Julia Morgan is an American architect we all should know about. Her career spanned decades in the first half of the 20th century, and the mark she made – with over 700 commissioned buildings– defined the contours of northern Californian architecture. Because she was a woman and because of her reticent personality, her work was largely unknown until decades after her death at age 85 in 1957. But her buildings are both striking and extremely durable, and remain today as hallmarks of a flexible style. Sometimes showcasing elements of the French Beaux-Arts, other times the Californian Arts and Crafts movement, Morgan consistently designed with both beauty and quality in mind.
Morgan faced many obstacles in her path to becoming an architect, often proceeding as one of the only women in her position. She was one of the first women to receive an undergraduate degree in Engineering from UC Berkeley . She was then became the first woman admitted to the prestigious École Nationale Supérierure des Beaux-Arts (she took the rigourous exam three times) and the first to earn her degree there. When she was getting her career started in California, one of her first employers remarked that Morgan was “an excellent draftsman whom I have to pay almost nothing, as it is a woman.”
Her time studying in Paris had made Morgan aware of using reinforced concrete to stabilize her structures, and this concern finally led to her widespread success. In 1903, she designed a belltower called “El Campanil” (shown in the photo here) by Mills College. When the infamous San Francisco earthquake of 1906 leveled much of the city, El Campanil remained standing. After the disaster, Morgan was able to gain a large number of commissions, her most famous of which was the buildings that made up Hearst Castle, one of which is shown here.
She paid attention to beauty in her work, using exposed Redwood, for example, and really considered the lifestyles of her clients when she designed her interiors. She was a practical person, using pockets in her skirts rather than carrying around a purse.
Sources: “Pioneering Women of American Architecture, Julia Morgan” by Julia Donoho and Alexandra Lange with Karen McNeill, Wikipedia “Julia Morgan”
