Julia Morgan: An Intimate Biography of the Trailblazing Architect

Great informative book about my favorite architect. I highly enjoyed reading this informative text. I highly recommend.

Such a beautiful and insightful read about Julia Morgan's life. You get not only her life but also why she was so great at what she did. Perfect for aspiring architects, creatives, and anyone else wanting to know more about this trailblazing woman.

Victoria Kastner’s exemplary Julia Morgan: An Intimate Biography of the Trailblazing Architect traces the life of the extraordinary woman who created William Randolph Hearst’s legendary “castle” near San Simeon, California, among other influential designs. Morgan’s character, challenges, and creative vision come vividly alive in Kastner’s skillful hands, as do the complex, fast-changing times in which she lived. Readers fascinated by Morgan, architecture, female architects, the Hearst empire, and California will all love this book.

What a delightful read! This book is an overdue tribute to Julia Morgan who was an influential architect who worked over 50 years on over 700 structures (though no official record exists). The author, Victoria Kastner, who was the official historian at Hearst Castle (San Simeon) for many years, give us access to Morgan's projects, her personal life and education. Structured well into ten chapters, this book is filled with personal photographs, letters, and amazing sketches and photographs of Morgan's work. Not only do we learn of the hurdles Morgan had to overcome as a female architect in her education and her early career, she also was "invisible" by not being given credit (or her work was dismissed as not very original) on some of her major projects after her death. She was able to form long-term professional relationships and friendships with wealthy benefactors (most notably Phoebe Hearst (mother) and William Randolph Heart (son) to design and build residences, schools, and museums. This book finally sets the record straight and gives Julia Morgan the visibility and honor she deserves. The next time I visit the Bay Area, I am excited to go visit all of her remarkable buildings (even if only from the exterior).

I highly recommend this book!

Julia Morgan was often dismissed as a one-time wonder for the elaborate castle she built for William Randolph Hearst, but recently critical thinking has shifted. The American Institute of Architects decided to give their highest honor posthumously to Julia celebrating her work in its entirety.

It was the Spring of 1919 when Julia first visited San Simeon. World War I had ended and the country was on the verge of the Roaring Twenties and an era of prosperity. She would spend nearly thirty years working on this project.

One of the unique things about Julia was that she was a native Californian when most of the San Francisco architects were transplanted Easterners. When she enrolled in Berkley's University of California, there was no architecture department so in 1890 she became one of its first female civil engineering majors and she made an important life long friend Phoebe Apperson Hearst, the mother of William Randolph Hearst.

The description of the 1906 catastrophic San Francisco earthquake and how it affected Julia and her work is compelling as well as how the commission to repair and rebuilt the Fairmount Hotel eventually became hers.

Carefully researched, containing new information, and written in highly readable language, this biography is a worthy addition to understanding the life of Julia Morgan.

Lavishly illustrated with beautiful color photographs, maps, and other ephemera, the book covers the genealogy of Julia's family, her childhood, through every aspect of her life and career. She died at the age of eighty-five on February 2, 1957.

The Hearst Castle was presented to the California state parks system and more than forty-five million have visited since guided tours began on June 2, 1958. I was one of them.

Thanks to NetGalley and Chronicle Books for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

A great read about a great woman! Architect, engineer, ceiling buster and advocate of the arts. She was an innovator and a fierce protector of her beloved California. She ran with a very well-connected crowd, or maybe it is better put - they followed her, and wanted her to do their next project.

The author brings Julia Morgan closer to the interested reader in her new book. A great read!

Well written biography. I read it aloud to my father and we both enjoyed as we are interested in Hearst and California history. Nice to read about Morgan rather than how she was a part of the Hearst story. I learned alot about Phoebe Apperson Hearst as well as other powerful women of the time. The only negative was the lack of descriptions of the photos.

As a fellow Berkeley alumnus, I have a soft spot in my heart for Julia Morgan and her works. And while I loved the detailed biography of her (and appreciated they didn't reduce her to just Hearst's architect), I would have loved more focus on and pictures of the buildings and what made her style interesting and special. This could have been 100 more pages and I wouldn't have minded a bit!