[2]: 24 Born in Junction City, Kansas, Mary was the third of five daughters of Bertrand Rockwell (1844-1930), a captain of the Union Army in the American Civil War and successful grain merchant and banker, and Julia Marshall Snyder (1850-1947), who was the first historian for the parish known today as Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri.

Mary Rockwell Hook died on her 101st birthday at her home on Siesta Key, an island off the coast of Sarasota, Florida.

[citation needed] In 1905, Rockwell went to Paris to study in the atelier of Marcel Auburtin, an admirer of her sister Kitty, as a prerequisite for being admitted at the École des Beaux-Arts.

In 1906, after her entrance examinations at the École des Beaux-Arts, French male students intended to fling buckets of water at her as she fled through the courtyard.

The Kansas City Star later wrote that the era was one "when male architects were openly antagonistic to women joining the profession.

Hook later described Pine Mountain as "an 18th-century world" where "there is no village to mar the peaceful landscape, where trains, motors, and chewing gum have not penetrated.

Even though a mill was installed on campus, it took more than a year to cut and dry lumber for Laurel House,[8] the school's dining hall.

[9] Undated: Science Building with Printshop and Workshop "Open House" for Mary Rockwell, Ethel McCullough, and Margaret Butler.

[1] Hook's Kansas City designs date from as early as 1908, with her most eminent work completed during the 1920s and 1930s in the Sunset Hills area.

Many of her designs in Sunset Hills pay tribute to the architectural styles she witnessed during childhood trips to Europe and East Asia.

Hook's Italianate architecture was evidenced by her synthesis of brick, stone, and antique materials with tiles, frescoes, and leaded panes.

The second house in California was designed at the height of her career in 1926 as an impressive French mansion called "Le Soleil" for Francis and Katherine Crosby in Woodside, an hour south of San Francisco.

After purchasing 55 acres (220,000 m2) of Gulf-front property on Siesta Key, Florida in 1935, Hook developed part of the area with her designs.

[21] Another subdivision called Sandy Hook was intended to be a residential area for architects and incubator for the Sarasota School of Architecture.

"[1] In Siesta Key, Hook used solar power to heat water for the resort hotel Whispering Sands as early as 1937.