American architect Margaret McCurry is known for her extraordinary series of private residences, all featuring a synthesis of modern classicism and the American vernacular. Order and symmetry, refinement and distillation, are characteristics not only of McCurry's design, but of her design process as well. This book, the first volume on her work, presents nineteen of her houses, along with selected other projects, and an absorbing personal narrative of her journey to become a principal in the Chicago architectural practice Tigerman McCurry. In twenty-five "short stories," which are accompanied by beautiful color photography and carefully delineated plans and other drawings, McCurry tells the tales behind the design and construction of her projects. In her honest assessment of the outcome of each, McCurry convincingly expounds upon her own philosophy of architecture, one in which the art of architecture is paramount.