India, July 15 -- It is widely accepted that New Delhi's finest modern buildings were designed by American architect Joseph Stein. Take the US Embassy. Hailed on its completion as the "American Taj Mahal," it too is a Stein creation... wrong! That distinction belongs to another American architect. The irony is that the American whose architecture profoundly shaped post-Independence Delhi is found not at the American Embassy, but at the nearby Australian High Commission.

For the concluding dispatch in our series marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, it is fitting to celebrate the American who's enduring legacy is found in India's capital.

Born in Omaha in 1912, Stein made Delhi his karmabhoomi in the late 1950s, opening...