At Columbia, he won the $1,100 Perkins Traveling Fellowship and traveled and studied in Europe for 10 months in 1911, mainly in Italy. He had associated with the firm of
John Russell Pope after graduation, and returned from Europe to rejoin Pope's firm in November 1911 where he became the chief designer, working on the Vanderbilt mansion on Long Island and the New York Fifth Avenue mansion of
Henry Clay Frick of
Carnegie Steel Company. He continued his association with Pope until he was persuaded to come to
Columbus, Ohio to design the new football stadium about 1917. While he was designing and overseeing the construction of
Ohio Stadium, he was also a Professor of Architecture at Ohio State for three years from 1918 to 1921. Ohio Stadium was then the largest two level, open ended stadium in the world. He then took a position as chief architect for the Columbus Public Schools. Later he returned to Ohio State where he served as University Architect from October 1929 to June 1956. As his mentor Pope had done at
Yale University, Smith revised a long term campus master plan for The Ohio State University. He proposed to extend the campus beyond the
Olentangy River. Over his career as University Architect at Ohio State, especially in the post-World War II years, he designed or oversaw design and planning of some thirty University buildings, including the expansion of the landmark
William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library, which dominates the main University landscape on the Oval. Among these were Hughes Hall (music), the Alpheus W. Smith Laboratory (physics), the Agricultural Laboratories, the optometry building, and especially the
St. John Arena and
French Field House. The task of designing and overseeing the construction of so many new buildings in those years became such that some outside architects were engaged for the purpose as, for example, with the Ohio Union, Mershon Auditorium, and most of those in the Medical Center complex. Smith-Steeb Hall is named after Dwight Smith and Carl E. Steeb. Smith was in continual demand as a consultant for various agencies or on specific projects including Wittenberg College, the Upper Arlington Board of Education, the Columbus and Springfield
YMCAs, the
Deshler Hotel (Columbus), the million-dollar First Congregational Church, Columbus (where he represented the John Russell Pope office), the Springfield Masonic Temple, the Marietta and Columbus City Halls and
Columbus West High School. His work was also part of the
architecture event in the
art competition at the
1932 Summer Olympics. ==Notable works==