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Title: Julia Morgan Papers
Date (inclusive): 1835-1958 (bulk 1896-1945)
Date (bulk):
Collection number: MS 010
Creator:
Morgan, Julia, 1872-1957
Abstract: This collection contains architectural drawings and plans, office records, photographs, correspondence, project files, student
work, family correspondence, and personal papers from the estate of California architect Julia Morgan, who practiced in San
Francisco during the first half of the twentieth century. The bulk of the collection extends from 1896, when Morgan left for
Paris to study architecture at the Beaux-Arts, to 1945 when her practice began to wind down. A persistent misperception exists
that she destroyed records from her fifty-year practice when she retired in 1951. In fact, she carefully preserved many original
architectural drawings and other business records, which were given to California Polytechnic State University by her heirs.
The National Board of the YWCA; Earl and Wright, Consulting Engineers; Mr. and Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, Jr.; and other
donors who wish to remain anonymous have made significant additional donations to the collection, which are also included
in this guide.
Extent:
99 boxes, 25 flat file drawers, 12 tubes, 7 artifacts
Languages:
English FrenchGermanItalian
English FrenchGermanItalian
Repository:
Special Collections, Robert E. Kennedy Library
California Polytechnic State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Donated by Julia Morgan's heir in 1980, the papers of Julia Morgan are housed in and administered by Special Collections at
Cal Poly. The National Board of the YWCA; Earl and Wright, Consulting Engineers; Mr. and Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, Jr.;
and other donors who wish to remain anonymous have made significant additional donations to the collection.
Collection is open to qualified researchers by appointment. For more information on access policies and to obtain a copy of
the Researcher Registration form, please visit the Special Collections Access page. Advance notice required for use.
Restrictions on Use and Reproduction
The materials from this collection are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study, pursuant to U.S. Copyright
law. Photocopying of material is permitted at staff discretion and provided on a fee basis. Photocopies are not to be used
for any purpose other than for private study, scholarship, or research. Special Collections reserves the right to limit photocopying
and deny access or reproduction.
For use other than private study, scholarship, or research, including permission to reproduce, publish, broadcast, exhibit,
and/or quote from this collection, researchers must submit a written request and obtain permission from Special Collections
as the owner of the physical collection. Researchers should also consult with an appropriate staff member regarding specific
literary or other intellectual property rights pertaining to this collection. The researcher assumes full responsibility for
any use of the materials. Permission to reproduce, publish, broadcast, or exhibit is granted by separate licensing agreement
on a fee basis.
Julia Morgan Papers, Special Collections, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
Abbreviations Used:
AIA: American Institute of Architects
ART: artifact
c.: circa
FF: flat file
n.d.: no date
n.p.: no publisher
PPIE: Panama–Pacific International Exposition
T: tube
YWCA:Young Women’s Christian Association
The National Endowment for the Humanities has generously funded the arrangement and description of this collection, along
with matching funds from California Polytechnic State University.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.
Architecture -- California.
Architects -- California -- Correspondence.
Architecture, Domestic -- California -- San Francisco Bay Area.
Architecture, Domestic -- California -- San Simeon.
Arts and crafts movement -- California -- San Francisco Bay Area -- History -- 20th century.
Asilomar Conference Grounds (Pacific Grove, Calif.)
Berkeley (Calif.) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
Collectors and collecting -- United States -- History.
École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts.
Hearst Castle (Calif.) -- History.
Hearst, Phoebe Apperson, 1842-1919 -- Homes and haunts.
Hearst, William Randolph, 1863-1951 -- Correspondence.
Hearst, William Randolph, 1863-1951 -- Homes and haunts.
Hearst-San Simeon State Historical Monument (Calif.)
Honolulu (Hawaii) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
Jolon (Calif.) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
Morgan, Julia, 1872-1957
Morgan, Julia, 1872-1957 -- Archives.
Morgan, Julia, 1872-1957 -- Career in Architecture.
Oakland (Calif.) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
Pacific Grove (Calif.) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
Panama-Pacific International Exposition, (1915 : San Francisco, Calif.)
Piedmont (Calif.) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
Regionalism in architecture -- California -- San Francisco Bay Area.
San Francisco (Calif.) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
San Luis Obispo (Calif.) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
San Simeon Ranch (Calif.) -- History.
San Simeon (Calif.) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
Steilberg, Walter T., 1886-1974.
