page_title: Wyntoon
section_title: Phoebe Hearst's castle
hierarchical_section_title: Wyntoon / Phoebe Hearst's castle
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of the exterior of Wyntoon, as published in Architectural Review in 1904. The building was designed by Bernard Maybeck for his client Phoebe Apperson Hearst, and built along the McCloud River in remote Northern California near Mount Shasta. It burned down in late 1929.
context_page_description: Wyntoon is the name of a private estate in rural Siskiyou County, California, owned by the Hearst Corporation. Architects Willis Polk, Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan all designed structures for Wyntoon, beginning in 1899.
  The land, sited at two sharp bends in the McCloud River, was named by financial adviser Edward Clark for the local Native American tribe of the Wintun people. Beginning as a humble fishing resort, the land was improved by a series of people, notably San Francisco attorney Charles Stetson Wheeler, his client Phoebe Apperson Hearst, and her son William Randolph Hearst who disputed with his cousin over ownership. Prominent structures, noted for their architecture, have been built on the land, some lost to fire, while other multimillion-dollar buildings were planned, but not built. Famous visitors to Wyntoon include Clark Gable, Charles Lindbergh, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and his son John F. Kennedy.
context_section_description: Phoebe Hearst, upon signing the 99-year lease, decided to build a very grand residence. She hired Bernard Maybeck to design one in the Gothic style of a Rhine River castle. The structure was mainly complete in 1902, and cost Hearst $100,000. Maybeck hired Julia Morgan to assist in the design.
  The castle's layout was fitted to the slope of the site, and to a semicircle of six tall conifers. Its footprint was 120 by 56 feet (37 by 17 m); an underground cellar was 45 feet (14 m) wide, 15 feet (4.6 m) high, and ran the length of the building, containing stores and a central heating furnace supplying steam throughout the building. The central tower made of stone reached to a height of 75 feet (23 m). A plumbed room entered from the outside allowed fishermen and hunters to clean their catch and themselves. Six floors of sleeping rooms were contained in the central tower; each bedroom entered from landings along the main spiral staircase carved of stone. The exterior of the tower was thick load-bearing crowning wall topped with a steeply angled roof to hold the weight of snow, and to shed excess snow. Glazed Paris-green tile from the Netherlands surfaced the roof, providing "a misty color like the holes between the branches in the trees in the forest." Bluish-gray basalt volcanic stone was quarried from local lava flows; it supplied the strength of the massive walls.
  The living room, 80 by 36 feet (24 by 11 m), had at one end an alcove framing a stained glass window, a copy of the 13th century one in Lorenzkirche in Nuremberg, the reproduction fabricated in the Netherlands. The room's apex was 36 feet high—a meeting of steeply angled wooden beams resting on 7-foot (2.1 m) thick stone walls. A tall fireplace separated the alcove from the majority of the living room; a large man could stand in its opening. Another fireplace warmed the other end of the living room. Tapestries hung from the stone walls to add a medieval appearance. Frederick Meyer made furniture for this room, and for all Wyntoon, in European vernacular style.
  Maybeck designed a dining hall much like the living room, with Gothic stone walls and high peaked roof, and two opposing fireplaces, but its Gothic tables were unusually placed against the walls leaving the center area open. Benches were provided for diners to sit. The kitchen wing, 40 by 40 feet (12 by 12 m), adjoined the dining room, connected through a wide butler's hall. Staff were provided rooms in the kitchen wing. Its foundation of cut stone reached to the top of the ground floor; the second story's wall was of rubble stone. The roof was topped by light gray slate. Initial critical reactions to the kitchen wing's exterior appearance led Hearst to surround it with shrubbery.
  Phoebe Hearst also built other structures including The Gables—a storybook dwelling for overflow guests—and a "Honeymoon Cottage". The castle was habitable in 1902, completely finished in 1904. It was featured in American Homes and Gardens in 1906, a three-page spread; the same space given the house in Architectural Review in 1904. The writer in Architectural Review criticized the quaint wooden carvings which gave the impression of "pastry and perfume", but praised the most important aspects of the structure:
  The dark height of the room, the unobstructed archways, the deep blues, reds and yellows of the cathedral window, to which time had given maturity, the tapestries, the little flicker of fire, and the roaring of the river outside; and you satiated, tired and inspired by the day's trip among hazel, dogwood, great aged pines, rocks, cascades, great trunks of trees fallen years ago—a disheveled harmony—here you can reach all that is within you.
  Hearst summered at Wyntoon and raised her son's children there when he was not watching them. William Randolph Hearst and his wife Millicent produced five sons from 1904 to 1915—each one spent summer months at Wyntoon with grandmother. The boys' father sent instructions about their upbringing, writing after the eldest boy George Randolph Hearst was nearly washed down the McCloud, that the bo
caption: Exterior of the living room showing a stained glass window. The scale is deceptive: A man standing under the window ledge would not reach the bottom of the sill.
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