Julia Morgan.
The Granger Collection, New York
“Every architect who ever worked with Julia Morgan said the only problem with her was that they couldn’t live on Hershey bars and coffee even though she did,” Morgan North explained about his Aunt Julia. “At midnight, everybody would be famished, so she’d break out a couple of Hershey bars and pass them around, and then start to work again.”
This prolific architect with an abundance of energy and determination broke through several barriers and designed more than 700 buildings over 30 years, while simultaneously creating the famous Hearst Castle at San Simeon, California.
Born on January 20, 1872, Julia Morgan was the second child of Charles and Eliza Morgan. She grew up in Oakland, California—at that time a wealthy suburb of San Francisco. Mr. and Mrs. Morgan and their five children lived in a large, three-story, fashionable Victorian house with servants. During this era in America (the beginning of the Gilded Age) members of the lower classes couldn’t attend public school, and even in the wealthiest of families, girls were not encouraged to attend high school. But Mr. and Mrs. Morgan strongly believed that a good education was important for all five of their children.
In 1867, Charles Morgan had sailed to California as he followed the flock of fortune seekers of the 1849 gold rush. After he married Eliza Parmelee, daughter of a self-made millionaire from the East Coast, Charles lured Eliza to California with stories of riches to be found. Eliza’s parents couldn’t sway their strong-willed daughter from traveling west with her new husband.
Though Charles Morgan was unlucky in his many failed investments and get-rich-quick schemes, Julia loved her father’s happy-go-lucky spirit. Fortunately, the Morgan family was able to enjoy an upscale lifestyle with the assistance from Eliza’s family money. Eliza’s parents paid for their home, and several East Coast visits for Eliza and the children.
On one visit to New York City when Julia was six years old, she became ill with scarlet fever. She was bedridden for several weeks and suffered multiple ear infections. Worried for Julia’s health, Mrs. Morgan overly protected the frail child and tried to have her stay close to home and rest. The strong-willed Julia rebelled, wanting to do the same activities as her brothers, such as playing on their gym equipment and archery. In her travels to the East Coast, Julia loved visits with her cousin Lucy, who was married to Pierre LeBrun, a very successful architect with a well-known firm in New York City. Through Lucy’s husband, Julia learned about the architecture field, and LeBrun mentored her in her career path.
In high school, Julia’s favorite classes were advanced math, physics, Latin, and German. She liked doing homework rather than going out with friends or to parties. When it was time to plan Julia’s debutante party, she was not interested. In the 1890s, debutante balls or coming-out parties signaled to society that young ladies were ready to meet young men and get married. Julia explained to her mom that she wasn’t interested in marriage; her loves were school and studying, especially complicated math problems. Besides, Julia didn’t like parties. She wanted a career—in music or medicine, she wasn’t sure. More women were studying in colleges, and she was determined to have an occupation. Mrs. Morgan realized that Julia’s strong will would help her to do anything she set her mind to. Julia’s sister, Emma, was just as determined and went to college and earned a law degree. Meanwhile, their brothers, Parmelee, Avery, and Sam, were average students who didn’t share their sisters’ ambitions.
In 1890, Julia enrolled in the University of California at Berkeley, near her Oakland home. Julia’s brother Avery had to escort her to classes—a requirement that her parents demanded because a young woman traveling alone was socially unacceptable at the time. As the only girl in her math and science classes, she was not welcomed by her male classmates. Girls were not supposed to do well in or even like math and science, but Julia loved those classes, so she learned to ignore the harsh treatment and excel nonetheless.
As her college studies continued, Julia decided she wanted to become an architect. She was impressed with the projects her cousin’s husband, Pierre LeBrun, had designed. More so, she was interested in learning how things worked—studying electricity, heat, magnetism, mechanics, and sound. She equated architecture with solving a complex math problem or composing a symphony, and she loved working on projects step-by-step. Architecture was not a degree program offered at the university at that time. The closest program was in civil engineering, which focuses on building materials and structural stress. Accordingly, Julia became the only woman to receive an engineering degree at the University of California in 1894.
