Mary Rockwell Hook (1877-1978) Papers (KC0010)
Mary Rockwell Hook (Mrs. Inghram D.) was born in Junction City, Kansas, the daughter of Bertrand Rockwell, a successful grain merchant and banker. The family moved to Kansas City in 1906. Hook graduated from Wellesley College in 1900, and decided on a career in architecture studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Hook was one of the country's first women architects. Her work in Kansas City dates from as early as 1908 with her most noted designs done in the Sunset Hills area during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1923, Hook had formed an architectural partnership with Eric Douglas Macwilliam Remington (1893-1975). Hook had done work throughout the United States. In 1935, she purchased a sandy key off the coast of Sarasota, Florida, and developed it with residences of her design. Not all of her designs echoed the grand residences she admired during her tours of Italy, France , and Spain. She may have been the first architect in the Kansas City area to use cast-in-place concrete walls, and as early as 1937 installed a solar system to provide hot water for a resort hotel on the Siesta Key, an island near Sarasota.
This collection consists of six photographs of three residences near Sarasota, Florida, which were designed by Mary Rockwell Hook. These are: the Boring residence; the Betty Strawbridge residence at 172 Sandy Hook Road, Whispering Sands, Sarasota; and the Florence R. DeWalt residence at 679 Avenida N., Sarasota. ca. 1950. An addition to the papers includes correspondence, photographs, printed material, and clippings, ca.1878-1994, and eight linen drawings of residence at 50th and Summit, 1922.
5 folders and 15 sheets of drawings.
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updated:
Monday, February 07, 2011
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