Morgan discovered her love for architecture from her cousin, architect Pierre LeBrun (Wadsworth, 19), and started her training with local Bay Area architect Bernard Maybeck during her senior year at the University of California. She attended informal architecture classes at Maybeck's house with fellow students. She was intrigued by his designs, especially the way in which he designed his redwood Berkeley houses to "look as if they were climbing the hills" of the city. She came to adopt his philosophy that "houses should look as if they grew on the land." When Morgan graduated, he encouraged her to continue her training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Wadsworth, 20). Her time with Maybeck and her training at the Ecole in France gave her two perspectives on architecture: she learned first of the Arts & Crafts styles and some experimental forms and ideas from Maybeck and only later took a more traditional training in classical forms and designs. This may be a reason why she was so able and willing to design in many styles. The Ecole des Beaux Arts, the "finest architecture school in the world" (Wadsworth, 20), taught an adherence to classical styles and traditional forms. Morgan began by learning the Arts & Crafts style, and was therefore not tied down by a strict base of knowledge like many other architects who attended the Ecole. Even though during her career she wasn't the sort of architect who came up with revolutionary new styles or innovations, she was nonetheless incredibly talented at being able to work in many styles, and make the results as beautiful as those that might be produced by a student of any one particular style. Furthermore, her engineering training made it easier for her to come up with designs and be sure that they would work. She would have known whether or not an architectural idea she came up with would be possible, or else she would know how to make it possible.

  Ideas & Philosophies

         Ms. Morgan's philosophy was simple: design a structure that works well with its surroundings and pleases the client. She was not trying to be innovative, she only wanted to make the best design possible with what she had at her disposal. During the more than two decades she spent building Hearst's castle at San Simeon, she was constantly forced to design and redesign rooms and buildings based on Hearst's ever-changing wishes and the sundry items he would send to her to be incorporated into the project. He would send home entire walls and ceilings to be used in certain rooms. He would help decide how another room or building would look, and then change his mind on certain details, forcing Morgan to go back and redesign around his new specifications. The Neptune Pool alone was redesigned twice (McMurray), and ended up using many imported Greek and Roman artifacts (including the facade of an ancient temple and statues of Neptune and two Nereids) (Boutelle, 202).

         Another example of her ability to work with what she was given is the famous Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. When the hotel was gutted and severely damaged in the 1906 earthquake and fires, Morgan, who was then only 34, was chosen to repair and restore the building (Generic Index, Fairmont Hotel page). Because of her engineering training from the University of California, Berkeley, she was able to repair the structural damage the building had suffered, and restore the building in time for the first anniversary of the earthquake. If nothing else, this feat showed Morgan's skills with problem solving on a grand scale.

         Ms. Morgan could take whatever a client had to give her for a project and give them something fantastic every time. In "Some Examples of the Work of Julia Morgan", Walter Steilberg, a long-time associate of Morgan's, wrote:
           The following examples [not shown here] selected from the several
           hundred residences which Miss Morgan has built in the San Francisco bay
           region during the past twelve years, present a wide range of problems
           in domestic architecture in which almost the only condition in common
           was that the first effort was to fulfill the needs of their occupants.
           The clients, for the most part, were persons of culture and broad
           experience whose ideas and traditions deserved careful consideration,
           and whose personalities merited interpretation in design. There were,
           however, not more than a dozen instances in which abundant funds were
           available for the work, and the great majority of these houses were
           constructed on rather narrow margins of expenditure. In few cases have
           the grounds and setting been ample. For the above reasons, the
           residences here illustrated are varied in type architectural expression
           and naturally do not in all cases represent the ideal of their architect,
           were purely artistic considerations to rule. Each one was designed from
           the inside out and the object was first of all to build a home
           (Steilberg, 60).
The passage is about residences Morgan had built up to late 1918. It illustrates her commitment to pleasing the client and making the best possible outcome from what she was given to work with. She could overcome all sorts of problems that each project presented, as Steilberg pointed out. The second to last line in particular explains how she would build something that the client wanted and was very functional rather than be completely artistic about it. According to Lynn Forney McMurray, Morgan's goddaughter, her tendency was to build from the inside out, as Steilberg mentioned. She would sit down with the client and discuss the ideas they had for the residence, such as the number of rooms and how they might be arranged, and she would take that information and build the outsides around it. Regardless of whether or not her artistic preferences were being completely met, she would do what she could to make sure the client got what they wanted. She simply never designed for herself (McMurray).

