Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes

Who was Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes?

Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes was an American architect. He was the eldest son of multimillionaire Anson Phelps Stokes, and graduated from Harvard in 1891. He designed St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University and several urban housing projects in New York City. Sanger Hill, a New York State country house in the English manner, represents his private housing work.

He married Edith Minturn in 1895. A friend sponsored their famous portrait in oil, 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 and of the Municipal Art Commission. She was the aunt of Edie Sedgewick, who was named after her.

I.N. Phelps Stokes founded an architectural firm, Howells & Stokes, with a partner, John Mead Howells, in 1897.

Mr. Stokes was active in housing reform. He was a co-author of the Tenement House Law of 1901, and designer of the University Settlement House.

In 1910, Isaac Newton Phelps 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 USA, where it was re-constructed using the timbers of a wrecked English ship, on a hill overlooking Long Island Sound near Greenwich, Connecticut. It was renamed High Low House.