Julia Morgan’s California: A guide to visiting the architect’s signature Bay Area buildings

The 150th birthday of Julia Morgan, California’s famous first licensed female architect and William Randolph Hearst’s estate designer, seems the perfect excuse to get out and explore her signature works. But with more than 700 sites in her oeuvre — from Oakland’s Mills College to the Saratoga Foothill Club and, of course, Hearst Castle — where to even begin?

As it turns out, you’ll find plenty of advice in a trio of books published just in the last year. “Julia Morgan: The Road to San Simeon” (Rizzoli Electa, $75) is a multidisciplinary exploration of her early Beaux-Arts designs by Gordon Fuglie and four other contributors, adorned with lavish photographs and architectural illustrations. Berkeley author Susan J. Austin’s “Drawing Outside the Lines” (SparkPress, $12.95) offers a historical fiction take on Morgan’s Bay Area childhood aimed at kids ages 10 and up. And former Hearst Castle historian Victoria Kastner explores the architect’s generosity as well as her health and family hardships in “Julia Morgan: An Intimate Biography of the Trailblazing Architect” (Chronicle Books, $32.50).

Consider this a book-centric, architectural adventure into the past, one that starts at Preservation Park in downtown Oakland. Morgan grew up just blocks away, when it was a well-to-do Victorian neighborhood. Today, this small business and events district offers preserved turn-of-the-20th-century homes with impeccable lawns and historically representative benches and street lamps.

“You get a feel for what Oakland was like before the freeway came in and everything was torn down,” says Austin. “There were dirt roads with horses and buggies, picket fences and iron fences. San Franciscans would get on the ferry and come to Oakland to see the gardens and have a feel of the beautiful neighborhoods, which wasn’t the case for San Francisco at that time.”

One of Morgan’s childhood friends recalls using the tops of those picket fences to walk from house to house. But while young Julia was reportedly scrappy and unafraid of heights, her body wasn’t always cooperative. She stumbled and even fell down stairs in her family house, leading her mother to grumble the “way she (uses) her legs is simply bewildering.”

She later lost her sense of equilibrium from inner-ear problems and a botched surgery, which would have been a setback for most architects, for whom clambering up partially built projects was part of the job. But she compensated by sticking a finger into the pocket of coworkers and having them lead her up scaffolding. On one occasion, while working on a job, she suddenly tumbled three stories down into a river.

“Witnesses had no idea how she survived, but she did and immediately wanted to get back on the scaffolding,” says Oakland-based historian Karen McNeill, who contributed a chapter to “The Road to San Simeon.” It only increased her reputation. “Guys who worked on Morgan’s buildings – and I say ‘guys’ because this was a hypermasculine world of all the building trades – commented on Morgan’s fearlessness, which was one way she instilled respect for her authority.”

After getting her architecture degree in 1902 from the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris – where in fraternal tradition, she was pushed off benches and had water poured over her head – Morgan established an office in San Francisco. Impressive works soon sprouted around her, including the Morgan-designed reconstruction of the Fairmont Hotel after the 1906 earthquake and fire. (Stop by to admire her handiwork and stay for some tea.) She also designed the YWCA in Chinatown, a fantastically detailed building with red-and-green tiles, a stairway that curves like a dragon’s tail and a meditative fish pond.

Morgan took on many such jobs that carved out physical space for women. “The YWCA was an extremely important social movement, because in the first part of the century, young women were leaving their family farms, they were coming to cities and didn’t have anywhere safe they could live,” says Kastner. “The boarding houses were full of traveling salesmen. So each city that had a YWCA would be for these young women, who were becoming teachers or nurses or stenographers or whatever.”

Morgan unified more than a dozen women’s clubs in Berkeley by designing a grand edifice for gathering and recreation, now the Berkeley City Club. It’s an atmospheric lair that blends Gothic, Romanesque and Moorish influences, with leaded windows and interior courtyards galore. The swimming pool is so stunning, it has a public viewing balcony. There’s also a Morgan-themed bar and a history room with club newsletters dating back a century and explaining, for example, that due to World War II food shortages, menu-planning is canceled but something will be served for $2 a plate.

