julia morgan tour hearst castle

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Hearst castle reopens with new tour focused on its architect, julia morgan.

As of May 11, tourist-packed motor coaches are once again making the winding ascent up to La Cuesta Encantada – “The Enchanted Hill,” the Central Coast of California ’s most magnetizing and majestic tourist attraction-slash-architectural landmark (sorry, Madonna Inn ) and the best-known work of Julia Morgan , the trailblazing Bay Area architect and reinforced concrete pioneer who, in 1904, became the first woman to obtain an architecture license in California.

Better known as Hearst Castle , the historic San Luis Obispo County estate suspended public tours in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic; even as pandemic restrictions eventually lifted across California and beyond, Hearst Castle remained off-limits to the public following a historic rainstorm in January 2021 that led to culvert failures along the upper portion of site’s main access road. Now, a section of the storm-damaged roadway has now been reconstructed and California State Parks has reopened Hearst Castle to visitors following its more than two-year closure, which included 10 months of emergency road repair work.

Built between 1919 and 1947 for publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, the opulent hilltop villa first opened for public tours as a historic house-museum in 1958 following the Hearst Corporation’s donation of the 127-acre property to the State of California. Today, the grounds are part of the California State Parks-operated Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument . The storied site is both a U.S. National Historic Landmark and a California Historical Landmark.

“Hearst Castle is a state treasure and we are thrilled to reopen this wonder to the public to enjoy in a safe and responsible manner,” said California State Parks Director Armando Quintero in a statement announcing Hearst Castle’s highly anticipated reopening . “We are confident that these once-in-a-lifetime repairs and improvements to the road facility will serve countless generations to come.”

As detailed by California State Parks , roughly 22,000 annual tour bus trips were made along the main access road prior to the pandemic. Stretching a total of 5 miles through rugged terrain rising more than 1,500 feet above the Pacific Ocean and Highway 1, the final 2.5-mile stretch of roadway “navigates rocky outcroppings and steep canyons by splitting into separate, narrower, one-directional sections for uphill and downhill traffic.” The estimated $13.7 million repair project, which focused on the upper section of the road, involved constructing new concrete retaining walls and restoring some of the existing historic stone walls; replacing the road’s storm-marred, 1920s-era clay pipe culverts with modern counterparts able to withstand future deluges; and tearing up the old asphalt roadway and recycling it into a “thicker, stronger” new roadway as part of a full-depth reclamation process.

In addition to a new and resilient access road, the reopening of Hearst Castle provides the historic site with an opportunity to shine an even brighter spotlight on the Ecole de Beaux Arts-trained Morgan, who has historically taken somewhat of a backseat to William Randolph Hearst (and the estate’s many notable Hollywood habitués during the Roaring Twenties) in public-facing programming. Morgan is now the subject of a new in-depth tour that focuses “on rarely seen areas of Hearst Castle that highlight her gift for design, and photographic displays of architectural drawings, family photos, and personal items.” The timing of the launch of the Julia Morgan Tour at Hearst Castle is opportune as it follows the March release of Victoria Kastner’s Julia Morgan: An Intimate Biography of the Trailblazing Architect from Chronicle Books. The new biography bills itself as “the first volume to thoroughly examine Julia’s private life as well as her career.”

As noted by the San Luis Obispo Tribune , the new two-hour tour was initially set to launch in 2020 as part of a series of centennial celebrations at the palatial Spanish Colonial Revival compound.

While Hearst Castle is Morgan’s most prominent and ambitious completed work (including its main residence known as La Casa Grande, Hearst Castle encompasses four buildings spread across 80,000 square feet and features 58 bedrooms, 60 bathrooms, and one Lady Gaga-famous swimming pool ), she designed more than 700 other buildings over her prolific career. Many of Morgan’s high-profile commissions, both before and after Hearst Castle, were as William Randolph Hearst’s principal architect although not exclusively so. In addition to projects for Hearst and his family, Morgan’s other major works include numerous YWCA facilities in California and beyond, the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, and several buildings on the campus of Mills College in Oakland, including its iconic clock tower.

Morgan, an intensely private person, died a recluse in 1957 at the age of 85 in her hometown of San Francisco. In 2014 she was posthumously awarded the AIA Gold Medal, the first woman architect to receive the prestigious honor. Five years later, the New York Times published a much-belated obituary for Morgan as part of its Overlooked series.