         One skill that was very important to Morgan's clientele was her ability to switch from project to project and style to style with ease. While she was working on Hearst's castle at San Simeon, she would spend nearly every weekend at the site, making adjustments and new designs and overseeing the construction (Wadsworth, 74). During the week, she would be back in San Francisco working on the other projects she and her employees were hired to create. One of the many YWCA buildings she was commissioned to design was almost a complete opposite of the San Simeon castle: the Chinese YWCA. On Sundays she would be working in the Classical and Mission styles of the castle and on Mondays she would switch to working on the Chinese-influenced building in San Francisco and other structures in different styles. Morgan had picked up an interest for Chinese art and design during her time in Paris. "Seeing the art in the Trocadero Museum in Paris" intrigued her and led to her Chinese art-influenced building (Wadsworth, 104), as well as the Japanese YWCA (later renamed Western Addition YWCA during World War II) (Boutelle, 118). She always kept busy on a variety of projects during the work at San Simeon, and each project was, of course, different. This shows her incredible eclecticism and that "she was comfortable and proficient in borrowing the vocabulary from a vast repertoire of architectural styles" to make her designs unique (Generic Index, Morgan's House).

         Julia Morgan wasn't one for the spotlight, believing "architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves" (Asilomar). The fact that she worked on the west coast when all the big architectural happenings were going on back east helped her keep a lower profile than some of her peers (Boutelle, 16). Still, she was not exactly unknown in the United States and elsewhere, and one might expect to be able to find all sorts of information on her and her philosophies in interviews and the like. In fact, she believed interviews, publications, competitions, and those sorts of things were for "talking architects," (Boutelle, 16) and she did not consider herself one of these. She once said "My buildings will be my legacy... they will speak for me long after I'm gone" (Wadsworth, 8).

         While Morgan never married, she treated her employees and their families as her own extended family. According to Lynn Forney McMurray, everyone that worked for her was appreciated and she always made sure their families were well and happy. However, she never played favorites. Everyone in her office had the same expectations placed on them, and her employees would know they were appreciated if they were still employed. She would fire someone for asking for a raise. She always sent Christmas presents to the children of her employees. Morgan even became the godmother of some of her employees' children. If an employee was in financial trouble, Morgan would help where she could (McMurray). She was a modest person, preferring to thumb through a book than take part in chitchat at family gatherings (Wadsworth, 50), but was always friendly and accommodating with staff, family, and clients alike. After a disastrous mastoid surgery in the early 1930s, her face was left sagging on the right side as the result of an accidentally severed facial muscle. This made her even less inclined to take part in gatherings and social events. When she was working on Hearst's castle, she would never eat in the dining room with Hearst and his guests, preferring instead to stay in her room, have her meal brought to her, and continue working. "For an architect," she said, "it is more or less embarassing [sic] to present so unsymmetrical appearance" (Boutelle, 232).

  Illustrating Ideas

         When it comes to determining how Morgan illustrated her ideas in built and unbuilt designs, one is looking at quite a task. Besides the fact that Morgan built many hundreds of structures during her career, there is so little information on what she was thinking while designing and building most projects that it is hard to get a clear idea of what her ideas were in the first place. Because Morgan was always so intent on building what the client wanted, her ideas sometimes took a back seat to those of the client. For instance, when she worked with William Randolph Hearst, his opinion was the driving force behind most of the designs. Whether by letter or in person, he would be constantly telling her what he wanted for each structure and later changing his mind or making small modifications of her designs. While they were working on the castle at San Simeon, "Hearst felt free to make notes on her carefully prepared blueprints, and referring to Morgan's designs, he once wrote that ‘Mine are not ordinary drawings'" (Julia Morgan: Blueprint..., III).

         Of course, she didn't always let clients treat her or her materials like Hearst did. He was a special case, and they worked together very closely. Walter Steilberg commented:
           She sat directly across from Hearst, and they were talking back and
           forth, and gesturing, and he was drawing things, and she was drawing
           things....It wouldn't have surprised me at all to see a little spark
           traveling from one skull to another, back and forth, because these two
           very different people just clicked (Julia Morgan: Blueprint, III).
While none of Morgan's commissions were insignificant, the Hearst projects were handled differently from the rest because of this relationship.

