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.

He later took post graduate courses at the School of Mines, Columbia University and then Italy before studying for three years at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

[6][7] Edith also served as the artist's model for a well-known sculpture, Statue of the Republic by Daniel Chester French,[8] and a portrait by Cecilia Beaux.

Howells continue to design skyscrapers, including the Tribune Tower and Daily News Building, New York, in collaboration with Raymond Hood.

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.

[14] 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.

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.

[17] Stokes prefaced the first volume with the following objective: THE Iconography of Manhattan Island represents the result of a two-fold purpose: to collect, to condense, and to arrange systematically and in just proportion, within the confines of a single work, the facts and incidents which are of the greatest consequence and interest in the history of New York City, with special reference to its topographical features and to the physical development of the island; and to illustrate this material by the best reproductions obtainable of important and interesting contemporary maps, plans, views, and documents; in other words, to produce a book dealing with the physical rather than with the personal side of the city's history, which shall be at the same time useful and interesting to the student of history, the antiquarian, the collector, and the general public.His initial thoughts were that the work would be covered in one volume, but he had underestimated and eventually six were required.

As an apology is, on the whole, the easier alternative, the author hastens to offer it – very humbly – and he sincerely thanks his subscribers for their considerate forbearance.While compiling the work, Stokes had become an obsessive collector and spent large sums with dealers in America and Europe.

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.