All too often when you hear the name Julia Morgan, it’s proceeded by “woman architect,” but a new book about the Hearst Castle designer aims to reframe how we consider Morgan. She’s not merely a “woman architect,” an oddity in a male profession—she’s a visionary who has no need of the “woman” qualifier because she’s among the best regardless of gender.
“Since 2017, I have been laboring to produce a comprehensive study on Julia Morgan, her fellow California architects, historicist California architecture in the Progressive Era and post-World War I era (1890 to 1930), and new research on Hearst Castle,” explained project organizer, editor, author, and Atascadero resident Gordon L. Fuglie. “My labors at last bore fruit. Rizzoli, the international fine art publisher, released our book late this spring: Julia Morgan: The Road to San Simeon, Visionary Architect of the California Renaissance.”
The book is a stunner, a groundbreaking new scholarly study that “includes much new material, previously unpublished,” Fuglie noted. It, along with Victoria Kastner’s Julia Morgan: An Intimate Biography of the Trailblazing Architect, are the first new books on Morgan in nearly 20 years, preceded by books such as Julia Morgan, Architect and Julia Morgan, Architect of Beauty.
“Kastner’s is the first to engage with Morgan as an individual and ‘working personality,'” Fuglie noted. “She used a number of previously unpublished correspondence to inform her book. Consider this: Morgan has been dead for 65 years. Astonishingly, Kastner’s book is the first serious attempt to chronicle the architect’s life. Sheesh! Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t have to wait that long!”
Fuglie and his fellow scholars’ book is an ambitious realignment of Morgan’s place in history.
“The significance of our book is that it looks at the era of Julia Morgan—not just her as a ‘pioneering woman architect,’ on a pedestal and set apart from California history and the rest of the architecture of her time,” Fuglie explained. “That’s why I wanted to do an anthology that incorporates specialists from different backgrounds and areas of expertise. That’s what makes our study a panorama of its subject—an expanded field. Morgan had renowned colleagues and occasionally worked with them, such as John Galen Howard and Bernard Maybeck at UC Berkeley.
“Further, ours is the most critical—as in evaluative—and up-to-date study of Morgan and her era,” Fuglie continued. “Unlike previous studies, our authors include four Ph.D.s and three scholars with master’s degrees in art and architectural history. Six of us have a record of scholarly publications prior to our Morgan anthology. Four of us have taught at the college and university level, and others have given public lectures on Morgan and California art history. Moreover, we can boast a contribution by Victoria Kastner, who served as Hearst Castle historian for more than 30 years.”
Indeed, the included essays are lucid and lively, and Fuglie had access to a vast array of materials, which made illustrating the book—as he said—”simple.”
“The images had to correspond to the text,” he said. “Read and see, see and read—text and image were chosen for their complementarity.”
Yes, the book would make a handsome addition to any coffee table, and it’s filled with historic photos, architectural renderings, and images of Morgan’s and her contemporaries’ buildings and architectural details, but this is also serious scholarship that makes for fascinating reading for those interested in California art history and early architecture.
Without Fuglie’s early trip to Hearst Castle and his subsequent relocation to the Central Coast, this book might not have been. That first visit as an eighth grader left an indelible mark.
“Remember, visitors approached Hearst Castle via miles of beautiful coastal and inland natural scenery, arriving at the hamlet of San Simeon,” Fuglie recalled. “Once you were dropped off at the hilltop, you were abruptly in the middle of a massive and complex historicist architectural ensemble. The State Parks tour at the time amounted to a torrent of miscellaneous statistics with virtually no cultural and historical context to understand the art and architecture you were experiencing.
“Some people I’ve interviewed recall early tours that didn’t even credit Morgan as the architect or referred to her as William Randolph Hearst’s secretary.”
Fuglie’s book hopes to rectify the chaos of Morgan miscellany and organize her achievements in a cogent and coherent way, and he’s quick to note that without his 2007 appointment as curator to the San Luis Obispo Art Center (now the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art) and relocation to the Central Coast, his early interest in Morgan may have remained dormant. However, proximity to Hearst Castle and its trove of Morgan architectural drawings as well as Cal Poly’s extensive Morgan collection made researching the architect a possibility.
“It sure helped that a former Loyola-Marymount University student of mine is now head of Cal Poly’s Department of Special Collections,” Fuglie noted. “Former Hearst Castle Museum Director Mary L. Levkoff received me collegially. She previously served at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C.”
These various troves of Morgan materials offered a lot to work with, and the result speaks for itself. It’s an impressive, beautiful, and informative book.
“To summarize, it’s the most thorough treatment of Morgan, her work, and her era published to date,” Fuglie asserted. “We were pleased that our book and Kastner’s intimate bio were issued in the same year. Is Morgan-mania underway?” Δ
Contact Senior Staff Writer Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Holiday Guide 2022.