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closeMark Wilson was first smitten by the architecture of Julia Morgan in the early 1970s while he was working on his bachelor’s degree in history at UC Berkeley.
He was walking along College Avenue when he noticed what he recalls as “an intriguing building.” It turned out to be St. John’s Presbyterian Church.
Wilson couldn’t resist going inside, where he soon learned that a female architect had designed the church in 1908 and that it was scheduled for demolition.
A cultural revolutionary
Today, that building is the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts. And Wilson is now an authority on the woman he describes as “a cultural revolutionary in a flowered hat,” as well as “a quiet feminist who blazed a trail for women in a profession that had never allowed women to participate fully until she came along.”
Wilson eventually wrote his master’s thesis at Berkeley on Morgan, but it is the publication of his book “Julia Morgan: Architect of Beauty” that is likely to cement his reputation as the leading scholar on Morgan, who died in 1957.
The book is likely to put to rest some misconceptions about Morgan, including that she ordered all her drawings to be destroyed.
Perhaps best of all, the book includes some Morgan designs that were mistakenly believed to have been torn down—a home in San Jose’s Rose Garden neighborhood, for example, as well as one in Saratoga.
“The thing I worked hardest on,” Wilson said, “was to get sites never photographed or documented. They may be mentioned in a monograph, but some are like that wonderful house in San Jose.”
Hidden gems in San Jose
That “wonderful house” is the James Pierce house at 1650 The Alameda, now the home of J. Morgan Gallery of fine art glass, the offices of World Art Glass Quarterly magazine and the offices of Bob Cullen, who, along with his wife, June Lim, restored the mansion they now own.
A change in street numbers on The Alameda led to the erroneous belief that the Pierce mansion had been torn down.
A call to Wilson from a reporter doing a story on the mansion’s restoration alerted him to the fact it was still there, and he worked quickly to include the house in his book.
In addition to photos of the Pierce house, Wilson reproduced Morgan’s drawings of the front and side elevations, taken from her original plans that were still in the house.
Another Silicon Valley structure featured in the book is the Chauncey Goodrich House in Saratoga. Designed by Morgan and built in 1920, the 13,000-square-foot house is one of the largest residences she designed, aside from her most famous commission: Hearst Castle at San Simeon.
The Goodrich house was purchased in 1999 by David and Roxanne Peterschmidt, who have since restored it and landscaped the surrounding property.
More than the castle
Wilson hopes his book, which is lavishly illustrated and features 150 Morgan-designed structures — including 50 never before photographed or included in any other book—will increase awareness of her work.
“That’s one reason I wrote this book,” he said. “She’s getting better known—in the Bay Area, particularly—but she deserves to be on the same level as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Bernard Maybeck and Greene and Greene.
“She could inspire a generation of young people to go into architecture and a career in design.”
Dispelling myths
He also wanted to dispel some of the myths that surround Morgan and her work.
Perhaps the one most repeated is that she destroyed her blueprints and office records when she retired in 1950.
“In reality, Morgan only destroyed a relative handful of her records and none of her plans,” Wilson said.
Many are archived at UC Berkeley and Cal Poly and her goddaughter Lynn Forney McMurray has 100 sets of original drawings, as well as the drafting record books from Morgan’s office from 1919 until it closed and the paper trail for all her commissions, according to Wilson.
Wilson, with McMurray’s help, used many of these documents to verify the authenticity of Morgan structures.
Wilson also wants the public to be aware of Morgan’s productivity.
“She outproduced every other major American architect,” he says. “It’s 532 buildings for Frank Lloyd Wright, and she completed close to 750.”
Wilson also bristles at the thought that Morgan was heavily influenced by Wright and Maybeck, whom she studied under at Berkeley and worked for after graduation.
“She was influenced, but she synthesized the two into something unique,” Wilson said. “She didn’t copy anything. When I see a building that’s a Julia Morgan, I can almost always tell because of the refinement of proportions.”
More than a
coffee-table book
It’s easy to look at “Julia Morgan: Architect of Beauty” as a sumptuous coffee-table book.
But it’s much more: Wilson shares the fruits of his years of research in essays that are entertaining and educational.
The frosting on the cake comes from the forward by McMurray.
McMurray writes of her mother being hired “to be Miss Morgan’s private secretary,” a job she held for 33 years. McMurray’s firsthand knowledge makes the architect very real as she writes of Morgan’s ongoing inner ear problem and how a 1932 surgery failed to correct the problem and resulted in partial paralysis of her face, her coping with a lisp and her dealing with her brother’s manic breakdown.
A legendary woman
At the same time, you get a sense of the passion Morgan had for what she did that kept her working until she was 78; the love and care she gave employees she treated as an extended family; and her belief in herself.
McMurray writes that Morgan’s response to an article about herself that she considered insulting was to say, “Let my buildings speak for themselves.”
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