In addition to a new access road and dedicated tour celebrating Morgan’s indelible legacy, the reopening of Hearst Castle will help to resuscitate the tourism-dependent economy of San Simeon, the small coastal town where the estate is located. With its main attraction closed to visitors over the past two years, local businesses hope that the reopening will provide the town and greater Central Coast region with the economic shot in the arm that it so desperately needs . “Hearst Castle is not only a fascinating place to visit, it serves as a backbone to the North County’s economy,” remarked State Senator John Laird in California State Parks’ press release announcing the May 11 reopening.

Ticketing and tour information for Hearst Castle, which is reopening with admission fees $3 lower than before the pandemic, can be found here . For those whose summer travel plans include the superlatively scenic stretch of California coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco with a stopover in San Simeon, advanced reservations are highly recommended.

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June 30, 2022 Special Issues & Guides » Get Outside

FEATURE:Hearst Castle’s new Julia Morgan tour highlights a woman before her time and the joy of collaboration 

Get outside - summer/fall 2022.

• PHOTO BY CAMILLIA LANHAM

The California State Parks system lost $32 million in revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic from Hearst Castle alone.

Between 700,000 and 850,000 people visit Hearst Castle every year, according to Dan Falat, superintendent of State Parks’ San Luis Obispo Coast District, which oversees the castle. Statewide, the park is a “significant operation,” he added, and revenues from his district primarily come from the castle.

“Post World War I, to be able to have all those relics and be able to bring them together,” Falat said. “The history in time of being able to bring everything together will never happen again.”

It’s lucky for everyone, then, that the park reopened to the public in April 2022.

And you’ll be happy to hear that the late Alex Trebec’s voice still guides bus riders from the visitors center at the base of the Hearst property up to La Cuesta Encantada.

In 2020, the estate built by media mogul William Randolph Hearst Jr. and architect Julia Morgan was set to commemorate its centennial. The pandemic had other plans, though, closing the park and pushing the castle’s 100th anniversary celebration forward a couple of years. As part of memorializing the past 10 decades of history, extravagance, art, and architecture, the park’s offering a special Morgan-focused tour of Hearst Castle through the end of the year (at least).

Hearst Castle Museum Director Cara O’Brien said that during the summer, the intimate two-hour tour (eight people, max) will run once a day at 9 a.m. Visitors will be able to explore the hilltop without a lot of other people around, getting the chance to view architectural drawings, family photos, and rarely seen areas that highlight Morgan’s gift for design, as well as learn more about her life and who she was.

Each guide who takes people on the Morgan tour does it a little differently, but everyone is laser-focused on the architect’s contributions to the castle, to her craft, to American society (she worked on 700 projects in her lifetime), and as a female working in a man’s world. The tour highlights the talented people she hired, the craftsmanship of their work, and the way she was able to meld her talent with Hearst’s ideas to build the collection of buildings, terraces, gardens, and pools overlooking San Simeon.

“It’s a phenomenal story, and it really highlights the collaboration with William Randolph Hearst—the intellectual collaboration,” O’Brien said. “Just a fascinating story, how she adapted to his changeable mind. And how she was always able to come through. … Their correspondence is so funny. It’s so beautiful. … Just their banter, and the ideas sparking off each other.”

Morgan created about 10,000 architectural sketches for everything that was built on the hill. She and Hearst had a similar vision, a similar eye for symmetry, and exchanged more than 1,000 telegrams throughout the duration of the project, said tour guide Sharon Foelz.

Foelz called the castle Morgan’s “crowning achievement” during a tour in April.

She pointed out the ceiling tiles of Casa Del Mar, one of the first cottages built on the hill. A conservationist was working to stabilize the gold gilt around the edges of the hand-plastered, -painted, and -gilded tiles. Hearst often replicated the ceilings he found in books at a secondhand bookstore in LA. He would tear the images from the books and send them to Morgan, who would get to work.

About 95 percent of all the art and artifacts displayed at the castle were purchased during construction, Foelz said, and Morgan would design rooms specifically for the objects that would go into them. Windows, doors, sculptures, paintings, mantels, tiles, ancient artifacts—all purchased in the wake of World War I from European and Asian countries.

“Thirteen rail cars full of objects from all the ends of the earth,” Foelz said. “It was quite an undertaking.”

The Julia Morgan tour is $100, and Museum Director O’Brien recommends booking the tour in advance via hearstcastle.org. In addition, Hearst Castle is also offering its standard Grand Rooms, Upstairs Suites, and Cottages and Kitchens tours, which are $30 for adults and $15 for children.