Everywhere Julia went, she took her sketchpad and pencil and recorded every interesting detail.
One of Julia’s mentors at the university was Bernard Maybeck, an architect who taught geometry at the school and architecture in his home. Julia loved his design philosophies: he believed a house grows out of the land, a house works with the owner, and a house should inspire. To become an architect, Julia would have to get a degree in architecture, and Maybeck believed that Julia should study architecture in the best school in the world—in Paris at École des Beaux-Arts (the School of Fine Arts). It had been a strictly all-male school for more than 250 years, though it was rumored that they might start admitting female students. Julia was up for the challenge.
Once in Paris, Julia Morgan discovered that not only did the Beaux-Arts deny women entry to the school, but it also restricted the number of foreigners who could enroll. Still, Julia was determined to apply. She began to study French and worked in an architect’s studio, called an atelier. Julia was the only woman working in the office, and she felt lonely when she was left out of the young men’s pranks and jokes. She was also running out of money, though she refused all offers of financial help. She felt that the pressures of “homesickness and nervous strain of exams” were more of a burden. Even though Julia missed home, she loved Paris and explored the many things to see, while recording every interesting detail in her sketchpad.
The Beaux-Arts finally allowed women to take entrance exams in 1897. Julia had a difficult time with the math portion because the metric system was used in Europe, but not America at that time. She placed 42nd out of 376 applicants—but the school only took the top 30. She took the exam again six months later, but the judges purposely took extra points off her test score so she would not be admitted. In a letter to her cousin Lucy and Pierre LeBrun, she shared that the jury explained “‘ne voudraient pas encouragé [sic] les jeunes filles’” (“they do not want to encourage young girls”), and she decided to try again, “just to show ‘les jeunes filles’ (young girls) are not discouraged.” Another six months later, a determined Julia took the exam again and passed, placing 13th. She later admitted to her parents the secret to her passing: during the oral portion of the exam, even the strongest of men caved under the pressure—they would “get up, tremble, turn white, clutch their hands and seem to have no power left.” Julia said that she was surprised by her strength in handling the pressure while speaking in front of the board; but, of course, she now had the honor of being the first woman admitted to the prestigious school.
The next challenge was that the Beaux-Arts did not award a certificate to students over 30. Julia completed the program in two years, a month before her 30th birthday, sealing the deal with a first-prize win in the student architecture competition. Julia was now the first woman to be granted the École de Beaux-Arts certificate.
Julia continued to work in Paris and New York, but she was anxious to return to California, so she turned down several job offers. Eventually, John Galen Howard, another École graduate, hired Julia to help him work on the University of California’s building program—a gift from Phoebe Hearst, the widow of a multimillionaire. Julia and Mrs. Hearst knew each other from when Julia was a student at the university. Mrs. Hearst supported women and their ambitions, and she was one of the many benefactors who had offered to help Julia financially at the École de Beaux-Arts but whom Julia turned down.
Julia’s projects were starting to attract attention. She designed the outdoor Greek Theatre for the university and a bell tower for Mills College, a women’s college in nearby Oakland, CA. Both were constructed of reinforced concrete—a new technique used in England and France, but not yet in America. As an employee of Howard’s, Julia also designed a permanent home remodeled from a hunting lodge for Mrs. Hearst, who personally requested Julia as architect. Her estate, Hacienda del Pozo de Verona, when finished, had 92 rooms, with a bowling alley, banquet room, swimming pool, and ballroom. Mrs. Hearst’s only child, William Randolph Hearst, met Julia when he visited his mother, and found they shared a love of architecture and the California landscape.
