Significations et usages de Julia_Morgan

Julia Morgan
William Randolph Hearst and Julia Morgan in 1926
Born	(1872-01-20)January 20, 1872 San Francisco, United States
Died	February 2, 1957(1957-02-02) (aged 85)
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley
Work
Buildings	Los Angeles Examiner Building The YWCA in Chinatown, San Francisco Riverside Art Museum Asilomar Conference Grounds
Projects	Hearst Castle

Julia Morgan (January 20, 1872 – February 2, 1957) was an American architect. The architect of over 700 buildings in California,^[1] she is best known for her work on Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. Throughout her long career, she also designed multiple buildings for institutions serving women and girls.

  Early life and education

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. At the urging of her friend and mentor Bernard Maybeck, whom she met in her final year as an undergraduate, she headed to Paris to apply to the famous École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts.

Denied at first because the school was not accepting women and a second time because she failed the entrance exam (she claimed in a letter that she had been failed deliberately because she was a woman^[2]), after two years, she finally passed the entrance exams in the Architecture Program, placing 13th out of 376 applicants,^[3] and was duly admitted. She was the first woman to graduate with a degree in Architecture from the school in Paris. American architect Fay Kellogg (1871–1918) was studying in Paris around the same time, advocating admission of women to the school, but acceptance came too late for her to attend.^[4]

  Career

Upon her return from Paris, she took employment with San Francisco architect John Galen Howard, who was supervising the University of California Master Plan. Morgan worked on several buildings on the Berkeley 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 was North Star House in Grass Valley, California, commissioned in 1906 by mining engineer Arthur De Wint Foote and his wife, the author and illustrator Mary Hallock Foote. Naturally, many commissions followed the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, ensuring her financial success.

  Hearst projects

  The Hearst Castle facade.

Morgan's most famous patron was the newspaper magnate and antiquities collector William Randolph Hearst, who had been introduced to Morgan by his mother Phoebe Apperson Hearst, the chief patron of the University of California at Berkeley. It is believed that this introduction led to Morgan's first downstate commission by Hearst, circa 1914, for the design of the Los Angeles Examiner Building, a Mission revival style project that included contributions by Los Angeles architects William J. Dodd and J. Martyn Haenkel. It's closed but still located at the southwest corner of Broadway and 11th Streets on a city block in Downtown Los Angeles, awaiting adaptive reuse.

In 1919, Hearst selected Morgan as the architect for La Cuesta Encantada, better known as Hearst Castle, which was built atop the family campsite overlooking San Simeon Harbor. The project proved to be her largest and most complex, as Hearst's vision for his estate grew ever grander over the decades of planning and construction. It later included The Hacienda, a residence–private guest house complex built in hybrid Mission Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, and Moorish Revival styles. It was located a day's horseback ride inland from Hearst Castle next to the Mission San Antonio de Padua near Jolon, California. Her work on 'the Castle' and San Simeon Ranch continued until 1947, ended only by Hearst's declining health.

Morgan became William Randolph Hearst's principal architect, producing the designs for dozens of buildings, such as Phoebe Apperson Hearst's Wyntoon, which he inherited. It is also a 'castle,' with a "Bavarian village" of four villas all on 50,000 acres (202 km²) of forest reserve which includes the McCloud River near Mount Shasta in Northern California. She also did studio and site work for the uncompleted Babicora, Hearst's 1,625,000-acre (6,580 km²) Chihuahua, Mexico cattle rancho and retreat.^[5]

  YWCA projects

Julia Morgan's affiliation with the YWCA began when Phoebe Apperson Hearst recommended her for the organization's Asilomar summer conference center. The Asilomar Conference Center, no longer YWCA but State-run, is still in Pacific Grove near Monterey, California. Morgan also designed YWCAs in California, Utah, Arizona, and Hawaii.

Five of the Southern California YWCA buildings were designed by Morgan.^[6] The 1918 Harbor Area YWCA in a Craftsman building is still standing, as is the 1926 Hollywood Studio Club YWCA. Morgan's Riverside YWCA from 1929 still stands, but as the Riverside Art Museum. Her 1925 Long Beach Italian Renaissance branch has been demolished. The "gorgeous" Pasadena YWCA is being acquired by the City for restoration and public use after several decades of decay.^[7]

She also designed YWCAs in Northern California, including those in San Francisco's Chinatown and Oakland.

