Julia Morgan, Architect of 700+ Buildings
Berkeley City Club, designed by Julia Morgan 1929-1931. Photo by Thomas Hawk, 2017. Creative Commons license.
Julia Morgan (1872 – 1957) designed more than 700 buildings in a range of styles during her long career. Her projects included homes, churches, clubs, hotels, schools, colleges, warehouses, and other commercial buildings. Her most well-known project is probably Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California, the estate she designed for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst over a period of more than twenty years.
Morgan was born in San Francisco in 1872 and earned a degree in Civil Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 1894. She began working as a drafter for architect Bernard Maybeck who encouraged her to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. When the École opened evening classes to women in 1897, Morgan headed to Paris. With little time to prepare, she failed the first entrance exam, as did the majority of applicants. Morgan’s second exam was rejected by the jury owing to gender-bias.
With Maybeck’s assistance, Morgan found an atelier to join, a necessary step for aspiring École students. Her score on her third entrance exam ranked thirteenth among the 392 applicants. On November 14, 1898, Morgan became the first woman admitted to the architecture program at the École des Beaux-Arts. Three years later she was the first woman to graduate from it. After returning to the Bay Area and working for three years, she became the first woman licensed as an architect in California. She started her own practice in 1904.
One of Morgan’s earliest solo projects was a bell tower at Mills College. She designed it of reinforced concrete, a system she had studied extensively. The builder, whose father was experienced in reinforced concrete, undermined Morgan’s authority with the client and ultimately took the lion’s share of credit for the completed tower. Nonetheless, Morgan received other commissions from the college. When the bell tower remained unharmed after San Francisco’s great earthquake in 1906, Morgan’s services were in demand owing to the devastation in the city around it.
Philanthropist and women’s advocate Phoebe Apperson Hearst was one of Morgan’s earliest clients. She steered many YWCA and other projects toward Morgan’s office. She also introduced her son William Randolph Hearst to Morgan. Morgan would go on to design a number of projects for him and his businesses.
Morgan employed draftsmen and apprentices including three women who earned their architectural licenses. Morgan always maintained control of the firm’s projects and designs, with clients rarely meeting with anyone else in the office; she would not lose her authority again.
Morgan retired owing to poor health in 1951 at age 79. She had never embraced modernism, the style of the era. After establishing her practice, Morgan stopped granting interviews, perhaps because the resultant articles from early-career interviews focused on her gender rather than her work. In spite of the quality of her designs, Morgan’s contributions to architecture were forgotten for decades.
This changed in 1988 when Sara Holmes Boutelle’s monograph on Morgan was published. After an effort led by architect and attorney Julia Donoho, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) posthumously awarded Julia Morgan their Gold Medal in 2014 in recognition of her “lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture.” Of the nearly seventy architects awarded the AIA Gold Medal between 1907 and 2014, Julia Morgan was once again the first woman.
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Sources
Boutelle, Sara Holmes. Julia Morgan: Architect (2nd Edition). New York and London: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1995.
Donoho, Julia and Alexandra Lange with Karen McNeill, Pioneering Women of American Architecture: Julia Morgan.
Lange, Alexandra, “Overlooked No More: Julia Morgan, Pioneering Female Architect,” New York Times, March 6, 2019.
McNeill, Karen, “Julia Morgan: Gender, Architecture, and Professional Style,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 2 (May 2007), pp. 229-268.