While Julia worked for Howard, she worked out of her parents’ garage, which she had turned into a studio. She had always dreamed of heading her own studio. When Julia heard the gossip that Howard raved about his wonderful designer and added, “to whom I have to pay almost nothing, as it is a woman,” she decided to take action. To work independently, architects need to be licensed by the state in which they work. In 1904, Julia passed the California state exam, became the first licensed architect in the state, and opened her own office in San Francisco.
But in April 1906, Julia’s world came tumbling down. Her entire office—including all her drawings, records, and office equipment—was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake. Fires raged for days, and firefighters had no means to stop the blazes. The massive quake left 700 people dead, 300,000 people homeless, and 28,000 buildings collapsed. Some of the few buildings that survived were Julia’s designs using reinforced concrete—her bell tower and library at Mills College and her University of California buildings. People quickly started talking about her because most of San Francisco had to be rebuilt to withstand the possibility of another earthquake, and she was the only architect in America with this expertise.
The highly anticipated Fairmont Hotel had survived the quake but was left an empty shell by the fire that raged through it 24 hours later. The owners, anxious to rebuild, approached Julia for the project with the stipulation that they needed the Fairmont ready within a year for their grand celebration. Julia was up for the challenge. She worked closely on every step of the project and gained a reputation for high quality and professionalism—from climbing up high ladders in her tailored suit to ripping out substandard tile work with her hands. On the one-year anniversary of the Great Earthquake, the Fairmont Hotel opened on time for a grand celebration announcing the rebirth of San Francisco, and the hotel remained the city’s social center, providing housing for the city’s wealthy.
With her success from the Fairmont Hotel commission, Julia was the talk of the town—a double-edged sword. The fame brought her endless clients, but she was reserved and shunned attention. After talking to one reporter, she vowed never again to be interviewed. Instead, Julia devoted herself to the passion of her design work. Often referred to as “the client’s architect,” she insisted on working on a design or project with the owner, family, or occupants of the building.
On building sites, the petite Julia Morgan, called J.M. or Miss Morgan, would stand out in a sea of workmen. At only five feet tall she may have seemed fragile, but she was strong. She wore wire-rimmed glasses, with her hair pulled back in a bun. She thought nothing of crawling up a ladder or scaffolding to check construction of a building in a tailored suit and silk blouse. On one construction site, she fell off the scaffolding and plunged down three or four floors into the Sacramento River. After the men on the job site pulled her out of the water, she insisted on going back up on the scaffolding.
Julia refused to carry a purse, so her pockets were usually full of pencils, pens, and sketchpads. She constantly had an envelope on hand to draw a plan or write notes. She was forever on the go, and coworkers jokingly said that she lived on coffee and chocolate. She never attended social gatherings or attracted attention to herself, nor entered competitions, wrote articles, spoke at conferences, or wrote any sort of memoir.
Though she broke through the men-only barriers of the architecture world, Julia Morgan didn’t consider herself a woman’s suffragist. Many of her clients were independently wealthy women with their own homes and projects. Most notably, Julia’s longtime client Phoebe Hearst was a supporter of the YWCA, an organization growing in California that supported independent women. Mrs. Hearst recommended to the board that Julia design all the YMCA locations, as well as the YMCA conference center named Asilomar, on 30 acres of land on the California coastline that Mrs. Hearst had donated.
In 1919, Phoebe Hearst passed away, and her son came back to California for the funeral. One day, while he was in town, William Randolph Hearst walked into Julia Morgan’s office and, true to his word, told Julia that he had a project for her. He said, “Miss Morgan, we are tired of camping out and want something more comfortable on the hill.”
The hill that Hearst was referring to was 250,000 acres of undeveloped land located in San Simeon, California, along the coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco. William Randolph Hearst’s father had bought the land in 1865, and it had been the site of many Hearst family camping trips. With his mother’s passing, William Randolph inherited the land. At first, Hearst wanted a bungalow, but the project soon turned into “the ranch.” Hearst called it “the Enchanted Hill.”
Hearst Castle, San Simeon, California.