It already feels as if the pandemic is in the rearview, according to O’Brien, who said the park has been busy and still has some restrictions in place.

“Staff is elated. And our visitors are happy and the gardens look phenomenal, and it’s oddly like it kind of never happened. We’re just doing what we always did,” she said.

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Hearst Castle salutes groundbreaking architect Julia Morgan

Hearst Castle was the product of a collaboration between media mogul William Randolph Hearst and architect Julia Morgan that spanned nearly three decades. The Mediterranean Revival-style village includes a main residence and three guest houses. All told, the estate has 58 bedrooms, 60 bathrooms, and 41 fireplaces. Photo by Matt Guilhem / KCRW.

After a year-long COVID closure and then a freak storm in 2021 that washed out part of the road up to the estate, the Central Coast sanctuary of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst is now celebrating its centennial two years late. The famous attraction is using its 100th anniversary to honor Julia Morgan, California’s first licensed female architect and the woman behind Hearst’s grandiose real estate dream.

“I’m a huge Julia Morgan fan,” visitor Suzanne Miller enthuses. “I grew up seeing the stuff she built in the Bay Area and I had never seen down here, so we just kind of jumped in the car and came down.”

Morgan designed more than 700 projects over the course of her career. In 2014, more than half a century after her death, she was awarded her profession’s highest honor – a Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects.

Suzanne Miller says her first trip to “La Cuesta Encantada” – the enchanted hill, as Hearst formally named his mansion – has sparked a deeper interest in the architect.

“I think it’s kind of interesting how hodge-podge the house is in terms of architecture and art, and that’s what makes me a little more curious about it,” says Miller.

Hearst collected nearly every sort of art or antiquity under the sun, but through a collaboration spanning 28 years, he and Morgan made an estate that integrated his boundless artifacts with a home that was, for its time, thoroughly modern.

Atop the hill where Hearst sited his fabulous home, gazing at a temple lording over the Neptune Pool, you can see architect Julia Morgan’s subtle mastery of blending old and new. She incorporated ancient columns holding up a pediment Neptune resides in, part of Hearst’s collection, with improvised elements of her own design.

“This was part of Morgan’s way of working with Hearst,” says tour guide Kathryn Keller, pointing to the structure. “There would be historic elements like the columns there that date back to Roman era, first to fourth century AD, and then fragments of various other Roman buildings up on top. But where you had a gap, you would have the craftsmen step in, cast some nice concrete that would look marble-like, and they could finish out the temple facade.”

As for the 345,000 gallon Neptune Pool, California State Parks’ Dan Falat, who’s along for the tour, advises against “accidentally” falling in. Should you happen to make a splash, you’ve quickly reached the end of your tour.

“They will definitely be taken down the hill in free transportation, issued a citation, and/or depending on how severe it is, it could go further than that,” he says seriously. “We try to dissuade everybody from doing that.”

Julia Morgan was known as a client’s architect. You’d hire her, she’d listen, and turn your vision into a place. One of her challenges at Hearst Castle was a massive fireplace Hearst acquired, for which he wanted an appropriately grand space to house it along with a collection of Flemish tapestries. The assembly room, which Morgan designed around that hulking mantel, is one of many examples of the partnership between Morgan and Hearst. In fact, she described him as the castle’s co-architect, in no small part because they were in constant communication.

“A thousand letters we have in our archives sent between Hearst and Morgan – letters and telegrams, and another 9,000 between their staffs,” Keller says.

Along with frequent correspondence, Morgan also made numerous trips to San Simeon to oversee construction. She didn’t exactly run in the same circles as Hearst’s guests – who included literary, political, and movie stars.

“Julia Morgan was a self-effacing, skinny woman who wore tweed skirts that were inches too long; she wore no makeup,” says Keller as she recalls an observation made by one dinner guest. “And in the dining room, in the evening, ‘she looked like a neat bantam hen next to birds of paradise.’ And yet, she always had the seat of honor.”

Upstairs, in the studio-style apartments that make up the north duplexes, displays on the wall spotlight Morgan’s young life and early career. Not only did she graduate from Berkeley in 1894 with an engineering degree, but she was the first woman to be admitted to the architecture program at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the close of the 19th century.

“When the news came back that she had won a place at the Beaux-Arts, of course it hit the front page of the Examiner,” Keller says. “And her father did say, ‘It seems as if I might go down in history as the father of the distinguished architect Julia Morgan.’”

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