Wyntoon (Calif. : Estate) -- History.
Young Women's Christian Association of the U.S.A.
Young Women's Christian associations -- United States -- History.
Architectural drawings and plans.
Correspondence.
Family papers.
Business records.
Photographs.
Artifacts.
Architectural elements.
Materials Cataloged Separately
The following monographs owned by Julia Morgan have been cataloged with separate MARC records:
Concours de L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts: (Medailles et Mentions) Dessines D'apres les Originaux par J. Boussard. (2 vol.) Paris: V. A. Morel, 1874-1875.
The Golden Gate, San Francisco: Through These Protecting Headlands $473,793,940 Worth of Foreign Commerce Passed In During
1919
. San Francisco: San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, 1920.
Industrial San Francisco in Word and Picture. San Francisco: San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, 1920.
Park, Andrew G.
The City Beautiful: San Francisco Past, Present and Future; Illustrated With Photographs Which Were Taken Before, During,
and After the Earthquake and Fire of April 18, '06; With a Brief Sketch of San Francisco's History and Magnificent Future
. Los Angeles: Houston & Harding, 1906.
Taylor, Edward Robeson, 1838-1923.
Into the Light. San Francisco: Taylor, Nash & Taylor, 1911.
Trial by Fire at San Francisco: The Evidence of the Camera. Pittsburg, : National Fire Proofing Company, [1906].
The following monographs came from additional donors and purchases and are cataloged separately:
Series 9 Subseries I. W.R. Hearst Design Notes and Books [MS 83]
The Phoebe A. Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California. San Francisco CA : J.B. Reinstein, [1899?].
Dami, Luigi.
The Italian Garden. Translated by L. Scopoli. New York: Brentano's, [1925?].
Eberlein, Harold Donaldson.
Villas of Florence and Tuscany, with a Frontispiece in Colour and 299 Illustrations Mostly from Photographs by the Author. Philadelphia, London, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1922.
Series 9 Subseries L. Hearst Association Copy [MS 84] Tipping, Henry Avray, 1855-1933.
English Homes, Period I: Norman and Plantagenet, 1066-1485. (vol. 1). London, Offices of Country Life [etc.]; New York, C. Scribner's Sons, 1921.
The Monastery Santa Maria De Oliva. Possibly published in San Francisco: Publisher not identified, 1950s.
Related Collections
Special Collections, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo:
Sara Holmes Boutelle Papers, 1972-1999 (MS 141)
Julia Morgan—Sara Holmes Boutelle Collection, 1877-1958 (MS 27)
Camille Solon Drawings Collection, 1900-1952 (MS 106)
Julia Morgan—Walter T. Steilberg Collection (MS 144) ca. 1910-1974 (1973-1)
Edward G. Trinkkeller Papers, 1896-1999 (MS 97)
The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley:
Julia Morgan Architectural Drawings, 1907-1929 (BANC MSS 71/156 c)
Correspondence Concerning the Phoebe Hearst Architectural Plan for the University of California, 1896 Oct 22-23 (UARC 308gh.cor)
George and Phoebe Apperson Hearst Papers, 1849-1926 (BANC MSS 72/204 c)
Environmental Design Archives, UC Berkeley:
Julia Morgan Collection, 1893-1980 (1959-2)
Julia Morgan/Forney Collection, 1907-1931 (1983-2)
Edward Bright Hussey Collection, 1915-1975 (1977-2)
Walter T. Steilberg Collection, ca. 1910-1974 (1973-1)
Special Collections, UCLA:
Harriet Rochlin Collection of Material about Women Architects in the United States, 1887-1979 (1591)
Born in San Francisco, Julia Morgan (1872-1957) grew up in Oakland in a spacious Victorian house. Gifted in mathematics and
encouraged in her studies by her mother, Morgan was influenced to become an architect by her mother's cousin, Pierre Le Brun,
who designed an early skyscraper, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower in Manhattan. In 1890, she enrolled in the undergraduate
civil engineering program at the University of California at Berkeley, in part because there were no architectural schools
on the West coast at that time. After graduation, Berkeley instructor and architect Bernard Maybeck recommended further study
at his alma mater, L'École des Beaux-Arts, where the curriculum was renowned for the scope and majesty of its assignments:
apartment suites in palaces, art galleries, opera houses, and other opulent environments fit for lavish, if imaginary, clients.
