The Refectory resembles a medieval dining hall complete with a massive stone fireplace, tapestries and choir stalls, while the indoor Roman Pool, with its glimmering blue-and-gold tile and marble statues, looks like an ancient Roman bath. More Old World influences are evident inside, from the third-century Roman mosaic at the entrance of the Assembly Room to the 15th-century Spanish ceiling hanging above the Billiard Room. Morgan modeled the Mediterranean main house, the Casa Grande, whose gleaming facade features ornate twin towers, carved teak and colorful tile, after a Spanish cathedral. "They both had this desire to take his favorite place of California and give it the architectural grandeur of Europe," said Kastner, who's published two books with photographer Victoria Garagliano: Hearst Castle: The Biography of a Country House and "Hearst's San Simeon: The Gardens and the Land." She's currently working on a third about Morgan's Hearst Ranch work. But as he and Morgan started work on "La Cuesta Encantada," or, the Enchanted Hill, as the 127-acre estate came to be called, their vision evolved to encompass something far more grandiose.Īccording to Kastner, Hearst and Morgan took inspiration from two sources: the Spanish Colonial Revival style made popular by the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, and their collective travels overseas. What Hearst originally had in mind was a "Jappo-Swiss" bungalow, Kastner said, then popular in Southern California. When Hearst inherited the family's 250,000-acre ranch in 1919 following his mother's death, he wrote Morgan complaining of the rustic conditions at "Camp Hill:" "Miss Morgan, we are tired of camping out in the open at the ranch in San Simeon and I would like to build a little something." Her son, William Randolph Hearst, commissioned the architect to build the Mission-style Examiner Building in Los Angeles in 1915. Her earliest commissions included a bell tower at Mills College in Oakland that withstood the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, landing her the commission to rebuild the severely damaged Fairmont Hotel.Ĭalifornia philanthropist Phoebe Apperson Hearst provided one of Morgan's first residential projects, hiring her to remodel and complete her Pleasanton mansion, La Hacienda del Pozo de Verona. Morgan opened her own office in San Francisco in 1904. She became the first woman to receive Beaux-Arts certification in architecture in 1902. "She didn't just remodel kitchens or build women's clubs, but she also built radio towers and zoos and hotels and hospitals and hundreds of private residences." "She had an output that is unmatched by most architects," Kastner said.īorn in San Francisco in 1872, Morgan studied civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley before attending the L'Ã?cole des Beaux-Arts in Paris on the urging of her mentor, Bay Area architect Bernard Maybeck. "The thing that makes her unique as a woman architect is that she was so diverse," Hearst Castle historian Victoria Kastner said of Morgan, who broke up the boys club of California architecture. San Luis Obispo County is home to two Morgan buildings: Hearst Castle and the Monday Club in San Luis Obispo.
John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, now the J ulia Morgan Center for the Arts. Over the course of her 47-year career, Morgan designed more than 700 buildings in California alone, including several YWCA buildings, the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, and the former St. That architect is Julia Morgan, California's first licensed female architect. Although most have probably heard of Hearst and his publishing empire, famously fictionalized in Orson Welles's film "Citizen Kane," the architect who designed his Central Coast mansion remains largely anonymous. "I enjoy imparting what we have there to our first-time visitors, just walking around with them and seeing the amazement in their faces."Ĭonsidered one of the jewels of the California State Parks system, Hearst Castle has attracted thousands of visitors to since opening to the public in 1958. "I was overwhelmed," the Hearst Castle museum director said. When Hoyt Fields first visited Hearst Castle, the lavish San Simeon estate of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, the experience left him in awe.
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