildings and inspiring teacher.”
In 1950, Stone formed a partnership with architect Alfred Aydelott of Memphis, Tennessee to design the Hospital of Social Security for Employees in Lima, Peru. This project established Stone as a specialist in hospital design, and it would lead to a series of commissions that focused on providing a humane environment for patients. Many of Stone’s prominent medical commissions were in the State of California and include the Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey, the Scripps Institute in La Jolla and the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage.
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