barefootsong's review
4.0
If you have heard of Julia Morgan, it is most likely for her work on Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California. I grew up just a bit down the coast from San Simeon, so visits to Hearst Castle and the nearby town of Cambria were frequent parts of my childhood. I was curious to get to know more about Morgan, who was one of the earliest female professional architects, among the first women to go through the engineering school at UC Berkeley, and the first woman accepted to the architecture program at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. This book leans more toward Morgan's architecture than towards her as a person, but I still found it quite interesting, even as a non-architect. There are plenty of photographs to accompany the textual descriptions of Morgan's designs, and I found myself dreaming about living in quite a few of them. Morgan had a real eye for detail and an admiration for true craftsmanship, making for some lovely places and spaces. Her life has a sad ending, though, as she retired and died believing that no one would ever appreciate her work again since the Arts & Crafts style that was her specialty had gone out of fashion. I love visiting Hearst Castle and now that I know about more of Morgan's work, I am definitely going to have to track down some of her remaining buildings when I'm in California again.
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