Courtesy Hearst Castle®/California State Parks
Julia Morgan traveled from San Francisco to San Simeon to work on design and construction for “the ranch” from 1919 to 1938, almost 30 years. She would work on her many other projects from her San Francisco office during the week, then take a train and taxi ride during the night, arrive in the morning to work on “the ranch,” and then turn around and work another week in San Francisco. The scope of the project grew over the years. As Hearst’s wealth steadily increased, the project changed from a bungalow for his family to a museum for his amazing art collection from around the world to, ultimately, a castle for entertaining guests from the social elite.
First, Julia had to create a five-mile winding road just to get to the building site. Housing for all the crew had to be built. A wharf had to be built for all the building supplies shipped in from San Francisco, as well as delivery of Hearst’s art treasures. Miss Morgan designed an aqueduct system to pipe mountain spring water in from five miles away, and tons of earth had to be trucked up the hill from below to create the lush landscaping designs that Hearst wanted.
The building projects started with three guest cottages, which became mansions with 10 to 18 rooms each. The grounds covered 127 acres and included the Neptune pool built around the front of an ancient Roman temple with columns and statues. Hearst started collecting animals as well as ancient art. The zoo that Miss Morgan designed was once the largest private zoo in the world.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the ranch was the social center for the rich and famous. Guests included President Calvin Coolidge, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, silent film actor Charlie Chaplin, actor Clark Gable, aviator Amelia Earhart, and filmmaker Howard Hughes. Miss Morgan stayed out of the public eye but could be seen occasionally with Hearst, huddled together over drawings and discussing plans for the ranch. Today, Hearst’s ranch is known as Hearst Castle, though Hearst didn’t like guests calling it a castle since he already had an ancient stone castle in Wales.
Julia Morgan and William Randolph Hearst.
Courtesy of Hearst Castle®/California State Parks
In the early 20th century, while Julia Morgan was working as an architect in San Francisco, Marion Manley was building Miami. In 1917, after graduating from the University of Illinois with a bachelor of science degree in architecture, Marion moved to Florida. Her brother, who had just won the commission to pave the main street in Miami, saw the opportunities for architects there. Marion quickly became a registered architect in the state and opened her own office in 1924. In her 60-year career, she designed more 100 residences and commercial buildings and was mostly known for her buildings at the University of Miami campus. Surprisingly, she had no relatives in architecture or role models, and never stepped into an architecture studio until her senior year in college. Years later, she explained to a reporter, “I wanted to work at something in which I used my brain and my hands.”
Julia Morgan is frequently quoted as saying, “Never turn down a job because you think it’s too small; you don’t know where it can lead.” True to this maxim, Julia Morgan designed a total of more than 700 structures. Her house designs, from small bungalows to huge mansions, all met the needs of the owners, including little details for the children such as secret hiding places or outdoor play areas. Her school layouts were designed around outdoor play areas, incorporating her childhood love of the outdoors. She designed churches, stores, hospitals, swimming pools, women’s clubs, crematoriums, and college campuses—all bearing her signature stamp but not defined by a single Julia Morgan style. The clients’ needs were always at the forefront of her designs. In 1950, the same year that William Randolph Hearst passed away, Julia closed her architectural design office, at the age of 79. True to her private nature, she instructed her staff to burn any documents or drawings that her clients didn’t want. She explained, “My buildings will be my legacy…. They will speak for me long after I’m gone.”
Always on the go—both mentally and physically— Julia traveled alone around the world in her later years. She finally put away her passport and returned to San Francisco, where she died on February 2, 1957, at the age of 85.
LEARN MORE
Julia Morgan (Women of Achievement) by Cary James and Matina S. Horner (Chelsea House Publications, 1990)
Julia Morgan, Architect of Dreams by Ginger Wadsworth (Lerner Publications, 1990)
Julia Morgan Built a Castle by Celeste Mannis and Miles Hyman (Viking, 2006)