Julia Morgan
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Julia Morgan (January 20, 1872–February 2, 1957) was an American architect. She is best known for her work on Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. Born in San Francisco, California, she was raised in Oakland and graduated from Oakland High School in 1890. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1894 with a degree in civil engineering and was the first woman allowed to study architecture at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Admitted to the Ecole in 1898 after three attempts, she received her certificate in 1902. She then studied with Bernard Maybeck and became good friends with him.
Upon her return from Paris she took employment with the San Francisco architect John Galen Howard who was at that time supersiving the University of California Master Plan. Morgan worked on several buildings on the UC Berkley campus, most notably providing the decorative elements for the Hearst Mining Building, and designs for the Hearst Greek Theatre.
In 1904 she opened her own office in San Francisco. One of her earliest works from this period was North Star House in Grass Valley, California, commissioned in 1905 by mining engineer Arthur de Windt Foote and his wife, the author and illustrator, Mary Hallock Foote. Naturally, many commissions followed the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, ensuring her financial success.
The most famous of Morgan's patrons was the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who had been introduced to Morgan by his mother Phoebe Apperson Hearst, the chief patroness of the University of California at Berkley. In 1919 Hearst selected Morgan as the architect for the Hearst Castle, which was built atop the family campsite overlooking San Simeon harbor. From this point forward, Morgan became Hearst's principal architect, producing the designs for dozens of buildings, such as Wyntoon (a "Bavarian village" located on 50,000 forested acres on the McCloud River near Mount Shasta), Jolon (a "hunting lodge" built in a Mission Style about thirty miles from the Castle), and Babicore, Hearst's Mexican rancho.
Her best-known works not commissioned by Hearst include the YWCAs in San Francisco's Chinatown and in Oakland, the Mills College Bell Tower, St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, and the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove near Monterey, California. Some of her residential projects, most of them located in the San Francisco bay area, may be categorized as ultimate bungalows, a term often associated with the work of Greene and Greene and some of Morgan's other contemporaries and teachers.
Morgan is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland.