then an now...Julia Morgan (1872-1957) was a distinguished Califor-nia architect, the first woman...
1
Julia Morgan (1872-1957) was a disnguished Califor- nia architect, the first woman trained as an architect at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, graduang with the class of 1902. During her prolific ca- reer, she was responsible for designing Hearst Castle at San Simeon, California, work- ing first for wealthy widow Phoebe Apperton Hearst and then for her son, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) for thirty six years. She worked inially for architect Bernard May- beck who had originally en- couraged her to study in Paris, and later for Paris classmate John Galen Howard, but soon set out to establish her own office and employees. She designed such Hearst family properes as Wyntoon Chalet, Jolon Hacienda at Milpitas Ranch, the Hearst Building and the San Francisco Examiner Building. During her career she was also kept busy designing a host of schools, churches, hospitals, Presbyterian residences, and YWCAs, including a Chinese ‘Y’ with beauful brick work at 965 Clay (pictured), a Japanese ‘Y’ at 1830 Suer in San Francisco, a Presbyterian residence, an Emanuel sisterhood residence, women’s clubs, and com- munity centers in California and Hawaii. Her work is justly celebrated. In reading the Wadsworth book, I was dismayed to read of her experi- ence with a male colleague, found in Chapter Three, “Geng Start- ed”: “Phoebe Hearst also wasted lile me in contacng the young architect she had met as a student. Hearst’s University of California building program- her giſt to the university- was underway, headed by John Galen Howard. Also a former student at the Ecole, Howard hired Julia to work for him. Julia joined the design team for the first build- ing, the Hearst Mining Building. A memorial to Phoebe Hearst’s hus- band, a former U.S. senator and miner who had become a mulmil- lionaire by buying mining land in the West, the building was to look like the California missions with white walls and overhang- ing red le roofs. When Hearst inspected the Mining Building, she was pleased with what she saw. She told John Howard to find Julia Morgan more work. He made Julia his assistant supervising architect on the next Hearst giſt to the campus (1903), an outdoor theater shaped in a semi- circle like one in Epidaurus, Greece… Julia knew she had to work fast and not make any mistakes.” This building was to be the first classical open-air theater in the United States, made of reinforced concrete, a success for her. Next was the Mills College bell tower in Oakland CA, the Wyntoon complex on the McCloud River with Maybeck, and the Hacienda del Pozo de Verona at Pleasanton CA. ”As Julia worked on the Haci- enda and other projects, she was eager to leave John Galen Howard’s employment and work enrely on her own. When a story surfaced that Howard was boasng to his colleagues that he had a wonderful designer, ‘to whom I have to pay almost nothing, as it is a woman,’ Julia stepped up her search.” In 1904, Julia took the state examina- on for cerficaon as an architect, becoming the first woman to be licensed as an architect in California; she then moved into a small office on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. “Many San Francisco Bay Area architects called on Julia Morgan in her new office, but not John Galen Howard. He never forgave her for going out on her own. For many years, he used his influence as the supervising architect of the University of California building program to bar her from making any important contribuons to the campus.” pp. 28-37, Wadsworth. An “Investor’s Business Daily Arcle” by Chrisna Wise tells how Ju- lia Morgan also went to work aſter her first professional office was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 (also recounted by Sara Holmes Boutelle in her book Julia Morgan Ar- chitect). She set up a new office at the Merchants’ Exchange Building, and set to work redesigning the Fairmont Hotel and re- building San Francisco via numerous commissions for her new firm, so that “she is now considered one of the tweneth cen- tury’s most influenal ar- chitects of regional design”. She “combined Arts and Craſts and Mediterranean styles—as seen in her design of the Hearst ‘castle’ at San Sim- eon, California—and helped define California architecture”, says Wise. “Morgan looked at each commission as a chance to design the perfect building. And she made her clients her top priority.” In the architecture field, where compeon is a fact of life, this sad instance of the John Galen Howard brand of man’s inhumanity to woman occurred in the first decades of the tweneth century to a dis- nguished praconer of the art, when women had not made many inroads into the profession. It is not a stretch to find that women are sll experiencing subtle forms of discriminaon in the architecture field in the new century. Without underesmang what it takes to be a successful architect, it is important to view one’s own experiences in the field in the lens of what is expected of the praconer, and to connue to strive for excellence. However, aſter a project is complet- ed, an architect is known for what they have done, categorized, and sized up. In my own case, twenty five years of work for two residenal pracces, where I had done enrely pencil draſting (sll my favorite form of the art) at the request of the employer, ensured that, despite subsequent CAD classes, I did not really survive professionally into the new era. The story is a complicated one. I find now however that I can work for myself using both drawing methods, which provides me great flexibility. I sll admire Julia Morgan’s professionalism in carrying on despite the cricism and opposion of her male peers, and I un- derstand that her male employees were very loyal to her. Bravo Julia! Sources: Julia Morgan, Architect of Dreams by Ginger Wadsworth, Lern- er Publicaons Company, Minneapolis MN 1990; “Investor’s Business Daily” arcle, 2005, entled “Architect Helped Rebuild City/Be Deter- mined: Julia Morgan came back stronger aſter 1906 San Francisco Quake” Photos from www.sanfranciscochinatown.com, copyright of Tiger Business Development, Inc. 2012- 13 Execuve Brd. M. Spencer, President C. Andreas, 1st VP G. Cavanaugh, 2nd VP S. Hunt, Secretary C. Andreas, Treasurer D. Fox, Past President 2012- 13 Brd. of Directors V. Bocanova, CWA Foundaon Liaison L. Hancock, Membership L. Grigais, Lecture Series P. Benvenuto, L. Nicholls, G. Paradowicz, Scholarship & Diversity K. Haig, Newsleer L. Nicholls, G. Paradowicz, Events 2012- 13 Newsleer K. Haig, Editor-in-Chief K. Haig, Journalist S. van der Meulen, Journalist L. Nicholls, Layout, Graphics Corporate Members City of Chgo, Public Bldg. Commission Harley Ellis Devereaux Huer Architects, Ltd Landon Bone Baker Architects Muller + Muller, Ltd Urban Works Sponsor 165 West Chicago Ave, #200 Chicago, IL 60610 Julia Morgan, Architect, and her Challenges By Susan J. van der Meulen, Architect MEMBER NEWS. UPCOMING EVENTS + MORE . . . then and now November 12 Eva Castro, Lecture Series, at the Art Instute TBD Jeanne Gang Exhibit @ AIC and Happy Hour December TBD Holiday Party This year the media has seen a resurgence of heightened interest on womanhood and femininity, imbued with unnerv- ing tones of post-financial-crisis anxiety. While the controversial Time magazine July/August cover story on aachment parenng is sll generang new threads for debates, an autobiographical story entled “Why Women Sll Can’t Have It All” srred up a new wave of heated dis- cussion in the mainstream media. The phenomenon of highly educated and over-achieving women, epitomized by the author of the Atlanc arcle, Anne-Marie Slaughter, who will- ingly opted out of a fast-ascending career track for maternal re- sponsibilies, has become even more prevalent, even though feminism has widely changed the discourse on workforce diversity. Although female professionals are not struggling to find employment opportunies anymore, thanks to generaons of feminist fighters be- fore us, what’s concerning us today is the unaainable pinnacle of suc- cess for women professionals. Ambious and capable as Anne-Marie Slaughter is, she sll had to step down from the high-level White House posion and “sele” for a teaching job at Princeton. The challenge here is not a hard choice between career and family, she didn’t go from work- ing to full-me at-home mom, but the pain of giving up her imminent success in a leadership role in the government, due to her motherly dues. What she is lamenng is the lack of flexibility and understand- ing for women who aspire and have the ability to rise up to the top. She claims that the demanding schedule of her government job simply renders it impossible to have a home life. It’s as though to become an industry leader these days, a woman has to work like a man and live up to the demands of a male leader with no regard to the condions of womanhood. Simply handing jobs to women is no longer enough; the workplace needs to make it possible for women to succeed differently. The rude awakening came to us that women couldn’t succeed by dis- guising ourselves as men. But acng like a man is not going to efface the inherent gender differences, which is more fundamental than we are willing to acknowledge. For architects, this ongoing debate on work life balance is even more relevant. While this parcular arcle in the Atlanc is geared towards a small fracon of highly achieving mid- career women, it is a cauonary tale for young women architects who are passionate about their work and want to make a difference in the real world. Unfortunately, the architecture profession is sll lagging behind in the gender diversity movement. In the May 2008 issue’s edi- torial of “Architecture Record” magazine, Robert Ivy poignantly cri- cized the alarming lack of gender diversity in the architecture industry, cing facts that “while women now account for approximately half of the student populaon in schools of architecture, their numbers among registered architects in the AIA hovers around 13.8 percent.” Four years later, this fact sll rings true. Women architects sll have a long way to go in fighng professional prejudices in the tradion- ally male-dominated profession. Due to this self-conscious struggle to blend in, it has been an open secret that woman architects, especially the ones with far-reaching prominence, don’t like to be noced by their gender, and are deeply offended when their designs are recog- nized as having “feminine” qualies, not to menon the difficulty in raising children with a calendar fully booked for the coming 20 years. Some suspect it is illusionary to expect society to see architects as “genderless” due to the scarce numbers of female architects who made it to the top. The fact that feminism in architecture hasn’t pros- pered is in itself a failure to assert us as equals. Why push us to think and work according to the patriarchal standards? Why shy away from the limelight that praises us as female role models? A survey of some 700 women architects from The Architects’ Journal shows that 80% of the surveyed architects think “having children puts women at a dis- advantage in architecture” and 61% think the building industry has not fully accepted the authority of the female architect. In this reality where gender discriminaon is sll commonplace in the macho in- dustry, simply averng aenon is not the soluon. The increasing numbers of female architects entering the workforce need to come to terms with the fear of standing out as women architects. Aſter all, “blend in” is an act to further perpetuate the patriarchal values in architecture. Despite the negave associaons with feminism, women architects have yet to find a way to fight the sexual polics at work, if not posioning themselves as gender equality advocates. At the same me, we need to recognize the work-life balance dilem- ma is not a gender specific issue. As some crics have pointed out, work-life balance is a human condion rather than a working mom problem. Salaried men don’t suffer any less than working moms, and the challenge varies for everyone. There is a grain of truth in Anne- Marie Slaughter’s senment that the workplace needs to provide a structure more suited for the hustle and bustle of contemporary home life. No maer what gender they are, people who want to compete in the game and arise to the top are finding it increasingly difficult to “have a life”. In light of this reality, professional women should not feel guilty or inadequate for not having it all. The humanly impossible standard of “having it all”, which need to be addressed as a patri- archal model, will put women in a perpetual cycle of dissasfacon. To many, me included, Anne-Marie Slaughter’s definion of female success is a single-minded reflecon on the achievement of femi- nism. A diversified workforce calls forth diversified values, and a flex- ible social structure to facilitate the realizaon of such varied values. The democrac capitalist society of America promises everyone the opportunity for the pursuit of happiness, and happiness has a differ- ent definion for everyone. A more progressive way to look at the equaon calls forth more alternaves to the simple-minded and oſten self-destrucve criteria of success. No maer whatever the gender, architects today sacrifice too much trying to balance pro- fessional ambions and home life qualies, especially in this econ- omy. Long work hours and around the clock availability are among the many contribung factors, which give lile consideraons for employees’ emoonal well being. In addion to increasing aware- ness for women architect empowerment, we also need a collec- ve vision for an updated and realisc soluon to work life balance. the newsleer of Chicago Women in Architecture promong the interests an issues of women in architecture since 1973 Ziyuan Wang Chinese YWCA, 965 Clay Street, San Fran- cisco, 1930, front facade on sloped site Exterior lantern fixture, Chinese YWCA, by Julia Morgan Portrait of architect Julia Morgan (1872- 1957), idenficaon card photograph taken during her me in Paris, ca. 1897-99 The “Have It All” Myth for Women Architects by Ziyuan Wang
Transcript of then an now...Julia Morgan (1872-1957) was a distinguished Califor-nia architect, the first woman...
Julia Morgan (1872-1957) was a distinguished Califor-nia architect, the first woman trained as an architect at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris, graduating with the class of 1902. During her prolific ca-reer, she was responsible for designing Hearst Castle at San Simeon, California, work-ing first for wealthy widow Phoebe Apperton Hearst and then for her son, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) for thirty six years. She worked initially for architect Bernard May-beck who had originally en-
couraged her to study in Paris, and later for Paris classmate John Galen Howard, but soon set out to establish her own office and employees. She designed such Hearst family properties as Wyntoon Chalet, Jolon Hacienda at Milpitas Ranch, the Hearst Building and the San Francisco Examiner Building. During her career she was also kept busy designing a host of schools, churches, hospitals, Presbyterian residences, and YWCAs, including a Chinese ‘Y’ with beautiful brick work at 965 Clay (pictured), a Japanese ‘Y’ at 1830 Sutter in San Francisco, a Presbyterian residence, an Emanuel sisterhood residence, women’s clubs, and com-munity centers in California and Hawaii. Her work is justly celebrated.
In reading the Wadsworth book, I was dismayed to read of her experi-ence with a male colleague, found in Chapter Three, “Getting Start-ed”: “Phoebe Hearst also wasted little time in contacting the young architect she had met as a student. Hearst’s University of California building program- her gift to the university- was underway, headed by John Galen Howard. Also a former student at the Ecole, Howard hired Julia to work for him. Julia joined the design team for the first build-ing, the Hearst Mining Building. A memorial to Phoebe Hearst’s hus-band, a former U.S. senator and miner who had become a multimil-lionaire by buying mining land in the West, the building was to look like the California missions with white walls and overhang-ing red tile roofs. When Hearst inspected the Mining Building, she was pleased with what she saw. She told John Howard to find Julia Morgan more work. He made Julia his assistant supervising architect on the next Hearst gift to the campus (1903), an outdoor theater shaped in a semi-circle like one in Epidaurus, Greece…Julia knew she had to work fast and not make any mistakes.” This building was to be the first classical open-air theater in the United States, made of reinforced concrete, a success for her. Next was the Mills College bell tower in Oakland CA, the Wyntoon complex on the McCloud River with Maybeck, and the Hacienda del Pozo de Verona at Pleasanton CA. ”As Julia worked on the Haci-enda and other projects, she was eager to leave John Galen Howard’s employment and work entirely on her own. When a story surfaced
that Howard was boasting to his colleagues that he had a wonderful designer, ‘to whom I have to pay almost nothing, as it is a woman,’ Julia stepped up her search.” In 1904, Julia took the state examina-tion for certification as an architect, becoming the first woman to be licensed as an architect in California; she then moved into a small office on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. “Many San Francisco Bay Area architects called on Julia Morgan in her new office, but not John Galen Howard. He never forgave her for going out on her own. For many years, he used his influence as the supervising architect of the University of California building program to bar her from making any important contributions to the campus.” pp. 28-37, Wadsworth.
An “Investor’s Business Daily Article” by Christina Wise tells how Ju-lia Morgan also went to work after her first professional office was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 (also recounted by Sara Holmes Boutelle in her book Julia Morgan Ar-chitect). She set up a new office at the Merchants’ Exchange Building, and set to work redesigning the Fairmont Hotel and re-building San Francisco via numerous commissions for her new firm, so that “she is now considered one of the twentieth cen-tury’s most influential ar-chitects of regional design”. She “combined Arts and Crafts and Mediterranean styles—as seen in her design of the Hearst ‘castle’ at San Sim-eon, California—and helped define California architecture”, says Wise. “Morgan looked at each commission as a chance to design the perfect building. And she made her clients her top priority.”In the architecture field, where competition is a fact of life, this sad instance of the John Galen Howard brand of man’s inhumanity to woman occurred in the first decades of the twentieth century to a dis-tinguished practitioner of the art, when women had not made many inroads into the profession. It is not a stretch to find that women are still experiencing subtle forms of discrimination in the architecture field in the new century. Without underestimating what it takes to be a successful architect, it is important to view one’s own experiences in the field in the lens of what is expected of the practitioner, and to continue to strive for excellence. However, after a project is complet-ed, an architect is known for what they have done, categorized, and sized up. In my own case, twenty five years of work for two residential practices, where I had done entirely pencil drafting (still my favorite form of the art) at the request of the employer, ensured that, despite subsequent CAD classes, I did not really survive professionally into the new era. The story is a complicated one. I find now however that I can work for myself using both drawing methods, which provides me great flexibility. I still admire Julia Morgan’s professionalism in carrying on despite the criticism and opposition of her male peers, and I un-derstand that her male employees were very loyal to her. Bravo Julia!
