Cuno Kibele was the most prolific and most influential architect to live and work in Muncie, Indiana, in the first decades of the twentieth century. From 1905 to 1927, Kibele designed Muncie's grandest public buildings as well as schools, churches, factories, and commercial buildings. Kibele is most often identified with these buildings. The purpose of this thesis is to study a portion of Kibele's work that has been generally overlooked, his residential designs.Kibele was a reputable residential designer in Muncie. He was a sought-after architect for the city's rising middle class who lived in the suburbs just outside of town. Kibele's residential designs were unlike his other types of commissions in their simplicity and restraint of form and style. Kibele did not include stylistic details in his residential designs to the extent that he did in his other commissions. The few stylistic elaborations that Kibele did include in his residential designs were common-place Craftsman and Prairie style details.Kibele's residences were not high style or innovative in design, however they incorporated the latest social thinking and technological advances. In the early decades of the twentieth century, middle class residential design in America underwent a dramatic transformation. The Victorian home, with its rambling, asymmetrical plan, dense cluttered interior, and ornate detailing was pushed aside in favor of a new, modem aesthetic that favored simple clean lines, reduction of ornamentation, and an open interior arrangement. Kibele's residential commissions demonstrate the modem design principles that resulted from this transformation: the inclusion of modem technological advances; a kitchen redesigned for efficiency; simpler outline and reduction of ornamentation; a simple, open floor plan; and provisions for healthy living. / Department of Architecture