Once in Paris, Morgan failed the entrance exam twice. Morgan then learned that the faculty had failed her deliberately to
discourage her admission. Eventually the faculty relented and Morgan went on to win medals for her work in mathematics, architecture,
and design. She traveled throughout Europe in her free time, filling sketchbook after sketchbook with accomplished watercolors,
pastels, and line drawings. In 1902, Morgan was certified by the Beaux-Arts in architecture.
Returning to California upon graduation, Morgan became the first woman licensed as an architect in California, working first
for John Galen Howard on several significant University of California buildings as part of the campus master plan bankrolled
by philanthropist Phoebe Apperson Hearst.
In 1904, Morgan opened her own office in San Francisco. One of her first commissions, a campanile for the Oakland campus of
Mills College, withstood the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, bringing her local acclaim and new commissions, including rebuilding
the earthquake-damaged Fairmont Hotel. From this point Morgan's career was assured, and her practice thrived.
Morgan designed her first YWCA building in Oakland in 1912. The next year, Morgan began work on the first of 13 buildings
in the Arts and Crafts style for Asilomar, the seaside YWCA retreat near Monterey. Host to thousands of visitors since its
founding in 1913, Asilomar is now a state historical park and conference center. Morgan eventually designed 28 unique YWCA
buildings in fifteen cities in California, Utah and Hawaii.
Publisher William Randolph Hearst first retained Morgan in 1910 for a residence in Sausalito, but it was never built. In 1915,
she completed a notable Mission Revival building for the Los Angeles
Examiner, Hearst's flagship newspaper. Hearst was so delighted by the structure that he commissioned Morgan to design his legendary
estate at San Simeon, situated on a crest of the Santa Lucia Mountains of central California. Known today as Hearst Castle,
the estate is now a state historical monument that has attracted more than 35 million visitors since it opened to the public
in 1958.
Morgan's classical Beaux-Arts training, joined with her engineering degree and expertise with reinforced concrete, made her
the ideal architect for this commission, which absorbed both architect and client from 1919 to 1947. Morgan designed the main
building (Casa Grande), and guesthouses (A, B, and "C" Houses), workers' housing, grounds and terraces, indoor and outdoor
pools, tennis courts, zoo and aviary, poultry ranch, greenhouses, warehouses, animal shelters, a five-mile pergola, and a
seaside village for the estate's supervisors.
In 1930, Hearst commissioned Morgan to build a Bavarian village on the McCloud River at Wyntoon, his northern California estate,
to replace his mother's Maybeck-designed castle that had recently been destroyed by fire. Other Hearst commissions documented
in the collections include the unbuilt hacienda at Babicora, his million-acre ranch in Mexico; the unbuilt "Hopi" residence
and unrealized plans for a hotel at the Grand Canyon; and the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Memorial Women's Gymnasium at UC Berkeley.
Morgan also supervised the alterations of Marion Davies' vast beach house in Santa Monica.
Through art dealers Arthur and Mildred Stapely Byne, Hearst purchased a thirteenth-century Spanish monastery in 1931. Santa
Maria de Ovila was dismantled and shipped to San Francisco, where Morgan and Hearst contemplated its use at Wyntoon. When
the plans were dropped for lack of funds, Morgan convinced Hearst to give the stones to the city of San Francisco for a medieval
museum to rival Manhattan's Cloisters. Morgan contributed additional plans and by 1941, the city had selected a site in Golden
Gate Park. After a series of arson fires at the warehouses obliterated the markings on the stones, the city lost enthusiasm
for the project. This last great collaboration between Morgan and Hearst was never realized.
Historian Elinor Richey wrote, "Morgan's work was outstanding not only for its thoroughness, diversity, and volume … but also
for its stylistic innovation and influence. Her early redwood shingle houses contributed to the emergence of the Bay Area
shingle style. She was also a decade ahead of most of her contemporaries in using structure as a means of architectural expression.
Unlike the work of most San Francisco architects of her time, Morgan's was reflective of that being done outside the Bay area."
(Richey,
Eminent Women of the West, p. 501)
Despite shortages of building materials and skilled labor, Morgan remained active professionally through World War II. In
1951, she closed her San Francisco office and retired. After several years of poor health, Julia Morgan died in San Francisco
in 1957 at the age of 85.