“I always think of the Berkeley City Club as combining the cathedral, the castle and the skyscraper, because you have the central shaft which is six stories high and stands up very tall,” says McNeill. “So you have women appropriating these symbols that are bastions of masculine power, historically, and turning them into their own.”

Morgan designed the Asilomar Hotel and Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove for the YWCA, where after a hard year in the rat race, women would gather for a seaside retreat. “It was a tremendously important place for them, emotionally and restoratively,” Kastner says. “It’s also one of the largest compounds of Arts and Crafts, shingle-style buildings in the country.”

A couple hours down the coast lies Morgan’s eternal claim to fame, Hearst Castle. The newspaper tycoon asked her to design his country home, saying it would take six months. Morgan spent the next 28 years trying to maintain coherence, while her “fellow architect” (as Hearst took to calling himself) expanded his vision and shipped in warehouse loads of arts, antiques and European ceilings. By 1947, the residence had 165 rooms and 123 acres of gardens, pools and grassland, some of it still grazed by descendants of zebras from the old private zoo.

“He was competing with other magnates to dazzle,” says Gordon L. Fuglie, an independent art historian and editor of “The Road to San Simeon.” “It’s just a very eclectic gathering of art and culture, like a cultural tidal wave washing over you.”

Hearst also wanted Morgan to build him a medieval-style museum in Golden Gate Park to rival the Cloisters in New York. He went as far as purchasing part of a 12th-century monastery in Spain and having the stones shipped to San Francisco. The project foundered, but Morgan was able to experiment with monastic architecture nevertheless by redesigning the Chapel of the Chimes, a crematory and mausoleum in Oakland.

What few people realize is that while Morgan was building California for the 20th century, she was also dealing with immense family tragedy. Her brothers perished in quite terrible ways. One had neurosyphilis, another was mangled in a streetcar collision and a third developed early-onset dementia and went missing from a care center. His body was found nine months later south of Oakland – he’d died from starvation and exposure.

Morgan is buried with her family at Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery. It’s one of the most visited grave sites there, with excellent sightlines to the Chapel of the Chimes.

That structure is Julia Morgan “in a nutshell,” says Kastner.

“On the surface, the idea of a columbarium for crematory urns doesn’t sound like such a jolly spot. But if you’ve been, you know it is the most magnificent, reverent, lyrical structure,” she says. “It is technologically modern but carved in an architectural language that references the past. And it shows how beauty can console us, comfort us.”

If You Go

Preservation Park: This two-block expanse is bordered by 12th, 14th and Castro Streets and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. Learn more at www.preservationpark.com.

Fairmont San Francisco: Explore this Nob Hill hotel at 950 Mason St.; www.fairmont.com/san-francisco/.

Chinatown YWCA: Find this Julia Morgan-designed building, which houses the Chinatown Historical Society of America, at 855 Sacramento St. in San Francisco; www.sanfranciscochinatown.com.

Berkeley City Club: This Morgan-designed “little castle” at 2315 Durant Ave. in Berkeley houses a historic hotel, swimming pool and two restaurants, Julia’s Restaurant and Morgan’s Bar and Lounge, both open Tuesday-Saturday; www.berkeleycityclub.com.

Asilomar Hotel and Conference Grounds: Stay at the historic lodge or take a self-guided tour of this Morgan-created property at 800 Asilomar Ave, Pacific Grove; www.visitasilomar.com.

Hearst Castle: William Randolph Hearst’s palatial estate is now a museum, open daily at 750 Hearst Castle Road in San Simeon. Tickets for tours — options range from grand rooms to upstairs suites, cottages and kitchen tours — start at $15 for children and $30 for adults. Tickets for a two-hour Julia Morgan tour are $100. Find details at https://hearstcastle.org.

Chapel of the Chimes: This columbarium is at 4499 Piedmont Ave. in Oakland; https://oakland.chapelofthechimes.com. The historic building is occasionally used for music events, including Garden of Memory performances typically held on the summer solstice. Julia Morgan is buried at the neighboring Mountain View Cemetery at 5000 Piedmont Ave; www.mountainviewcemetery.org.