Julia Morgan, California Architect by Zina Abbott

I’ve been sitting on this blog post for several years now. I was inspired to write it after, on a visit to a doctor or car dealership in Fresno―I cannot remember which―I happened to pick up a Fresno magazine about early California architect, Julia Morgan. This article mentioned some of her features outside of Fresno, but focused on her design of the Fresno YWCA and a few other Fresno buildings, most still in use today. What better time than to have this early California female professional follow my trio of posts on early California lady lawyers: Please click HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Julia Morgan (January 20, 1872 – February 2, 1957) was an important Oakland architect, one of the first major woman architects and first woman licensed as an architect in California, where she designed over 700 buildings. William Randolph Hearst was one of her major patrons and she was the chief architect of a number of Hearst projects including Hearst Castle, the Hearst Building in San Francisco, and others. Morgan also designed a number of buildings for girls and women including a series of YWCAs across the western United States.

Julia Morgan as a child

Julia was born January 20, 1872 in San Francisco, to Charles Bill Morgan and Eliza Woodland (Parmelee) Morgan. Both came from well-to-do families. The Morgan family moved to Oakland when Julia was two years old, a few blocks away from Oakland High School. It was said to be a large, 3-story Victorian in the Stick-Eastlake style. Julia Morgan had three brothers, Parmelee, Avery, and Gardner Bulkey “Sam,” and one sister, Emma. She was particularly fond of her youngest brother, Sam.

Julia’s father was not a particularly successful businessman, so the family relied on money from Eliza's family. Eliza ran the household with a firm hand. When Eliza's father died in July, 1880, Eliza's mother moved into the Oakland home, bringing the family wealth with her. All these things provided "young Julia with a role model of womanly competence and independence." She turned down her parents' offer of a debutante party, saying she wanted to gain a career first.

 

Julia Morgan's 1899 student ID card from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, taken from the biography "Julia Morgan, Architect" by Sara Holmes Boutelle. (Abbeville Press)

After graduating from Oakland High School,  Julia Morgan attended the University of California at Berkeley where she was mentored by Bernard Maybeck. She graduated from with a degree in civil engineering, then went on to study at the Hopkins School of Art Instruction. With encouragement from Mr. Maybeck, she applied to the prestigious École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the national fine arts school of France. After initially being rejected because she was a woman (the school had never allowed women to study architecture), she was finally accepted. In 1902 became the first woman to receive a certificate in architecture from the school. In 1904 she was the first woman licensed as an architect in California.

After opening her own office in San Francisco, Julia Morgan designed the YWCA building, several churches, and a number of residences. One of the more unusual structures she designed was El Campanil at Mills College, which was paid for by “Borax" and Mary R. Smith. It was one of the earliest reinforced concrete structures west of the Mississippi. When this building came through the 1906 San Francisco earthquake unscathed, it did much to advance Morgan's reputation as an architect and an engineer. One of her first projects was to rebuild the Fairmont Hotel after the destruction caused by the 1906 earthquake.

 

William Randolph Hearst and Julia Morgan

Julia Morgan stood only 5’ tall, and she never married, but focused on her work her entire life. She was an intensely private person. With determination and strength of character, she fought for acceptance in her field. Fearless, Morgan was known to climb scaffolding to examine the construction of her designs. These traits became essential while working with her most famous client, newspaper mogel, William Randolph Hearst. Considered by many to be Julia Morgan’s major career achievement, she designed ‘La Cuesta Encantada,’ a Beaux-Arts extravaganza in San Simeon, California, which was built between 1919 and 1937. Probably her most famous project, it is popularly known as Hearst Castle.

Hearst Castle

Morgan also designed the “Little Castle,” the Berkeley Women’s City Club - a beautiful mélange of Moorish, Gothic and Romanesque elements. Hearst’s mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, chose Morgan to design many buildings for the women’s organizations of which she was a major patron.

 Merrill Hall, Asilomar

Asilomar, the YWCA camp Morgan designed in Pacific Grove, is a California State Monument and perhaps the most prominent Arts & Crafts compound in the country.