Sources: Julia Morgan, Architect of Dreams by Ginger Wadsworth, Lern-er Publications Company, Minneapolis MN 1990; “Investor’s Business Daily” article, 2005, entitled “Architect Helped Rebuild City/Be Deter-mined: Julia Morgan came back stronger after 1906 San Francisco Quake”
Photos from www.sanfranciscochinatown.com, copyright of Tiger Business Development, Inc.
2012- 13 Executive Brd.M. Spencer, President
C. Andreas, 1st VPG. Cavanaugh, 2nd VP
S. Hunt, SecretaryC. Andreas, TreasurerD. Fox, Past President
2012- 13 Brd. of DirectorsV. Bocanova, CWA Foundation Liaison
L. Hancock, MembershipL. Grigaitis, Lecture Series
P. Benvenuto, L. Nicholls, G. Paradowicz, Scholarship & Diversity
K. Haig, NewsletterL. Nicholls, G. Paradowicz, Events
2012- 13 NewsletterK. Haig, Editor-in-Chief
K. Haig, JournalistS. van der Meulen, JournalistL. Nicholls, Layout, Graphics
Corporate MembersCity of Chgo, Public Bldg. Commission
Harley Ellis DevereauxHutter Architects, Ltd
Landon Bone Baker ArchitectsMuller + Muller, Ltd
Urban Works
Sponsor
165 West Chicago Ave, #200Chicago, IL 60610
Julia Morgan, Architect, and her ChallengesBy Susan J. van der Meulen, Architect
MEMBER NEWS. UPCOMING EVENTS + MORE . . .
t h e n a n d n o w
November12 Eva Castro, Lecture Series, at the Art InstituteTBD Jeanne Gang Exhibit @ AIC and Happy Hour
DecemberTBD Holiday Party
This year the media has seen a resurgence of heightened interest on womanhood and femininity, imbued with unnerv-ing tones of post-financial-crisis anxiety. While the controversial Time magazine July/August cover story on attachment parenting is still generating new threads for debates, an autobiographical story entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” stirred up a new wave of heated dis-cussion in the mainstream media. The phenomenon of highly educated and over-achieving women, epitomized by the author of the Atlantic article, Anne-Marie Slaughter, who will-ingly opted out of a fast-ascending career track for maternal re-sponsibilities, has become even more prevalent, even though feminism has widely changed the discourse on workforce diversity.
Although female professionals are not struggling to find employment opportunities anymore, thanks to generations of feminist fighters be-fore us, what’s concerning us today is the unattainable pinnacle of suc-cess for women professionals. Ambitious and capable as Anne-Marie Slaughter is, she still had to step down from the high-level White House position and “settle” for a teaching job at Princeton. The challenge here is not a hard choice between career and family, she didn’t go from work-ing to full-time at-home mom, but the pain of giving up her imminent success in a leadership role in the government, due to her motherly duties. What she is lamenting is the lack of flexibility and understand-ing for women who aspire and have the ability to rise up to the top. She claims that the demanding schedule of her government job simply renders it impossible to have a home life. It’s as though to become an industry leader these days, a woman has to work like a man and live up to the demands of a male leader with no regard to the conditions of womanhood. Simply handing jobs to women is no longer enough; the workplace needs to make it possible for women to succeed differently.
