Cal Poly

Julia Morgan Papers, MS 010

Pages: Collection Summary | Biographical Note | Scope and Content

Scope and Content Note

The Julia Morgan Papers contains architectural drawings and plans, office records, photographs, correspondence, project files, student work, and personal papers from the estate of Julia Morgan. The bulk of the material in this collection extends from 1896, when Morgan left for Paris to study architecture at the Beaux-Arts to 1945, when her practice began to wind down. The earliest piece in the collection is an 1835 remembrance book belonging to Julia Morgan's grandmother. Additional donors have given more than twenty-seven significant additional donations of original Morgan materials to Cal Poly, which are also included in this guide.

The collection is organized into nine series:

• Personal Papers, including family correspondence and photographs, extensive student work from the Beaux-Arts years, and travel diaries;
• Professional Papers, including awards, research notes and photographs;
• Office Records, including correspondence with clients and colleagues and contemporaneous published works on Morgan commissions;
• Project Records, including files, photographs, and drawings on residential and commercial commissions;
• San Simeon Project Records, including extensive correspondence, financial records, photographs, and drawings;
• Other Hearst Project Records, including files, photographs, and drawings for Wyntoon, the Hearst Building in San Francisco, the Los Angeles Examiner building, the Milpitas ranch near Jolon in California and Babicora ranch in Mexico, the Phoebe A. Hearst Gymnasium for Women at UC Berkeley, and the Santa Maria de Ovila monastery;
• YWCA Project Records, including files, photographs, and drawings for Asilomar and YWCA buildings in California and Hawaii;
• Art and Artifacts, including Morgan's Beaux-Arts medals, doctoral hood, and drafting table;
• Additional Donations, including extensive Morgan project files from Walter Leroy Huber, a San Francisco-based civil engineer; extensive collections of photographs and plans for Morgan's masterworks at Asilomar, San Simeon, and Wyntoon; and project files and drawings for Morgan commissions throughout California.

Large and/or significant series include Morgan family correspondence and memorabilia; travel diaries, sketchbooks and memorabilia from Morgan's educational years in Europe; honors, awards, and degrees; business records and correspondence between Morgan and Walter L. Huber, a consulting engineer; professional and business correspondence, primarily for commissions from William Randolph Hearst; photographic prints and negatives of family members, friends and various architectural commissions, including San Simeon and Wyntoon; architectural drawings and sketches for a variety of Morgan's commissions, including private residences, YWCAs and Hearst estates; and artifacts, including Morgan's architectural competition medals won at the École des Beaux-Arts, and the hood she received for her honorary doctorate from UC Berkeley.

An extensive and significant portion of the collection is the correspondence between Morgan and William Randolph Hearst, which covers twenty-six years between 1919 and 1945 and documents the design, construction and maintenance of such Hearst commissions as San Simeon, Wyntoon, several newspaper office buildings, and Hearst's Mexican ranch, Babicora. The Morgan/Hearst correspondence has been placed in the San Simeon portion of the papers, Series 5, Subseries E. However, the researcher should be reminded that most of the correspondence between Hearst and Morgan contains references to a variety of commissions or projects and therefore is found in the first series.

Note that names for complex projects, such as San Simeon and Wyntoon, usually had variant names for individual buildings. For Wyntoon, chalets in the Bavarian Village are known by multiple variant names: e.g., Cinderella House was also called Pinnacles, Angel House was also called Sleeping Beauty House or Fairy House, and Brown Bear House was Bear House or Snow White-Rose Red House. At San Simeon guesthouses had the following variants: Casa del Mar was also called A House or House A, Casa del Monte was also called B House or House B, and Casa del Sol was also called C House or House C.

Within each series the correspondence is arranged chronologically, with Hearst's letters or telegrams followed by a copy Morgan made of her reply, which is the method Morgan used to maintain her office files. Architectural drawings and business records regarding Morgan's other commissions can be found in her papers, although these materials have survived on an extremely random basis and may not be considered representative of the bulk of her life's work. Researchers interested in Morgan's commissions for clients other than Hearst should consult Series 4 Project Records and Series 7 YWCA Projects Records carefully. Folder headings for Morgan's projects files first list the building name, client name, city or county in which the structure is located, and date, if known.

Client names and construction dates may differ from Sara Holmes Boutelle's published lists and have been updated in this guide for greater accuracy. All cities and counties listed on folder headings are located in California, unless noted otherwise.

Pages: Collection Summary | Biographical Note | Scope and Content