This is the first post in a series on mostly female trailblazers of the Gilded Age. These were the people that inspired many of the lead characters in my debut novel ‘The Eighth Wonder.’ I hope you find their stories as inspiring as I did.
To launch the series, there is no better way to start than with Julia Morgan on her 139th birthday. That is, she was born in San Francisco on January 20, 1872.
She was a tiny woman with a towering ambition and an enviable self belief spurred on by her three older brothers and egalitarian parents . She studied science/engineering at Berkeley (the only woman in her class) and graduated in 1894 and was then first female student to be admitted into prestigious Ecole Des Beaux Arts architectural school in Paris in 1898. And boy did she have to work hard to get in. First there was the language barrier (she had to complete the exam in French), on the second attempt, she did pass, but they scaled her marks so that she didnt qualify and on her third attempt in October 1898 she placed thirteenth out of four hundred applicants. She completed her studies in 1903, then opened her first office in San Francisco in the spring of 1904. Over the course of her career she designed and constructed over 700 buildings including the colossal Hearst Castle (below). Many of her commissions were for women’s clubs and movements, including the Berkeley City Club (now a fancy hotel) and the Y.W.C.A in Hawaii.
Julia was one of many trailblazing women who inspired the characters in my novel “The Eighth Wonder.”
To learn more about her works of art the book ‘Julia Morgan Architect of Beauty’ by Mark Anthony Wilson is a good place to start.
