The Iconography of Manhattan Island

[1] Stokes's worldwide research teams scoured public and private collections of maps, guides and obscure source material to complete his encyclopedic monument to New York City.

It describes in detail the growth of a fortified Dutch settlement into a major city, and ultimately included six volumes sold to subscribers and libraries in a limited edition of 360 sets printed on Holland-made paper and 42 on Japanese vellum.

His insights into better housing for New York's poor enabled better living conditions through improved sanitation brought by modern building methods, and were shared by reformers such as Jacob Riis, Stanton Coit, Charles B. Stover and Carl Schurz.

Stokes's three other lasting monuments include St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University; 953 Fifth Avenue – an Italian Renaissance palazzo-style fourteen story apartment building occupying the east side of Fifth Avenue near 76th Street;[2] and 184 Eldridge Street, also by the firm of Stokes and John Mead Howells, which has housed the University Settlement Society of New York since 1898, and is now a landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stokes's bad real estate investments bankrupted him long after his monumental publishing effort left him in dire straits.