A Julia Morgan house

 

In her lifetime Morgan designed and saw built over 700 structures, including over 100 single-family homes in Berkeley alone. She was skilled in many styles, ranging from the brownshingles so characteristic of Berkeley, to formal classical structures and numerous revival buildings. Her homes in the styles of the Arts & Crafts movement rank with the best of her contemporaries. She

St. John's Presbyterian Church, Berkeley, CA

 

She also designed churches, hotels, civic and commercial buildings, and museums. For many years, she was the official architect of the YWCA in the west. She also built residences in Honolulu, Pasadena, Long Beach, and Oakland, as well as Fresno.

Fresno, CA YWCA

 The YWCA residence hall located at 1660 M Street and San Joaquin Avenue in downtown Fresno, designed and constructed in 1922, is distinctive for its Julia Morgan architecture. At the end of this post I have quoted most of the article written about Julia Morgan and her role in building Fresno’s YWCA which inspired this post.

In 2014, the American Institute of Architects broke the gender barrier for its highest award, the gold medal, by awarding it post-humously to Julia Morgan nearly fifty-seven years after her death in 1957 and more than 100 years after the first gold medal was conferred. This organization was prompted to do so after several recommendations by those who recognized the role her architectural style played in inspiring and developing architecture nationwide. "Her work mirrored the social and economic burgeoning of California and the changing roles of women," Philadelphia architect Denise Scott Brown wrote in a letter of recommendation. "Now that we are taking off our blinders, we can see Morgan's greatness...."

Unfortunately, during her lifetime, her reputation eroded as the more austere modernist movement became dominant and the more lavish Beaux-Arts tradition characteristic of Morgan's work fell out of vogue.

Morgan practiced nearly 50 years before her retirement in 1951. She died in 1957, and is buried in Mountain View Cemetery in a family plot marked by a modest gravestone. She said “My buildings will be my legacy…they will speak for me long after I'm gone.”.

For more images about Julia Morgan and her work, please CLICK HERE.

More Julia Morgan architecture:

 

Berkeley Women's City Club

Hearst Building, San Francisco, CA

 

Hearst Castle

Hearst Castle

Oakland YWCA, Oakland, CA

Sources:

https://localwiki.org/oakland/Julia_Morgan

http://greenbungalows.info/east-bay-architecture/architect-portraits/julia-morgan/

Stevens, Janice; “Julia Morgan, Architect,” Central Valley Magazine, September 2018, page 8

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-julia-morgan-hearst-castle-aia-medal-20131221-story.html

https://www.ywcaoahu.org/ywca-oahu-120/2020/4/14/a-moment-in-our-history-julia-morgan-derey

The YWCA residence hall located at 1660 M Street and San Joaquin Avenue in downtown Fresno, designed and constructed in 1922, is distinctive for its Julia Morgan architecture.

A Fresno Bee article dated October 16th, 1988, quotes historian Sara Homes Boutelle, who wrote the first “critical biography of the most significant and successful female architect in the history of their profession.”

Bocelli said, “Morgan delighted in the purposeful variation of scale. She used vaulted ceilings or left trusses open to extend the height of even small rooms, and favored open plans that created a feeling of expansiveness, while sometimes juxtaposing that openness with enclosed recessed to give a sense of shelter and privacy.”

Morgan is noted for visiting the families of her clients and sitting on the floor with the children to understand their personalities and needs.

She then would design the building from “...the inside out,” Bocelli said, with the interior of the building being of primary importance. The design of the YWCA residence hall certainly incorporates those ideals.

The building features Spanish revival-style with Italian Renaissance detailing. In the early days of the 20th century, buildings didn't have air conditioning and heating; consequently, the climate was a key factor in the design of the residence.

The two-story building is H shaped with a courtyard. The sleeping porches connect to the usable attic, and whereas they were once screen porches, they are now enclosed.

“Deliberately adapted to Fresno's climate, this harmoniously designed building had great care given to the function for which it was constructed.

