Hearst Castle, as it’s commonly known, is often thought to be the genius of one man. But look past the praise heaped upon William Randolph Hearst and your gaze rests upon Julia Morgan, a woman of brilliance and firsts of her own and the perfect partner to spend decades molding Hearst’s dream into a stunning reality known around the world.
Despite their differences – Hearst’s tendency toward grandiosity, hyperbole and not letting the facts get in the way of a good story, and Morgan’s penchant for precision, balance and beauty, and the absolute truth of mathematics and engineering – they did have things in common. Both were born in San Francisco (she, nine years later), they each spent formative years living in Europe, and both were passionate that architecture be designed and built to reflect the terroir of the surrounding countryside.