The rude awakening came to us that women couldn’t succeed by dis-guising ourselves as men. But acting like a man is not going to efface the inherent gender differences, which is more fundamental than we are willing to acknowledge. For architects, this ongoing debate on work life balance is even more relevant. While this particular article in the Atlantic is geared towards a small fraction of highly achieving mid-career women, it is a cautionary tale for young women architects who are passionate about their work and want to make a difference in the real world. Unfortunately, the architecture profession is still lagging behind in the gender diversity movement. In the May 2008 issue’s edi-torial of “Architecture Record” magazine, Robert Ivy poignantly criti-cized the alarming lack of gender diversity in the architecture industry, citing facts that “while women now account for approximately half of the student population in schools of architecture, their numbers among registered architects in the AIA hovers around 13.8 percent.” Four years later, this fact still rings true. Women architects still have
a long way to go in fighting professional prejudices in the tradition-ally male-dominated profession. Due to this self-conscious struggle to blend in, it has been an open secret that woman architects, especially the ones with far-reaching prominence, don’t like to be noticed by their gender, and are deeply offended when their designs are recog-nized as having “feminine” qualities, not to mention the difficulty in raising children with a calendar fully booked for the coming 20 years.Some suspect it is illusionary to expect society to see architects as “genderless” due to the scarce numbers of female architects who made it to the top. The fact that feminism in architecture hasn’t pros-pered is in itself a failure to assert us as equals. Why push us to think and work according to the patriarchal standards? Why shy away from the limelight that praises us as female role models? A survey of some 700 women architects from The Architects’ Journal shows that 80% of the surveyed architects think “having children puts women at a dis-advantage in architecture” and 61% think the building industry has not fully accepted the authority of the female architect. In this reality where gender discrimination is still commonplace in the macho in-dustry, simply averting attention is not the solution. The increasing numbers of female architects entering the workforce need to come to terms with the fear of standing out as women architects. After all, “blend in” is an act to further perpetuate the patriarchal values in architecture. Despite the negative associations with feminism, women architects have yet to find a way to fight the sexual politics at work, if not positioning themselves as gender equality advocates.
At the same time, we need to recognize the work-life balance dilem-ma is not a gender specific issue. As some critics have pointed out, work-life balance is a human condition rather than a working mom problem. Salaried men don’t suffer any less than working moms, and the challenge varies for everyone. There is a grain of truth in Anne-Marie Slaughter’s sentiment that the workplace needs to provide a structure more suited for the hustle and bustle of contemporary home life. No matter what gender they are, people who want to compete in the game and arise to the top are finding it increasingly difficult to “have a life”. In light of this reality, professional women should not feel guilty or inadequate for not having it all. The humanly impossible standard of “having it all”, which need to be addressed as a patri-archal model, will put women in a perpetual cycle of dissatisfaction. To many, me included, Anne-Marie Slaughter’s definition of female success is a single-minded reflection on the achievement of femi-nism. A diversified workforce calls forth diversified values, and a flex-ible social structure to facilitate the realization of such varied values. The democratic capitalist society of America promises everyone the opportunity for the pursuit of happiness, and happiness has a differ-ent definition for everyone. A more progressive way to look at the equation calls forth more alternatives to the simple-minded and often self-destructive criteria of success. No matter whatever the gender, architects today sacrifice too much trying to balance pro-fessional ambitions and home life qualities, especially in this econ-omy. Long work hours and around the clock availability are among the many contributing factors, which give little considerations for employees’ emotional well being. In addition to increasing aware-ness for women architect empowerment, we also need a collec-tive vision for an updated and realistic solution to work life balance.
the newsletter of Chicago Women in Architecture promoting the interests an issues of women in architecture since 1973
Ziyuan Wang
Chinese YWCA, 965 Clay Street, San Fran-cisco, 1930, front facade on sloped site
Exterior lantern fixture, Chinese YWCA, by Julia Morgan
Portrait of architect Julia Morgan (1872-1957), identification card photograph taken during her time in Paris, ca. 1897-99
The “Have It All” Myth for Women Architectsby Ziyuan Wang
