Julia Morgan: The Lady Is an Architect

by Gray Brechin
"Can a woman be an architect? The question was frequently asked in architectural periodicals in the first few decades of this century, and the answer was generally affirmative -- as long as the ladies stuck to bungalows. Several women in Berkeley established small residential practices. Only Julia Morgan broke all the rules to become a major California architect. Daughter of a prosperous Oakland mining engineer, Morgan was the first woman to graduate with a degree in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, in 1894. With the encouragement of her teacher, Bernard Maybeck, she became the first woman to enter the revered Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1897, receiving her diplome in 1901. From the moment she opened her own practice in 1905 until she retired in 1950, she was seldom without work, producing an estimated 1,000 buildings and consistently working 14-hour days.
Zen Center, San Francisco, Julia Morgan, 1922
She demonstrated her multifaceted talents in 1906 when she was chosen by the Law Brothers to restore their gutted Fairmont Hotel (after Stanford White was eliminated, permanently by Harry Thaw in one of the century's most celebrated crimes). A gushing woman reporter sent from the Call to interview the young architect complimented her on the fine interior decoration and was sternly informed that Morgan was in charge of structural renovation. This was only part of the truth, as she also designed a splendid terrace, staircase, and gardens at the back of the hotel sloping toward Powell Street. Morgan is usually given credit for the superb trading hall in the Merchant's Exchange, although conclusive proof has be unavailable to historians. She did, however, for many decades maintain handsome offices in the building, where her staff of up to 16 functioned as a surrogate family.Morgan drew on a wide range of traditional stylistic sources for her buildings. The Chinatown YWCA on Clay Street is, of course, Chinese, while the nearby Donaldina Cameron house of 1907 is a utilitarian structure of dark clinker brick showing strong Craftsman influence. Miss Burke's School of 1917-18 on Jackson Street and the 1922 Emmanuel Sisterhood Building (now the Zen Center) at Page and Laguna are Mediterranean in inspiration, though the latter is finished in dark brick.For Morgan, the exterior appearance of a building was secondary to the commodity and convenience of the interior. Her plans and spaces are simple, direct and graceful, no matter how richly detailed. They avoid the spatial eccentricities of Maybeck's buildings, or Willis Polk's, or Ernest Coxhead's. In the 1920's and 1930's, Morgan collaborated with her old mentor, Maybeck, on a number of monumental projects; though the nature of their relationship is unclear, it appears that Maybeck concocted scenographic exterior effects while Morgan devised the efficient plans, structures and utilities that Maybeck didn't want to bother with.
Without doubt, Morgan's greatest patrons were the Hearst family. For Phoebe Apperson Hearst, she designed an addition to the great Hacienda at Pleasanton and received innumerable commissions for YWCAs and women's buildings. Though best remembered for work on the castle at San Simeon for Phoebe's son, she designed "Bavarian village" for Hearst at his Wyntoon estate near Shasta and supervised the dismantling and redesign of an entire Spanish monastery, which was intended for the same property but eventually was donated to San Francisco. (Its remains lie behind the deYoung Museum and scattered throughout Golden Gate Park.)
Zen Center, San Francisco, Julia Morgan, 1922
Julia Morgan was both conservative and extraordinarily competent. In turn, she attracted a steady stream of conservative clients. Grace, refinement, and understatement, rather than innovation and personal eccentricity, distinguish her works; it is her very self effacement in favor of the wishes of her clients that caused her buildings to please rather than to thrill. However, in certain projects, like the camp she designed for the YWCA at Asilomar, one cannot help but respect and admire the exquisite attention to detail, to plan and, especially, to siting, and acknowledge that Morgan ranks with the best of Bay Area architects, despite the ostensible handicap of her sex."