         An important part of Morgan's design philosophy was her attention to detail. She emphasized this in everything she made.
           Details were all-important to Morgan. Her entrances were often subtle
           exercises in opposition, expressing welcome while gracefully excluding
           the world. At a time when many modernist architects were trying to
           dissolve the wall, Morgan enhanced it, glorifying the wall's importance
           by the ways she used windows to punctuate it. Never merely openings,
           her windows were often major design features, shaped and ornamented,
           with various forms and sizes unified into pleasingly rhythmic patterns.
           She used reflective light to call attention to the richness of surfaces,
           arranging for illumination to come from more than one direction to avoid
           glare. Her stairways were central features, using the light as part of
           the design. Fireplaces were many and varied, with the hearth often
           becoming the heart of the home. Paneling and built-in furniture were
           scrupulously thought-out parts of the aesthetic and practical scheme,
           satisfying in the use of fine wood and cabinetry. Meticulous care for
           such elements was a major, ongoing consideration, and she presented
           full-scale drawings for all-important details to the artisans who would
           carry them out. A Morgan building could come equipped with custom-designed
           buffets and bureaus, tables, chairs, lighting fixtures, even dishes and
           linens (Boutelle, 15-16).
In finished structures and unused drawings one can see the above mentioned attention to detail that Morgan put into all her projects. For example, the Chinese YWCA featured intricately-designed Chinese-influenced forms and patterns in windows and other openings, and the building itself even had the feel of a Chinese stronghold to it, with sections of crenelation along the top. The tile portions of the roofline curved up at the corners like traditional Chinese buildings, but in a way that didn't flat out imitate the Asian style.

  Views

         Today's housing industry does not seem to have the same priorities that Morgan had. If one takes a look around a typical housing development, one finds mass-produced everything. Plans, details, and just about anything found in a new house is repeated over and over again in other neighborhood houses. My parents' own house is repeated at least four times on the same street, the only differences being colors, yard size, and the reversal of layout in a couple of the houses. Of course, not all houses are made like this. There is the the occasional unique residence built, but in my experience it's rare to see a modern house with the sort of hand-crafted detail that one finds in a typical Morgan-built home. These days craftspeople are hard to find and very expensive to use for most projects. The personal touches that were so common in Morgan's buildings would today likely be replaced by store-bought items. It is unfortunate that this has become the way that houses are made, but it seems to be a fact of life for now. Many people are content living in cookie-cutter homes that look the same as the other houses on their block. If they are not content, they probably can't afford the kind of money needed to build their own home or to buy one with a more unique look. The Arts & Crafts style is prohibitively expensive today. While Morgan, if alive today, would likely still be building large non-residential structures, she would have a hard time finding people wanting her to build them a home. Another unfortunate factor in today's construction industry is that most recent projects I have seen have been built in styles other than Morgan seemed to be interested in. There are a lot of glass walls and futuristic, experimental forms in many modern large buildings. Although Morgan was talented enough that she might have been able to come up with similar designs, her preference for Arts & Crafts, Mediterranean, Classical, and other such older styles may have kept today's prospective clients from contacting her for their projects. There was an Arts & Crafts revival during the 1960s, but Morgan had died nearly a decade earlier (Boutelle, 13). If I ever had enough money to afford an Arts & Crafts style house, I would definitely have one designed and built, but I may be in the minority. Morgan's ideas may be outdated today, but they won't always be.

  Conclusion

         Julia Morgan was a "client's architect" (Wadsworth, 49), always intent on giving the client what they wanted in the best possible design. She did what it took to get the training she needed to become one of the most important women architects in history. Her buildings have become state monuments, beloved gathering places, and inspiration to many people. When she closed her office in 1951, she ordered the building superintendent to destroy the remaining files, records, and drawings (Julia Morgan Center...). It showed yet again that this hard-working, modest woman wanted the physical presence of her buildings to be her legacy, not words or drawings. She imparted a vast collection of architectural treasures to us. This quiet pioneer may have left us few of her own thoughts, but her works will speak volumes for as long as they and their creator are remembered.

Boutelle, Sara Holmes. Julia Morgan, Architect. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1988.

Generic Index of Buildings by Julia Morgan. No Date Given. Bluffton College. 4-18-2001
< http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/jmindex/genericindex.html >.

Julia Morgan. 2000. Asilomar Conference Grounds. 8-10-2001
< http://www.asilomarcenter.com/DiscoverAsilomar/julliamorgan.html >.

Julia Morgan: Blueprint for Social Change. Luedtke, Pia Lindstrom. 1993. The Concord Review. 8-10-2001
< http://tcr.org/morgan_1.html >.

Julia Morgan Center for the Arts: Julia's Story. No Date Given. Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. 4-18-2001
< http://www.juliamorgan.org >.

McMurray, Lynn Forney. Personal Interview. 2 June. 2001.

Steilberg, Walter T. "Some Examples of the Work of Julia Morgan." The Architect and Engineer of California Nov. 1918: 39-107.

Wadsworth, Ginger. Julia Morgan, Architect of Dreams. Minneapolis: Lerner Publication Company, 1990.

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