The American architect, educator, and designer Edward Durrell Stone (1902-1978) was an early practitioner of the International Style, but took his architecture in a new direction after 1940. He was particularly known for his design for the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, India, and for the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Edward Durrell Stone was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on March 9, 1902. He attended the University of Arkansas (1920-1923) located in his home town, but received no degree. His first job--for the firm of Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch and Abbott in Boston--was to work on the restoration of Massachusetts Hall at Harvard as an apprentice to Henry R. Shepley (1923-1925). In 1926 Stone won the competition for a special scholarship to Harvard and attended for one year. Eclecticism was on the way out in architecture, and Stone switched to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) where Jacques Carlu was beginning to...