The renowned Chicago architect Margaret McCurry, speaking from experience, discourages young architects from working for free, even in the process of getting paying jobs. <\/p>\n
She tells them to \u201cturn it down because to accept it means that you don\u2019t value your work enough to charge for it nor will a potential client.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, in 1993 McCurry had a meeting with former chairman of the Chicago Bears, Mike McCaskey, and his wife, Nancy, about building a house. At the end of the four-hour meeting, the McCaskeys casually mentioned that they were interviewing other architects and asked if McCurry could send them some sketches to see if they were on the same page.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, Mike, I can\u2019t,\u201d came McCurry\u2019s reply.<\/p>\n
Instead of drawing for free, she wrote the couple a two-page essay about the experience of living in the house she would ultimately be hired to design, colloquially known as the Lighthouse, a building that evoked the history and ambiance of Martha\u2019s Vineyard, complete with a widow\u2019s walk and the doors and windows arranged so that lake breeze flowed effortlessly throughout the rooms.
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McCurry had no choice but to defy expectations.\u00a0The decorated architect and designer was born in 1942 to art teacher Irene Tipler and architect Paul McCurry, who didn\u2019t encourage Margaret to follow in his footsteps. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t expecting that his first two children, as girls, were ever going to enter such a profession,\u201d said McCurry in her 2020 oral history. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t encouraging because he was afraid that architecture was too hard a field for women.\u201d
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McCurry began forging her own path by enrolling in drawing classes at the Art Institute when she was 10 years old and went on to graduate from Vassar in 1964 with a degree in art history. Her first job out of college was as the secretary to the head of the package-design department at Quaker Oats in Chicago\u2019s Merchandise Mart. After approximately one year in that role, McCurry was able \u201cto get one of the few jobs that women had above the level of secretary, which was a package design coordinator.\u201d When her division was folded into Quaker Oats\u2019s advertising department, everyone was fired. Her father connected Margaret with the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), where she worked for 11 years in their interior design department.
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The architect finds her niche.<\/p>\n
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Margaret McCurry (left) with architect Stanley Tigerman (right) in Italy, n.d. <\/p>\n
Paul McCurry wasn\u2019t entirely wrong: being a woman in the male-dominated architecture profession is not easy. In the \u201970s, when SOM was contracted to build the [Merchandise] Mart Plaza Holiday Inn, McCurry was assigned the role of lead interior designer. During a meeting regarding the hotel\u2019s bar, McCurry demonstrated her skills from a woman\u2019s perspective after a male brand manager suggested hanging wicker baskets as seating. \u201cThat was the age of the miniskirt \u2026 I remember thinking that was just a horrible idea. [I said], \u2018that is an interesting idea, but if I snagged my panty hose on one of those baskets, I would be really upset,\u2019 [and] that was the end of baskets.\u201d<\/p>\n
Margaret McCurry at the Tigerman McCurry office, about 2013<\/p>\n
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Because of her time at SOM, in 1977 McCurry was able to sit for the architect\u2019s licensing exam by way of the profession\u2019s apprenticeship clause, which required eight years\u2019 experience under a licensed architect that would vouch for your experience. Subsequently, she operated her own firm, Margaret I. McCurry, Ltd, from 1977 through 1982. During the period bridging SOM and the creation of her own firm, McCurry met her future husband, Stanley Tigerman. In 1982, the now-husband-and-wife merged offices to create Tigerman McCurry and built a country home for themselves in Lakeside, Michigan.
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Despite the home being chiefly McCurry\u2019s design, she was again marginalized due to her gender by someone she initially saw as an ally. \u201c[The house] was a joint venture \u2026 there was a woman journalist who would write about it for Progressive Architecture. She came to the house, we explained who designed what part, and it was maybe 60% me and 40% Stanley. After all that, she ended up writing about Stanley anyway. I said, \u2018That is the last time I choose a woman just because she is a woman.\u2019\u201d
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Margaret McCurry<\/p>\n
Passing down a professional code of ethics to the next generation of architects is paramount to McCurry, especially considering her place as an architectural trailblazer. She admits to being harder on the younger generation of women architects, \u201cwhose road forward is so much easier than ours was, and yet, who choose divisive behavior to advance their agenda. The women of my age who survived harassment on the job site or in the office, or dealt with low wages and discrimination, nevertheless had a code of ethical behavior. Our stories of endurance would fill a movie script.\u201d
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Since the closure of the Tigerman McCurry office, Margaret\u2014who is still active in the firm\u2014has divided her time between architectural projects and travels with the American Institute of Architects\u2019 Committee on Design, which she chaired in 1993. McCurry recently visited Vietnam and Cambodia to pay respect to friends she lost in the Vietnam War on the 50th anniversary of the war\u2019s end, as well as trip to the south of France to view E-1027, the Irish architect and designer\u00a0Eileen Gray\u2019s iconic house. She serves on the Dean\u2019s Council at Yale Architecture School, where she\u2019s working on a book of Stanley Tigerman\u2019s drawings, Drawing on the Ineffable (due this summer), as well as serving on both the Art Institute of Chicago\u2019s Architecture and Design and Textiles committees.<\/p>\n
To date, the Tigerman McCurry Archive is the largest collection in the museum\u2019s Art and Architecture Archive: over 650 containers spanning approximately 815 linear feet of shelf space that document the work of the prolific firm, including photographs, publications, correspondence, awards, and much more.<\/p>\n
Check out the collection\u2019s finding aid<\/a> and make an appointment<\/a> for research in the Archive.<\/p>\n \u2014Dave Hofer, access and reference archivist, Research Center Learn More<\/p>\n
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