Исаак Ньютон Фелпс Стокc: Америкалық сәулетші және әлеуметтік тұрғын үй құрылысының пионері

American architect

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 married Edith Minturn – daughter of Sarah Susannah Shaw and Robert Bowne Minturn, Jr. – in 1895 at La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada. They lived in Paris while 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.

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. Stokes was appointed by his aunts, Caroline and Olivia Stokes, to design several of their charitable building projects. These included: the Tuskegee tenement building in New York (1901); St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University (1907); Berea College Chapel (1906); Woodbridge Hall at Yale (part of the Hewitt Quadrangle) (1901); two tenements called the Dudley complex at 339 349 East 32nd Street, New York (1910); an outdoor pulpit for St. John the Divine Cathedral (1916) and memorial gates at both Harvard and Yale universities, Hartford First Church Cemetery and Redlands Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in California. Howells and Stokes also provided designs for the Protestant College in Beirut, an institute supported by the Stokes and Dodge families. Caroline Stokes funded work at the Booker T. Washington Tuskegee institutes. The architect for these works was Robert Robinson Taylor, who was offered some professional advice by I. N. Phelps Stokes, but this proved to be unhelpful to Taylor who was working with limited resources. Stokes was involved with family owned property management companies, building and running apartment and office blocks in New York. In addition to his commercial work, he designed private housing such as Sanger Hill, a New York State country house for his cousin Colonel William Sanger; Beacon Hill House, Newport, Rhode Island for his uncle Arthur Curtiss James; Brick House, Collender's Point, Darien, Connecticut for his parents; and a house for his wife at Indian Harbor, Greenwich, Connecticut. In 1910, Stokes dismantled a large timber framed house, formerly the Queens Head, located next to what is now the A140 Ipswich to Norwich route in Thwaite, Suffolk, UK. He transported it in 688 crates from Tilbury Docks to the US, where it was reconstructed using the timbers of a wrecked English ship on a hill overlooking Long Island Sound near Greenwich, Connecticut. It was renamed High Low House (one of its former names when it was in Thwaite).

Stokes was active in housing reform. He was appointed a member of the Tenement House Committee of the Charity Organisation Society in 1899, and was appointed a member of the State Tenement House Committee by Governor Roosevelt in 1901. He was a member of the executive committee and chairman of the Committee on New Building and in this role was a co author of the Tenement House Law of 1901. He became a political ally and then a friend of New York Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia. During the New Deal, as head of the Art Commission, Stokes oversaw the WPA mural program for the City of New York, which sponsored murals at locations including the Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport, Harlem Hospital, and New York Public Library. At various times Stokes was director and president of the Phelps Stokes Fund; trustee, New York Public Library; honorary vice president, Community Service Society of New York, Fine Arts Federation of New York and President of the Municipal Art Commission of New York. Following the death of his wife he resigned many of his public duties. At his retirement from the Municipal Arts Commission in 1939, Mayor La Guardia said: “All through the city physical changes are being made, and a great deal of it is due to your vision and your perfect artistic style. Once in a while a modernistic piece has crept in on us, but it has been more than offset by your selections. All I can do is express my regret that you are leaving us."

A fire started in the New York State Capitol at Albany in the early hours of March 29, 1911. The building housed the New York State Library, and it was feared that many historical documents were lost or damaged in the fire. The trustees of the New York Public Library asked I. N. Phelps Stokes to go to Albany and offer support. When he arrived he became involved with the salvage. He first surveyed the building to ensure it was safe for workers to enter. A preliminary inspection by Stokes and the archivist, Arnold Johan Ferdinand Van Laer, found that some documents still survived under the damage but urgent action was required to save them. Governor John Alden Dix arranged for soldiers to help and they formed a chain to carry salvaged papers and books to a place of safety. The fire continued to break out as they worked and to add to their problems the weather was so cold that water froze. It was estimated that 80 percent of the archive was lost in the fire. The night watchman's body was also discovered in the rubble.