Julia Morgan

LOCAL LORE

Julia Morgan’s San Francisco Legacy

by George Rathmell

       Though diminutive in appearance, Julia Morgan was and remains a giant of American architecture. Born in San Francisco in 1872, she moved with her family to Oakland when she was three. Her father, having made his fortune in cotton in the east, provided an affluent life style for his family. Julia was not only small but also suffered from a chronically inflamed ear. Her parents treated her as an invalid, but she was a confirmed tomboy, and, when no one was looking, worked out in her brothers’ gymnasium.

   After graduating from Oakland High School, she entered UC Berkeley, one of the two dozen women students there, and the only woman in the engineering department. As a senior at Cal, she met Bernard Maybeck, who was teaching descriptive geometry. He was quite a character, wearing a waist-long beard and trousers of his own design that reached nearly to his armpits.

   Eccentric as he may have been, Maybeck was gaining a solid reputation for designing simple Arts and Crafts redwood houses that dotted the Berkeley hills. Upon graduation, Julia went to work for Maybeck. Two years later, Maybeck learned that his alma mater, the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, was grudgingly accepting women into its previously all male halls. He encouraged Julia to go to Paris and take the entrance exams.

   Miss Morgan set off and started knocking on the venerable school’s doors. It took two years, but she was finally admitted, the first woman to be accepted in the department of architecture. She was accepted, but hardly welcomed. Her teachers expressed amazement whenever she turned in acceptable work, and her fellow students played tricks on her, pouring water on her head and pushing her off the ends of benches. Nonetheless, she persisted and returned to California in 1902 with a degree in architecture.

A Career Begins
   It was a fortuitous time to return. Phoebe Apperson Hearst had just decided to donate funds for a mining building on the UC campus in honor of her late husband, former U.S. Senator George Hearst, who made his fortune in mining. Since Morgan’s mentor, Maybeck, was in charge of the project, Julia was assigned to execute the classical detailing of the building. Phoebe Hearst was impressed with her work and commissioned her to design the University’s 8,000-seat Greek Theater, modeled on the ancient theater at Epidaurus.

   Morgan then moved from the Berkeley campus to an Oakland one, Mills College. Her first project there was the college campanile in 1904 which she specified was to be constructed of steel-reinforced concrete. The same year, she opened her own office in San Francisco, the first woman licensed to practice architecture in California.

    The earthquake that occurred two years later revealed the vulnerability of most buildings along the fault lines. Morgan’s reputation was greatly enhanced by the fact that her Mills College campanile remained standing. Quite probably, that was the reason she was given her first San Francisco commission, the reconstruction of the severely damaged Fairmont Hotel. That project assured that she would never lack for work. She moved her office to the Merchants Exchange Building at 465 California where she designed the arcade and remodeled interior rooms.

   Morgan’s prominence grew, not only because of her designs, but also due to her temperament. Rather than dictating to her clients what they should want, she listened and accommodated. She never rejected a client because of lack of money, and willingly took on small, simple jobs as well as huge ones. Innovation was less important to her than good construction, and she designed her buildings “from the inside out,” concentrating on interiors that were practical and exteriors that were simple and appropriate to their surroundings. The conference center at Asilomar in Pacific Grove is an excellent example of this philosophy.

   Her private residences in San Francisco, mostly in Pacific Heights and Russian Hill, reflect her preferences for light and airy structures with generous windows, porches, courtyards, and creative uses of wood. Her Beaux Arts training in Paris gave her a classical foundation so that she was as comfortable designing structures in Gothic, Romanesque, or Mediterranean style as she was with simple barn-like wood shingle buildings.

  In 1908, Morgan took on another victim of the earthquake and fire, the 1894 Chinese Presbyterian School. Her clinker brick replacement is at 920 Sacramento and was named the Donaldina Cameron House in honor of a Scottish missionary who rescued Chinese girls from prostitution and sweatshops. The 1912 Gum Moon Residence at 940 Washington served another mission also dedicated to rescuing Chinese girls.

     The building at 1335 Franklin, originally a private home, survived the 1906 quake and served as the State Supreme Court for a couple of years. Morgan remodeled the place in 1914 when it became the Century Club of California. In 1922, she drew plans for a Stick Style Victorian mansion at 300 Page Street to serve as the residential building for the Emanuel Sisterhood. The structure now houses the Zen Center. Tables and chairs designed by Morgan 75 years ago are still in use there.

   In 1917, Morgan created an Italianate building in Pacific Heights to serve as the Katherine Delmar Burke School. Today the building at 3065 Jackson houses the coeducational college preparatory University High School.
  
The Big Job
   William Randolph Hearst, the son of Morgan’s patron, had become one of the nation’s wealthiest men through his success in newspaper publishing. In 1919 he approached Morgan and told her that he wanted to build some bungalows on his 275,000-acre ranch at San Simeon where his family camped each summer. She drew up some preliminary plans, and Hearst began altering them continuously until he convinced her to design the twin-tower castle and three guest houses that comprised 150 bedrooms surrounded by 127 acres of gardens, with indoor and outdoor pools and a private zoo.

Hearst Castle facade

   For the next 23 years, Morgan supervised this monumental undertaking. Several times a month she would leave her San Francisco office and travel to San Simeon on the night train to spend a few days climbing the ladders and scaffoldings of the construction to inspect and direct the work and to consult with her client, patiently accepting his constant changes.

Beneficial Works
   While Hearst Castle was underway, Morgan’s other projects continued. The charitable-minded Presbyterians turned again to her for another project in 1922. Russian refugees fleeing Czarist oppression had been settling on Potrero Hill since 1900 and needed a community center. Morgan came up with the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House at 953 Delta Street, a rustic shingled building, small and utilitarian, but welcoming in aspect.

   In contrast to this small project, the enormous and elegant English-style Heritage Retirement Community at 3400 Laguna in the Marina was started in 1924 on land that was previously part of the Panama-Pacific Exposition. Since 1925, the Heritage has provided gracious living quarters for the elderly.

   Women have understandably been drawn to Morgan to design institutions especially for them. An example is the stately Native Daughters of the Golden West building at 555 Baker Street. Also, Morgan was the favorite architect of the YWCA and designed a number of their facilities during the 1930s, including, in San Francisco, the YWCA Center at 965 Clay (now the Chinese Community Center), the Chinese YWCA and the Tuscan villa-style Residence Hall at 940 Powell, and the Western Addition Y at 1830 Sutter.

   In 1937, Morgan undertook a major remodeling of the Hearst Building at Third and Market, adding a spacious marble lobby and a decorative façade. The Hearst Building houses, among its other illustrious occupants, the offices of the Nob Hill Gazette.

   During World War II, Morgan began to phase out her practice, and, after the war, she traveled extensively in Europe. In 1957, the architectural genius died and was buried in Oakland with, at her request, no funeral. Having shared her profits with her staff, and generally being indifferent to money, she died penniless, but her heritage is the excellent work she left for all of us to enjoy.
  
     George Rathmell is a freelance writer and frequent NHG contributor. The second edition of his history, Realms of Gold: The Colorful Writers of San Francisco 1850-1950, has just been released. His information is available at www.georgerathemell.com.

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