The Julia Morgan Papers contains architectural drawings and plans, office records, photographs, correspondence, project files,
student work, and personal papers from the estate of Julia Morgan. The bulk of the material in this collection extends from
1896, when Morgan left for Paris to study architecture at the Beaux-Arts to 1945, when her practice began to wind down. The
earliest piece in the collection is an 1835 remembrance book belonging to Julia Morgan's first cousin once removed. Additional
donors have given more than twenty-seven significant additional donations of original Morgan materials to Cal Poly, which
are also included in this guide.
The collection is organized into nine series:
1. Personal Papers, including family correspondence and photographs, extensive student work from the Beaux-Arts years, and
travel diaries;
2. Professional Papers, including awards, research notes and photographs;
3. Office Records, including correspondence with clients and colleagues and contemporaneous published works on Morgan commissions;
4. Project Records, including files, photographs, and drawings on residential and commercial commissions;
5. San Simeon Project Records, including extensive correspondence, financial records, photographs, and drawings;
6. Other Hearst Project Records, including files, photographs, and drawings for Wyntoon, the Hearst Building in San Francisco,
the Los Angeles Examiner building, the Milpitas ranch near Jolon in California and Babicora ranch in Mexico, the Phoebe A.
Hearst Gymnasium for Women at UC Berkeley, and the Santa Maria de Ovila monastery;
7. YWCA Project Records, including files, photographs, and drawings for Asilomar and YWCA buildings in California and Hawaii;
8. Art and Artifacts, including Morgan's Beaux-Arts medals, doctoral hood, and drafting table; and
9. Additional Donations, including extensive Morgan project files from Walter Leroy Huber, a San Francisco-based civil engineer;
extensive collections of photographs and plans for Morgan's masterworks at Asilomar, San Simeon, and Wyntoon; and project
files and drawings for Morgan commissions throughout California.
Large and/or significant series include Morgan family correspondence and memorabilia; travel diaries, sketchbooks and memorabilia
from Morgan’s educational years in Europe; honors, awards, and degrees; business records and correspondence between Morgan
and Walter L. Huber, a consulting engineer; professional and business correspondence, primarily for commissions from William
Randolph Hearst; photographic prints and negatives of family members, friends and various architectural commissions, including
San Simeon and Wyntoon; architectural drawings and sketches for a variety of Morgan’s commissions, including private residences,
YWCAs and Hearst estates; and artifacts, including Morgan’s architectural competition medals won at the École des Beaux-Arts,
and the hood she received for her honorary doctorate from UC Berkeley.
An extensive and significant portion of the collection is the correspondence between Morgan and William Randolph Hearst, which
covers twenty-six years between 1919 and 1945 and documents the design, construction and maintenance of such Hearst commissions
as San Simeon, Wyntoon, several newspaper office buildings, and Hearst’s Mexican ranch, Babicora. The Morgan/Hearst correspondence
has been placed in the San Simeon portion of the papers, Series 5, Subseries E. However, the researcher should be reminded
that most of the correspondence between Hearst and Morgan contains references to a variety of commissions or projects and
therefore is found in the first series.
Note that names for complex projects, such as San Simeon and Wyntoon, usually had variant names for individual buildings.
For Wyntoon, chalets in the Bavarian Village are known by multiple variant names: e.g., Cinderella House was also called Pinnacles,
Angel House was also called Sleeping Beauty House or Fairy House, and Brown Bear House was Bear House or Snow White-Rose Red
House. At San Simeon guesthouses had the following variants: Casa del Mar was also called A House or House A, Casa del Monte
was also called B House or House B, and Casa del Sol was also called C House or House C.
Within each series the correspondence is arranged chronologically, with Hearst’s letters or telegrams followed by a copy Morgan
made of her reply, which is the method Morgan used to maintain her office files. Architectural drawings and business records
regarding Morgan’s other commissions can be found in her papers, although these materials have survived on an extremely random
basis and may not be considered representative of the bulk of her life’s work. Researchers interested in Morgan’s commissions
for clients other than Hearst should consult Series 4 Project Records and Series 7 YWCA Projects Records carefully. Folder
headings for Morgan’s projects files first list the building name, client name, city or county in which the structure is located,
and date, if known.
Client names and construction dates may differ from Sara Holmes Boutelle’s published lists and have been updated in this guide
for greater accuracy. All cities and counties listed on folder headings are located in California, unless noted otherwise.