  Mills College and other projects

The following are her contributions to the women's college Mills College in the East Bay foothills of Oakland, California, which, like her work for the YWCA, were done in the hopes of advancing opportunities for women:

• The El Campanil, which is believed to be the first bell tower on a United States college campus^[8] and the first reinforced concrete structure on the west coast.^[9] Morgan's reputation grew when the tower was unscathed by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.^[8] The bells in the tower "were cast for the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago-1893) and given to Mills by a trustee".^[9] It is not to be confused with The Campanile, a nickname for Sather Tower, the clock/bell tower of nearby UC Berkeley. Morgan helped draft parts of the UC Berkeley campus under John Galen Howard, but the Sather Tower was not her design.
• The Margaret Carnegie Library (1906), named after Andrew Carnegie's daughter.^[8]
• The Ming Quong Home for Chinese girls, built in 1924 and purchased by Mills in 1936, which was renamed Alderwood Hall^[9] and now houses the Julia Morgan School for Girls.^[8][10][11]
• The Student Union (1916)^[8]
• Kapiolani Cottage, which has served as an infirmary, faculty housing, and administration offices.^[8][9]
• Mills's original gymnasium and pool, which have been replaced by the Tea Shop and Suzanne Adams Plaza.^[8]

Her other projects include the redesign of the landmark Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco after it was damaged by the earthquake of 1906. She was chosen because of her then-rare knowledge of earthquake-resistant, reinforced concrete construction.

The former St. John's Presbyterian Church, which she considered to be her finest Craftsman-style building,^[12] is now the Berkeley Playhouse at 2640 College Avenue in Berkeley, California.^[13] Other projects include the Chapel of the Chimes in Oakland, the sanctuary of Ocean Avenue Presbyterian Church at 32 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, where Mission Bay Community Church also meets, and the large Berkeley City Club, adjacent to University of California. Her work also included a World War I YWCA Hostess House in Palo Alto which was later the site of the MacArthur Park Restaurant^[14]

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, express the Arts and Crafts Movement in the American Craftsman style of architecture. Several houses are on San Francisco's Russian Hill, as was her own residence.

  Legacy

Julia Morgan is buried in the Mountain View Cemetery in the hills of Oakland, California.^[15]

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced on May 28, 2008 that Julia Morgan would be inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. The induction ceremony took place on December 15 and her great-niece accepted the honor in her place.

The Julia Morgan Ballroom at the Merchants Exchange Building in San Francisco was named in her honor.

  Books

• Boutelle, Sara Holmes (1988). Julia Morgan, Architect. New York: Abbeville Press.
• Morgan, J. (1976). Architectural drawings by Julia Morgan: beau-arts assignments and other buildings. Oakland, Calif: Oakland Museum, Art Dept.
• Steilberg, W. T., & Morgan, J. (1983). Some examples of the work of Julia Morgan. San Francisco: Architect and Engineer of California.
• Morgan, J., Hearst, W. R., & Loe, N. E. (1987). San Simeon revisited: the correspondence between architect Julia Morgan and William Randolph Hearst. San Luis Obispo, Calif: Library Associates, California Polytechnic State University.
• Morgan, J. (1987). Berkeley houses by Julia Morgan. Berkeley, California: The Association.
• Wilson, Mark (2007). Julia Morgan. Kaysville: Gibbs Smith Publisher

  Further reading

• Longstreth, R. W. (1977). Julia Morgan, architect. Berkeley Architectural Heritage publication series, no. 1. Berkeley, California: Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association.
• University of California, Berkeley. (1986). Julia Morgan, architectural drawings: inventory of holdings, College of Environmental Design. Berkeley: The College.
• Pasadena Cultural Heritage Commission. (1988). Report on reuse of the Julia Morgan YWCA building: YWCA & YMCA Pasadena, California. New York: Halsband.
• Quacchia, R. L. (2005). Julia Morgan, architect, and the creation of the Asilomar Conference Grounds: including a comparison with Hearst Castle. Virginia Beach, Virginia: Q Pub.
• McNeill, Karen (May 2007). "Julia Morgan: Gender, Architecture, and Professional Style." Pacific Historical Review, pp. 229–267.
• Wilson, Mark (2007). Julia Morgan: Architect of Beauty. Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith. ISBN 978-1-4236-0088-6. 

  See also

• Women in architecture

  References

  External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Julia Morgan

• The Julia Morgan Collection at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
• Julia Morgan — An Online Exhibition
• Julia Morgan at Hearst Castle
• Index of Buildings by Julia Morgan
• Julia Morgan Architectural Drawings, 1907–1929, The Bancroft Library
• North Star Historic Conservancy
• Wyntoon at Great Buildings Online
• Women in Architecture
• Carrillo Rec Center in Santa Barbara
• William J. Dodd: American Architect & Designer - Los Angeles
• Julia Morgan Center for the Arts - Berkeley, CA
• UC Berkeley Environmental Design Archives
• Landmark Heritage Foundation