This incredibly competitive woman was not going to be deterred from pursuing her dream because she was born with two X chromosomes.” “She came of age at the dawn of the Progressive era, when women were really beginning to feel the frustration of not being able to use the skills they had learned in college,” says historian and Morgan expert Karen McNeill. By 1904, she had opened her own office, one of the few woman-owned firms in the country. After returning to California, she worked for the architect John Galen Howard. Morgan took his advice, becoming the first woman to graduate from the École in 1902. (It was the closest thing to a major in architecture, which the school didn’t offer then.) Her mentor, the great Bay Area architect Bernard Maybeck, urged her to continue her studies at his own alma mater, the prestigious, all-male École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Born into an affluent San Francisco Bay Area family in 1872, she bucked the traditional path for women of the time by attending the University of California, Berkeley, and majoring in civil engineering. ![]() Though naturally reticent and reluctant to promote herself, Morgan was a bit of a well-mannered renegade. “Drive is what she had, and the most spectacular will,” says Victoria Kastner, Hearst Castle’s official historian. Morgan’s groundbreaking career spanned a major earthquake, the Great Depression, and two world wars. By the time she died in 1957, she had designed an estimated 700 buildings, mostly in California, where she was the first woman in the state to be licensed as an architect. The architect Charles Moore described it as a “grand liquid ballroom.” Movie director Stanley Kubrick used it in 1959 as a location for a scene in Spartacus, and Lady Gaga filmed a video there last year.īut the mastermind behind the Neptune Pool - the architect Julia Morgan - preferred to remain out of the spotlight. Cary Grant, Jean Harlow, and Charlie Chaplin all enjoyed the shimmering waters of the Neptune Pool. Seventeenth-century statues of Neptune and the Nereids overlook the pool, which once served as the centerpiece for lavish parties hosted by Hearst Castle’s famous residents, William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies. ![]() They’re also working to address persistent water leaks. (You can actually see the tilework better now that the pool is dry.) Both types of stone have corroded over the years, so restoration architects Page & Turnbull are tracking down replacements at Vermont quarries. Luxurious white marble lines the 104-foot-long oval, along with dark green serpentine tiles forming squares, diamonds, and a Greek key pattern.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |