"Something a Little Different": La Cuesta Encantada's Architectural Precedents and CulturalPrototypesAuthor(s): Robert C. PavlikReviewed work(s):Source: California History, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Winter, 1992/1993), pp. 462-477Published by: California Historical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25161623 .Accessed: 08/12/2011 13:13

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William Randolph Hearst and Julia Morgan at work during early construction at San Simeon, ca. 1921. Although they

were in constant communication regarding

every detail of the castle's design and construction, Hearst and Morgan were not

often photographed together. Film director Irvin Willat took this photograph during his tour of the estate. Courtesy Marc Wanamaker, Bison Archives, Hollywood.

462 CALIFORNIA HISTORY

"Something A Little Different"

La Cuesta Encantada's Architectural Precedents and Cultural Prototypes

by Robert C. Pavlik

The design and construction of William Ran

dolph Hearst's San Simeon estate, "La Cuesta

Encantada," has been the subject of a half

dozen books, all describing its European attributes,

furnishings, and antecedents.1 What the authors of these works consistently fail to recognize is the estate's presence in the historical California land

scape, and the importance of its own time period in

understanding the complex's design and creation. The remote hilltop retreat overlooking the San

Luis Obispo County coast was the creation of two native Californians, newspaper publisher William

Randolph Hearst and architect Julia Morgan. It was the culmination not only of an architectural

style, but also of an outlook and attitude prevalent in early twentieth-century California. This unu

sual personal, architectural, art-filled monument was created within a complex historical background and cultural context. Even the estate's Spanish name, which means "The Enchanted Hill," is evoc

ative of the romanticized view that Californians had of their pastoral state and that Hearst had for his family's sprawling ranch at century's turn.

William Randolph Hearst was born April 29, 1863, to Phoebe Apperson and George

Hearst. The latter had already made a for tune in the gold and silver mines of California and

Nevada, and returned to his native Missouri to visit his ailing mother and to secure a bride. He became

reacquainted with young Phoebe, the daughter of

longtime family friends, and they were married.

Following the death of George's mother, the couple sailed for San Francisco and settled into the posh Stevenson Hotel, where their only child was born.

The city in which William Randolph Hearst was

spanked into life was remarkably prosperous and

colorful, fueled by the influx of great mineral wealth and shaped by the eclectic population clustered on

San Francisco's isolated shores. The San Francisco

Bay Area contributed to the rest of the country a

generous cultural bounty, including philosophers, writers, and artists. Among them, an architectural

fraternity was founded in San Francisco in 1861, followed by a west-coast chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1869. These early west coast architects brought with them not only their

WINTER 1992/93 463

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Phoebe Apperson Hearst (1842-1919) and Senator George Hearst (1820-1891). When the

twenty-year-old Phoebe Apperson married George Hearst in 1862, he had already amassed a fortune. For Mrs. Hearst, this wealth assured a luxurious life and exceptional opportunity to educate their only son William. A civic-minded patron of the arts, she also founded or

supported numerous charities during her lifetime and was a leading advocate of opportu nity for women in education and the professions. Courtesy Hearst Monument Archives.

own building techniques and styles from other

regions of the United States and the world, they also embraced a classical tradition previously estab

lished by Walter Colton and Thomas Larkin in

Monterey. Architects like Gordon Cummings and

Reuben Clark, who contributed their skills and vision to the design and construction of the state

capitol building in Sacramento, are examples of

the practitioners of architecture in California in the 1850s and 1860s. Historian Harold Kirker calls this

period between the Gold Rush and the completion of the railroad in 1869 "the California Renaissance."2

It was during this period of cultural maturation that William Randolph Hearst came of age.

Young Will was a well-traveled American at a

time when most United States citizens knew little of life and conditions beyond their congested urban

neighborhoods or isolated rural farms. Hearst's

mother Phoebe took a great interest in her only child's educational development, instilling in him

a genuine interest in and appreciation for learning. A former schoolteacher herself, Phoebe continued

her own private lessons for self-improvement as

well as for her son's eventual betterment. As was

the case for many other wealthy Gilded Age Amer

icans, an important component of the Hearsts'

program for personal enrichment was the Grand

Tour of Europe. Accompanied by a private tutor, Phoebe and William crossed the United States on the transcontinental railroad in 1873, just four years after its completion. From Boston they sailed for

the United Kingdom, where young Will became enamored of the history and culture of his great

grandparents' native country. Even to his ten-year old eyes, the remarkable contrast between Old

World and New was apparent. Hearst was seeing, first hand, the manifestations of western civiliza

tion that gave birth to his own homeland across the Atlantic Ocean. His expressed desire to occupy Windsor Castle and to buy the Louvre Museum in

464 CALIFORNIA HISTORY

Paris indicate a deep interest in and appreciation for art and architecture at an early age. The Euro

pean excursion of 1873 (followed by a similar trip in 1879) doubtless left an important impression on

young Hearst.

Between the two European trips, the Hearst

entourage visited the 1876 Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia. This fantasy city was created to

house displays that boasted of the cultural, social, and technological achievements of the participat

ing countries, and to celebrate the centennial of

the American Revolution.3 This fair was the first of

many international events that heralded America's

entry onto the world stage, while at the same time

presented fantastic Utopian models of the coun

try's and world's future. World's fair historian

Robert Rydell has shown that in response to the dra

matic and unsettling changes sweeping American

society between Reconstruction and World War I, fair organizers and promoters were popular prom

ulgators of symbolic and recreational representa tions that stood for, among other things, national

pride, Manifest Destiny, economic progress, Social

Darwinism, and imperialism.4 Among the fairgoers immersed in this melange was thirteen-year-old

William Randolph Hearst. The Centennial Exposi tion's impact on him, as an individual, is unre

corded. It can be safely stated, however, that as a

product of his time young Hearst absorbed many of the messages inherent in these mid-nineteenth

century displays. As he matured, these ideas

represented his firm convictions?particularly his

unbridled patriotism, his suspicion of the motives

of foreign nations, his jingoistic stance toward Asia, his enthusiasm for war with Spain over Cuba, and

his passion for grandiose building projects and

self-aggrandizing displays. A fair even more impressive than the 1876 cele

bration and more influential in terms of its impact on American society was the World's Columbian

Exposition of 1893, held in Chicago. Celebrating ?one year late?the 400th anniversary of the

"discovery" of the North American continent by

Christopher Columbus, the Columbian Exposition was a landmark in American cultural history. Known as the great "White City," the exposition was designed in what was then referred to as "Neo

classical Florentine."5 The overall plan of the fair was superintended by the distinguished architect and city planner Daniel Burnham. The fair had

wide-ranging impact, not only on the architecture of

public buildings, but on fair architecture as well. The

exposition also gave rise to another important aspect of American civic architecture and urban planning.

Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and

architect Burnham's masterful layout of the expo sition grounds served as a blueprint not only for

future fairs, but also helped spawn the nationwide

"City Beautiful" movement, an energetic attempt to redesign, in neoclassical splendor, America's

cities on a large, unified scale. The City Beautiful

concept was manifested in the resurrection of Pierre

L'Enfant's master plan for Washington, D.C, and in subsequent civic design plans for Cleveland,

Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco.6 The imposition of the neoclassical style on the

American landscape, however, was not heralded

by all as a landmark. Chicago-based architect Louis

Sullivan condemned such reliance on European historical precedents as "fictitious and false," and

bitterly proclaimed that "the damage wrought by the World's Fair will last for half a century from its date, if not longer. It has penetrated deep into the constitution of the American mind effecting their lesions significant of dementia."7 A student of the

Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and mentor of Frank

Lloyd Wright, Sullivan is known as the father of the modern skyscraper, symbol of America's grow

ing power and energy in the rapidly industrializ

ing world. An example of this "reliance" that

Sullivan scorned may be found in the exposition's California building, designed by New York City architect A. Page Brown in the Mission Revival

style. Brown himself had been trained in the New

York architectural offices of McKim, Mead and

White, principal designers of the Chicago fair's neoclassical buildings. The California building brought its regional style of California mission

inspired architecture to a worldwide audience.

Sullivan and others were disappointed with their

fellow Americans' futile attempts at transplanting the history and culture of the Old World to the

New. The roots of this ideological conflict between architects of the period lay in the very tumult of the times: the struggle to establish a unique American

identity, the closing of the frontier, and the rapidly increasing pace of industrialization.

While the Chicago fair was still in its planning stages, William Randolph Hearst, by now editor and owner of the San Francisco Examiner, commis

sioned his friend, San Francisco architect Willis Polk (who had previously worked in A. Page

WINTER 1992/93 465

Brown's office), to prepare preliminary plans for a similar fair, to be held in the bay city in 1900. It was the first in a series of projects that indi

cate the publisher's passion for architecture and

building projects. Hearst published an account of the scheme on Christmas Day, 1891, in his news

paper. The Polk plan differed from the Columbian

Exposition in an important way. It did not rely directly upon European precedents, but instead

took its inspiration from the architecture of Cali fornia, inspired by the missions. Though this fair

plan existed only on paper, its concept symbolized a growing movement for a regional identity to be

expressed architecturally. Hearst was unable to muster support for such

an undertaking, even though his business rival, Chronicle publisher M.H. deYoung, successfully

brought some of the Chicago displays to San Francisco for the Mid-Winter Fair in 1894. Richard

Longstreth has observed a remarkable similarity between Polk's 1891 plan for a San Francisco fair and the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915, and speculates that Polk, and therefore

Hearst, may have played a much more important role in the latter exposition's design and execution

than has been previously recognized.8

Perhaps the most impressive of all Hearst family undertakings up to this time was the international

architectural competition held in the 1890s to design a master plan for the University of California. The

competition was conceived by Bernard Maybeck and funded solely by Phoebe Hearst as a tribute to the memory of her late husband George, who had died in 1891. Both Maybeck and Phoebe Hearst

may have been inspired, at least in part, by the

Chicago World's Fair and the new campus of

Stanford University in Palo Alto. Maybeck trav eled extensively in the United States and Europe, advertising the Hearst competition and soliciting participants. The plan of Parisian Emile Bernard was chosen in 1899 and eventually modified by

the university architect, John Galen Howard, who

had also been an entrant and runner-up in the

competition. In addition to the Beaux-Arts-inspired architec

tural plan, which stressed symmetry and harmony

among the various elements, Phoebe and Will

Hearst funded the construction of three major

buildings on the Berkeley campus: the Hearst Memorial Mining Building, the Maybeck-designed

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A later informal photo shows Hearst and his pet dog Helen at his San Simeon estate. When the castle was

completed, the dog was allowed to swim with him in the estate pool and go into the private movie theater.

Hearst's San Simeon compound included a zoo and a

full-time resident veterinarian, reflecting a more pri

vate side of the millionaire?his love of animals and concern for their welfare. Courtesy Hearst Monument

Archives.

466 CALIFORNIA HISTORY

Hearst Hall, and the Greek Theater. Several years later, the Hearst Memorial Gymnasium was built as a gift to the university by William Randolph

Hearst in memory of his late mother. With the

exception of Maybeck's fantastic Neo-Gothic wood

structure, the Hearst buildings are examples of the

classical and Mediterranean styles, based on his

torical precedents but designed and constructed

for modern purposes and local conditions. In the

words of the competition announcement, the built

environment of the campus should be "a creation

that shall visibly embody the majesty of a state

imperial in its resources, and soon to match the

greatest empires of the world in population, wealth

and culture."9

From their active participation in these projects, it is evident that both Phoebe and William Randolph

Hearst were strong motivating forces behind a

regional identity for California as expressed in its

art and architecture. As world travelers, they had seen and experienced the great centers of civiliza

tion, and, like so many of their west-coast contem

poraries, they were determined to create a great cultural center on the state's golden shores. They believed California would be the inheritor and per

petrator of greatness, an Athens and Rome rein

carnate, the blue Pacific Ocean its Mediterranean, its cities and universities modern-day monuments.

By 1906 William Randolph Hearst was a national

figure. He was completing his second term of

office as a U.S. congressman from his adopted state of New York. He owned newspapers in San

Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and

Boston, and was on his way to creating a media

dynasty, at one time owning a chain of twenty-six newspapers and thirteen magazines.

When San Francisco was reduced to ashes in

April 1906, Hearst immediately led a campaign to rebuild his native city. His biographer, W.A.

Swanberg, states that Hearst "was deeply moved by the ruin of the city of his childhood," even though

he took advantage of the situation by openly pro

claiming the goodness of his own meritorious

deeds.10 From the horrible destruction of the city could come an opportunity, an opening of the way for a new "city on the hill" in the grand fashion

of a City Beautiful plan. Such a plan was prepared

by Daniel Burnham shortly before the conflagra tion and enthusiastically supported by some two

dozen city leaders. It was not to be, however.

Politics, economy, and the need for quick recovery dictated that the rebuilt city assume its same pre disaster configuration. A golden opportunity for

the city by the Golden Gate was forever lost.11 To

assuage their sense of guilt and to realize at least some vestige of the greatness proposed by the Burnham plan, the city leaders vigorously strove

for the right to host the world's nations at an inter

national exposition, to be held in 1915, one year after the opening of the Panama Canal.

The role of the Hearst family in the organization and execution of the fair has not been fully explored nor appreciated, but their involvement was a logical extension of their concurrent commitments to the

promotion of California and the introduction of its

citizenry to the world. Phoebe Hearst occupied the

most visible role, having been unanimously elected to the post of honorary president of the Woman's

Board of the exposition. She also served on the

California State Educational Advisory Committee, and loaned her priceless tapestries for display in the reception room of the mission-style California

building at the fair.12 William Randolph Hearst served on the Ways and Means and Finance com

mittees of the Panama Pacific International Exposi tion Company. Along with William H. and Charles

T. Crocker, Levi Strauss and Company, Ghirardelli

Company, A.B. Spreckels, and M.H. deYoung, Hearst was one of forty-two San Francisco busi nessmen who contributed $25,000 each as seed

money for the fair.13 He was also instrumental in

securing America's original Liberty Bell from Phil

adelphia for display at the exposition, an attraction that drew one of the largest crowds during the

fair's duration. His own display, a massive print ing press invented by George Pancoast and shipped from New York to San Francisco through the Pan ama Canal, won the grand prize in the Palace of

Machinery's exhibition hall.14 Due to their bicoastal

status, Hearst's wife, Millicent, was named a New York state commissioner to the exposition by Gov ernor Martin H. Glynn in 1913.

Also at the fair was architect Julia Morgan, a

longtime associate of the Hearst family and a stu

dent of Bernard Maybeck at the University of Cali fornia, where she was the first woman to receive a

degree in mechanical engineering. Morgan first became acquainted with Phoebe Hearst at the uni

versity. Following her training at the Ecole des

WINTER 1992/93 467

Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she was again the first

woman to graduate, Morgan returned to Califor

nia and worked under University of California

architect John Galen Howard, supervising the con

struction of the Greek Theater. She later remodeled

Phoebe Hearst's Pleasanton estate and designed William Randolph Hearst's Los Angeles Examiner

building. In 1913 Morgan was chosen as the archi

tect for the YWCA building at the Panama Pacific International Exposition. Her presence at the fair

provided Morgan the opportunity to study care

fully the fair's architecture and layout and to work

with a number of craftsmen who later would be

called upon to contribute their talents to William

Randolph Hearst's San Simeon project.15 As Richard Longstreth has observed, the Panama

Pacific Exposition was in effect the realization of

Hearst's original plan for a world's fair for San Fran

cisco, an idea that had languished, unappreciated, for twenty-four years. The dream city that arose on

the mud flats of the Marina District was a colossus

of lath and plaster structures that symbolized the

linkage between East and West made possible by the completion of the Panama Canal. The fair's

physical presence in California, at the mouth of the Golden Gate, lent credence to the idea that this

place was now the crossroads of world commerce,

culture, and civilization. To that end, the buildings of the fair were, according to author Ben Macomber,

"purposely eclectic, cosmopolitan. Under a domi

nating Moorish-Spanish general form, the single architect of the group, W.B. Faville, of San Francisco,

gj^HB^^SSJHw^Bj^^HH ?ftf> Julia Morgan (1872-1957) poses

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468 CALIFORNIA HISTORY

drawing upon the famous styles of many lands

and schools, has combined into an ordered and

vastly impressive whole not only the structural art

of the Orient and of the great Spanish builders, but also the principles of the Italian Renaissance and

the architecture of Greece and Rome from which it

sprang. Thus the group is wholly southern in its

origin. There is no suggestion here of the colder

Gothic architecture of the north."16

The landscaping of the exposition was an inte

gral component of the architecture, and served to

complement the Mediterranean motif that domi

nated the fair. Landscape designer John McLaren

transformed the marshy site into a resplendent

Spanish-Italian villa garden, complete with palms, Italian cypress, yews, eucalyptus, and orange trees.

Statues and fountains, created especially for the

fair by a cadre of craftsmen under the direction of

sculptor A. Stirling Calder, completed the scene.17

At the close of the exposition, a commemorative

volume was produced by the P.P.I.E. committee,

consisting of a collection of letters extolling the

virtues of the fair. According to exposition presi dent Charles Moore, "sentiments from Californians

have not been here presented, save in a few, excep tional cases, lest it be thought that their tone of enthusiasm was the result rather of local pride than of disinterested analysis." William Randolph

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A view of buildings at the San Diego Exposition of 1915, including many in the "new" Spanish-Colonial Revival style, which clearly intrigued and influenced Hearst's ideas for San Simeon. Motorized cars like the one in the center of this image, called an "electriquette," could be rented by tourists visiting the Balboa Park

exposition. Courtesy San Diego Historical Society.

WINTER 1992/93 469

Hearst was one of the Californians (disguised as a

New Yorker) represented in the book. Hearst's

letter is worth quoting in full:

The Panama Pacific International Exposition dem onstrated very clearly and conclusively that this

great United States of ours has reached an art and architectural development equal to its material

development. It has been said and believed both here and abroad, that although the United States was a great country in a business way, it had not

yet reached a state of development where it could either appreciate or express the higher ideas of art and architecture, and that for education in these finer things the people of this country would still have to go to Europe. But no other exposition here or abroad has ever displayed so much artistic and architectural loveliness. It has shown what America can do in the way of art and architecture. If America

will do what it can do, the principles and policies which created the exposition in all its practicability and artistic beauty will be applied in public build

ings in all parts of our country. Civic centers will be built which will perform all their useful functions and be made at the same time objects of beauty

which will not only educate our own citizens at

home, but attract visitors from afar. Thus the expo sition will prove to have offered an example, and to have set a standard which will be imitated every

where throughout our land and which will produce innumerable evidences of the higher development of our people.

William Randolph Hearst18 New York City, New York

The letter further illustrates journalist Frank Mac

Shane's astute observation that "when Hearst

repeatedly referred to his Americanism, he really was referring to the California dream."19

A smaller exposition was held in San Diego in 1915, and while it was not international in scope, it

did have a significant impact on California's regional architecture and on Hearst's developing architec

tural acumen. The architects for that fair, Bertram

Goodhue and Carleton Winslow, Sr., popularized a style of architecture that was not indigenous to

Alta California, namely, Spanish-Colonial Revival.

These elaborately decorated masonry and stucco

structures were based on historical models found

in Mexico and Central America. Although this

ornate companion style to Mission Revival existed

in California prior to 1915, and was exhibited in similar fashion at the Panama Pacific International

Exposition, its most widely noticed use was on the

California building at the San Diego fair. Several reasons account for its emerging popularity: first, the changing taste of the public (Mission Revival

was indeed heavy and rather austere); second, Goodhue's use of Churrigueresque ornamentation was very skillfully handled. A third reason was, in contrast to the buildings at the Panama Pacific

International Exposition, which were torn down after the fair closed, San Diegans successfully

protected their buildings from demolition.20 A few

years later, when Morgan and Hearst corresponded briefly regarding Goodhue's California building at San Diego, their mention of it may simply have

been because it was still standing. In contrast,

during their almost constant correspondence they would devote considerable time and effort dis

cussing the statuary, gardens, and layout of the Panama Pacific International Exposition, and devis

ing ways of obtaining the rights to reproduce or

secure some of the work that was commissioned for the fair.

Although his mother's death in the world wide influenza epidemic in 1919 was dis

tressing, it did deliver to fifty-six-year-old William Randolph Hearst full control of the family

fortune. Until that time, he had been dependent on the ample, yet still insufficient, income of his

growing publishing business. When his inheritance seemed assured, he vigorously launched into his

new building project. W. R. Hearst chose "Camp Hill" as the site of his new home on the San Luis

Obispo County coast. It was the place where his

father had brought him many years earlier, and

where he would bring his own family to camp in

wood platform tents among the oak and bay trees, above the summer fog and surrounded by the

Hearst family ranch he loved more than any other

place on earth. Although his plans seemed modest

enough at first, they quickly grew into a spectacu lar complex of buildings, pools, formal grounds, and lofty terraces from which to view the sur

rounding Santa Lucia mountains and the broad,

bright Pacific below. William Randolph Hearst was approaching sixty

years of age when he began planning his hilltop complex. After residing in New York for almost

twenty-five years, he was finally coming home. He

had served two lackluster terms in the House of

470 CALIFORNIA HISTORY

La Casa Grande under construction, ca. 1923. ll^l^^&RffnBH^ Courtesy Hearst Monument Archives.

