Mary Craig’s Plaza Rubio, facing the Santa Barbara Mission, was the mastermind of entrepreneur and developer Margaret Andrews. Working in tandem with Andrews, it remains today one of Mary Craig’s finest contributions to the architectural legacy of Santa Barbara. As a series of seven houses conceived and built from 1924 to 1926, this subdivision has urban implications taking it well beyond mere building. The twenties was a period of civic expansion; development of unoccupied land was inevitable though, admittedly, the last vestiges of the rural setting original to the Mission were lost. The challenge to add to the landscape, while at the same time keeping the Mission central to this ambitious plan, was significant. It is hard to imagine a finer solution; the houses on Plaza Rubio neither intrude on the mission, nor are upstaged by it. With near pitch-perfect planning, they are far enough away to remain deferential yet close enough to embrace the mission in a framed composition.