Julia Morgan
Authors: McNeill Karen 
Published: August 2024

Julia Morgan (b. 1872–d. 1957) is the most decorated and best known woman architect in United States history. The San Francisco native was raised in Oakland and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1894. In 1898 she became the first woman to pass the entrance examinations for the architecture program at the École des Beaux-Arts, and in 1902 became the first woman to earn a certificât d’études from that prestigious institution. Upon returning to California, Morgan worked for John Galen Howard, campus architect of the University of California, where she contributed to the Hearst Mining Building, Greek Theater, and initial studies for Sather Gate. Morgan’s big break came in 1903 when Susan Mills, president of the eponymous women’s college in Oakland, hired her to design a Mission-style campanile. When that reinforced concrete structure survived the earthquake and fires of 1906 without a crack, Morgan’s professional reputation and status catapulted her to the highest ranks of the region’s architects. Morgan earned her California state architectural license in 1904, the first woman to do so, and immediately opened an office in San Francisco’s financial district. Her career spanned nearly fifty years and produced as many as 750 buildings and structures in an eclectic variety of styles. Residential architecture—from modest brown shingle bungalows to historicist mansions—dominated the first decade of Morgan’s career. Her clientele always included institutional architecture and women’s organizations too, but 1912 marked the beginning of a twenty-year relationship with the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), for whom Morgan ultimately designed at least thirty buildings in at least seventeen locations (the number keeps growing as new documentation becomes accessible). She was also the supervising architect of the national YWCA Hostess House initiative during World War I. The Hearst family, meanwhile, was Morgan’s single most important family client, beginning with the remodeling of Hacienda del Pozo de Verona, Phoebe Hearst’s country estate forty miles east of San Francisco, and culminating with the Bavarian inspired Wyntoon compound in Shasta County and, of course, Hearst Castle in the Santa Lucia Mountains above California’s central coast. This pioneering career earned Morgan accolades in life and death. The University of California, Berkeley, awarded her its highest honor, a Doctor of Laws degree, in 1929, and in 1940 the women’s board of the Golden Gate International Exposition named Morgan one of the most influential women in the state. In 2014, Julia Morgan became the first woman to be awarded the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal, its highest honor—fifty-seven years after Morgan’s death and 107 years after the award was established. Although Morgan has been the subject of more books and articles than probably any other woman architect in the United States or elsewhere, hagiography dominates the canon. The literature is rarely analytical or intellectual, and it tends to avoid complex topics like race, class, or sexuality. This has allowed myths to persist (for example, that Morgan destroyed her archives) and factual errors to go unchecked (that Morgan was the first woman to earn a diplôme from the École), including in many of the articles and books listed below.