“The exterior might best be described as an adaptation of the Italian villa-style coolant low pitched hip roof, smooth, stucco wall surfaces, and Broad Lodi Wald, unroofed front veranda. Windows are of two types, arched and rectangular, with the Arches reflecting the Romanesque style. Shallow balconies, with simple wrought iron railings and supports, under the second floor windows are characteristic of the style.

“The interior has a lounge for the residence, a small library, and a spacious recreation hall which has recently been redecorated so that it can be used by volunteer workers to provide lunches to large groups as an additional source of funds for the organization, unquote rights and author in quote Heritage Fresno.”

The YWCA building his representative of Morgan training and Neo-classic Beaux Arts Elegance, but, as Boutelle noted, also possessed a Craftsman emphasis on simplicity and utility.

Today the YWCA building continues to provide moderate cost housing for women just as it had since its Inception and is considered to be the last building designed by Morgan still in use for its original purpose. Although it reflects the ravages of time, the building maintains the Integrity of Morgan architectural design and joins with other examples of her architecture and preserving her Legacy.

“Alterations to the building have been minor, and do not detract from the significance of the building. In the early 1940s the third floor dormitories parentheses sleeping porches on parentheses we're partitioned into several smaller areas. Other than this minor change, the building retains its original integrity,” notes Valerie D. Comegys on the building’s nomination to the National register of historic places.

Morgan is also credited for designing a small bungalow activities building in west Fresno and the recreation center on Tuolumne and L streets.

“In 1933, the recreation center was closed due to local financial problems. From 1945 to 1960, it was occupied by the Pacific Bible Institute (Fresno Pacific University). Sadly, the recreation center was remodeled beyond recognition in 1965,” notes Powell.

Attesting to its historical significance, the YWCA residence hall is listed on the national register of historic places, the California register of historic resources and the City of Fresno local official register of historic resources.

 

Early Lady Lawyers of California- Mary McHenry Keith by Zina Abbott

 

In earlier posts, I featured two of the first lady lawyers who were admitted to practice before the California Bar. The first was Clara Shortridge Foltz, and very soon afterward was Laura de Force Gordon. Both of these women, intent on expanding their knowledge of the law after already passing the bar, applied to the Hastings College of Law (Now the University of California). They were denied admission based on their gender. After filing a lawsuit, they won their case. Unfortunately, due to financial and other reasons, neither completed the course of study and graduated.

 

The first woman who attended and graduated from Hastings College of Law was Mary McHenry. Graduatating in 1882, Mary McHenry practiced law for only a few years, although she used her law degree throughout her life to advocate social justice issues, specifically woman suffrage, opposing white slavery and prostitution, and animal rights issues.

Mary McHenry

Mary McHenry Keith was born in San Francisco, California on November 20, 1855 to John McHenry (1809–1880) and Ellen Josephine Metcalfe McHenry (1827-1922). John McHenry was a Judge and Louisiana Supreme Court Justice who moved to California in 1850 and continued to work as a judge in San Francisco. Mary had three siblings, Elizabeth Harris McHenry Lamare (1850-1907), Emma McHenry Pond (1857-1934), and John McHenry (1858-1935). She attended San Francisco's Girl's High School before pursuing a college degree.

Mary's father was not supportive of women's work outside the home, but did not stop her from attending college. She completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1879 at the University of California in Berkeley. Thanks to the efforts of the above-mentioned lady lawyers to make it possible for women to attend law school about the time she finished her undergraduate degree, and without telling her father, she enrolled in Hastings.

1883 Portrait of Mary-William Keith

For a short time after graduating from law school, Mary worked as a lawyer specializing in probates. She gave up being a lawyer in 1883 when she married prominent landscape artist, William Keith. Mr. Keith died in 1911, and Mary did not remarry.

Mary McHenry Keith focused activist work after her marriage. Her work in this area started when she was still a student and promoted the dress reform movement, which drew attention to the ways in which women’s clothing restricted the abilities of women to comfortably and effectively engage in the full range of activities available to male classmates. As a as president of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, she addressed the importance of women receiving an education.

By the early 1890s, Mary was a prominent lecturer and member of the Berkeley Political Equality Club, serving as its President beginning in 1902. With a membership of over 200, the Berkeley Political Equality Club was one of the largest suffrage organizations in California and throughout the West Coast of the US.

 

Mary Keith at 1911 Amendment 8 Campaign in San Francisco

 

Mary firmly believed that women should develop themselves to their full potential, and that they should fully participate in society. In 1895, she organized the Woman's Congress (held in Berkeley) at which time she met Susan B. Anthony and began a regular correspondence about suffrage and women's rights. After the dismissal of the campaign in 1896, Mary revamped and retargeted the movement; publicly speaking to the right and need for co-education, centralizing suffrage as a primary cause in women organizations across the state, and integrating modern devices, such as cars and telephones as a way to reach and democratize rural areas. her leadership in Northern California provided a key role in securing the passage of suffrage for California women in 1911.  

In 1912, Mary was elected president of California’s Equal Suffrage Association. In this role, she expanded her experience and suffrage support to other states, such work contributed to the 19th amendment's ratification in 1920. 

Mary Keith 1910

Mary was an advocate for animal rights. She saw connections between women's and animals rights, and her thoughts on animal rights are reported to have had a strong influence on John Muir. Her advocacy for animal rights led to her service to the Humane Society, the California Audubon Society, as an officer for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and as a trustee of the Latham Foundation for the Promotion of Humane Education.

As a donor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and William Keith’s widow, she also was recognized for her work cataloguing, preserving, and exhibiting his collected works.

Mary McHenry Keith lived until the age of ninety-one. She died in Berkeley, California, on October 13, 1947.

This includes my trio of blog posts about early California lady lawyers. I’ve been interested in women and the law in California for years. However, my research for my romance, A Lawyer for Linton inspired my learning more about these women who pioneered professional careers and held leadership positions advocating for a better, more equitable society.

 

 

You may find the book description and purchase link for A Lawyer for Linton by CLICKING HERE.

 

 

My latest book to be released tomorrow (preordered purchases will actually show up on most readers’ Kindles late tonight) is Lighthouse Escape. What a delight writing this romance turned out to be. I hope my readers will enjoy reading. You may find the book description and purchase link for this book by CLICKING HERE.

 

 

 

 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_McHenry_Keith

https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/saint-marys-college-museum-of-art/mary-mchenry-keith-suffrage

California’s Early Lady Lawyers-Laura de Force Gordon by Zina Abbott

 

Last month I blogged about California’s very first lady lawyer, Clara Shortridge Foltz. You may find that post by CLICKING HERE. Today, I wish to introduce you to Laura de Force Gordon, the second woman to pass the California State Bar and the second woman to pass the be able to argue before the Supreme Court. Those are but some of this woman’s accomplishments.

Laura de Force Gordon (August 17, 1838 – April 5, 1907) was a California lawyer, newspaper publisher, and a prominent suffragette. She was the first woman to run a daily newspaper in the United States (the Stockton Daily Leader, 1874), and the second female lawyer admitted to practice in California.

As an activist, Gordon, along with California’s first woman attorney, Clara Foltz, was a key proponent of the Woman’s Lawyer’s Bill, which allowed women to practice law in California. She also pushed for the inclusion of Article XX, Section 18, in the California Constitution that prohibited the state from barring women from practicing any "lawful business, avocation, or profession".

Laura de Force was born in Erie County, Pennsylvania to Abram de Force and Catherine Doolittle Allen. The family had nine children. Her father struggled with rheumatism, but the children (including at least two daughters) received education in the public schools.

After the death of one of the children, the family turned to Spiritualism in 1855. Starting at age fifteen, Laura toured the Northeast of the United States giving public speeches, including a speech in Boston at age eighteen. During one such event, she met a Scottish physician named Charles H. Gordon, and in 1862, they married. They gradually moved west. During the Civil War, they lived in New Orleans where he was posted. From there, they went to Nevada, and then, in 1870, to California.

In 1870, Laura she helped found the California Women’s Suffrage Society and gave more than 100 speeches on suffrage. She also worked for suffrage in Nevada, speaking throughout the state in the late 1860s and in front of the state legislature in 1871. One paper writing about her speaking at this time described her speaking as "like a stream of liquid fire".

        Gordon and Anthony escorted by Theo. Tilton to seats on Exposition Hall stage

Laura also traveled outside of the Southwest. She representing California at the 1872 National Woman Suffrage Association in New York City. At the 1872 Liberal Republican convention, alongside Susan B. Anthony, she asked the party to seat her as a representative from California. Although her request was responded to with laughter, she submitted a pro-suffrage resolution.

In 1873, Gordon became an editor and reporter for the Stockton Narrow Gauge. In 1874, she bought the Stockton Weekly Leader and converted into a daily newspaper. This made her the first female publisher of a paper in the United States, even though, by doing so, she recognized the difficulties for a woman running a newspaper, having “already experienced the pressure of the tide which a woman must work against, if she dare deviate from the old routine of dish-washing and cradle-rocking.”

Though the paper was successful, Gordon sold it in 1876 and began considering a more financially stable career in law. She did publish the Oakland Daily Democrat between 1876 and 1878 and she was a correspondent for the Sacramento Bee and other papers, with a press desk on the floor of the state Assembly. She also served as an organizer of the Pacific Coast Press Association.

Sometime before 1878, Laura divorced her husband on grounds of adultery. She later referred to herself frequently as a widow, rather than a divorcée, since widowhood was more socially acceptable.

After beginning her legal career in 1879, she continued her suffrage activism. She was elected president of the California State Suffrage Association from 1884–1894, and a paid speaker on behalf of the movement in the 1888 presidential election. In 1892, she spoke at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

In January 1879, Laura Gordon and Clara Foltz were briefly admitted to the recently opened Hastings College of Law and paid the $10 tuition. However, on the third day of classes, they were asked to leave, in part because the school's Dean felt their "rustling skirts" bothered the male students. In February, the women filed and argued a case that persuaded the state's Supreme Court to overturn that decision. However, because of work, activism, and family obligations, neither Gordon nor Foltz were able to graduate. The first female graduate of Hastings was Mary McHenry Keith.

At that time, law school graduation was not necessary for bar admission, so Gordon studied on her own. On December 6, 1879, she was admitted to the State Bar of California, becoming the second female attorney in the state (after Clara Foltz). In 1880 she established her own firm in San Francisco, where she specialized in general and criminal law. Her work included successful defenses in several murder cases. She was also the first woman in California to argue a case to a jury. This work attracted national attention, particularly in the case of George Wheeler, where Gordon assisted the defense and Foltz the prosecution, leading the New York’s National Police Gazette to write that it was a case where "two females will be allowed to wag their tongues to their heart's content".

On February 3, 1883, Laura became the second woman to be admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court, after Belva Lockwood. 

After beginning her legal career, Laura continued her suffrage activism. She was elected president of the California State Suffrage Association from 1884–1894. She was a paid speaker on behalf of the movement in the 1888 presidential election. 

Official portrait for Columbian Exposition

In 1892, she spoke at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago where she declared, “Woman is no longer content to remain a subject,” she said in the 1893 speech at a convention of women in Chicago.

Laura de Force Gordon retired from the legal profession in 1901. She spent her last years on her farm in Lodi, California. Her health deteriorated in 1906 after the premature death of her grandchild. She caught pneumonia in March 1907, and died in Lodi on April 5, 1907.

Gordon died about four years before women were granted the right to vote in California, and more than a decade before the 19th Amendment established that right for women across the United States. But she was always optimistic: “Woman suffrage is bound to come,” she wrote in 1896.

“There has never been a time when so many men and women took so deep an interest in the subject,” she wrote, “and I am happy in the thought that our day of political freedom is so near.”

 

I was prompted to write this series of posts about early California women attorneys as a result of my research for my novel, A Lawyer for Linton. The book description and purchase link for this sweet romance is available by CLICKING HERE.

 

 

 

Sources:

https://www.berfrois.com/2013/08/jill-norgren-american-rebels-women-lawyers-nineteenth-century/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_de_Force_Gordon