Doris Stone

Who was Doris Stone?

Doris Zemurray Stone was an archaeologist and ethnographer, specializing in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the so-called "Intermediate Area" of lower Central America. She served as the director of the National Museum of Costa Rica and endowed numerous professorial chairs in U.S. universities.

Born 1909 in New Orleans, Louisiana, Doris Zemurray was the daughter of Samuel Zemurray, a Russian immigrant who founded the Cuyamel Fruit Company the following year. He built the company into a successful venture, later famously selling it to the United Fruit Company giant in 1930 only to subsequently engineer a reverse takeover of sorts, serving as the latter's director in a profitable, if controversial, tenure from 1933 to 1952.

In 1917 Zemurray purchased and moved his family into a three-storey Beaux Arts mansion on St. Charles Avenue facing Tulane University, which would become the family home for the next four decades. In the early 1960s the mansion was transferred to Tulane where it became the residency of the University's presidents.