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WINTER 1992/93 471

Representatives, and was handed disappointing defeats in his bids for mayor of New York City, governor of New York, and president of the United

States. Relegated by the American public and poli ticians to a role as outsider, he remained a power ful publisher who exerted influence through his

numerous publications. He also turned his bound

less energies to other pursuits, including the expan sion of his art collection, the construction of La

Cuesta Encantada, and his involvement in the rap

idly growing movie industry in southern Califor

nia, in which he championed the abilities of his new love, actress Marion Davies.

Four months after his mother's passing, Hearst was encouraging architect Morgan to hurry the

surveying work for the main San Simeon building so that he and his wife could see the layout before

returning to New York. Planning for the complex continued through the fall of 1919 and into the next

winter, when they discussed the overall design. Hearst's rambling communications were almost

stream-of-consciousness in their meandering explo ration of ideas. He dismissed the baroque architec

ture of the California missions as "bare and . . .

clumsy," and expressed his fondness for the Ren

aissance architecture of southern Spain. On New

Year's Eve, 1919, Hearst wrote to Morgan, "the

trouble would be, I suppose, that it [southern Renaissance] has no historic association with Cali

fornia, or rather with the Spanish architecture in

California .... Would it not be better to do some

thing a little different than other people are doing out in California as long as we do not do anything

incongruous?"21 Something different, yet in keeping with the

contemporary trends of architectural taste in the

Golden State, is what they eventually arrived at.

While not as elaborate as the buildings at the San

Diego exposition, the three guest houses and La

Casa Grande do exhibit some of the Churrigue

resque detail and cast stone ornamentation found

on the buildings at both California expositions. The grounds at San Simeon contain a plethora of

plantings that were and are readily identified with the California-Mediterranean landscape: palms, fruit trees, coast live oaks, Italian cypress, roses, and numerous annuals. Scattered throughout the

gardens are statuary ranging from ancient sarcoph

agi to Art Deco sculpture. Airy terraces and espla nades are laid out in asymmetrical symmetry, nearly

perfect axes and cross-axes that lend a much

needed quality of slight imbalance to the overall

layout. In that way, the house and gardens are in

keeping with accepted style and taste of the times, and yet different enough to lend an air of individu

ality and uniqueness to the plan. The outdoor Neptune Pool is perhaps one of the

most breathtaking features of the hilltop. The deep blue color of the pool, surrounded by gleaming concrete and marble, is truly a stunning sight. The

ancient Greek and Roman motifs may, at first, seem puzzling. However, they are in keeping with

the Mediterranean qualities of the overall design, and in fact could be likened to Bernard Maybeck's neoclassical Palace of Fine Arts at the Panama

Pacific Exposition, the only architectural feature to

survive on the site beyond November 1915.

The design and construction of the San Simeon estate was an undertaking more on the order of

creating a large-scale commercial or public build

ing than constructing a residence. The immensity of the project required architect Julia Morgan to form and oversee a complex organization. The remote location and the difficulties encountered in

transporting materials, along with maintaining a

stable work force, compounded the usual prob lems associated with building. The construction

site was five miles inland and 1,600 feet above the small coastal town of San Simeon. When construc

tion began in 1919, the only reliable access to this remote region of northern San Luis Obispo County

was by coastal steamer. Plans for the construction

of state Highway 1 from San Luis Obispo to

Monterey were just getting underway, and the

closest railroad depot was in San Luis Obispo,

thirty-five miles away across the most rudimentary

county roads. Prior to and concurrent with the

complex's construction, Morgan was required to

improve or develop local port and road access, as

well as water, power, and sewage disposal systems. The local population of Cambria and San Simeon

numbered about five hundred people in 1919. Most of the region's residents were engaged in dairy

farming, cinnabar mining, logging, or tending the

lonely lighthouse station at Piedras Blancas. With

the jobsite situated midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, Morgan was able to draw from

both regions to assemble a large workforce of skilled

designers, architects, engineers, construction super intendents, craftsmen, and laborers, all of whom

472 CALIFORNIA HISTORY

Architect Julia Morgan's blue-pencil sketch of San Simeon's main building, ca.

May 1922, illustrates Hearst's method of directing architectural changes during the construction period and offers a glimpse at his approach to overall proportion, as well as smaller detail. Here, his penciled response directs additional width between the twin towers, which he suggests will improve both exterior building proportion and interior spacing of tapestries and light. Courtesy Special Collections,

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

contributed their talents to the final product that

slowly arose on Camp Hill.

Although she worked out of the San Francisco area more than two hundred miles distant, Morgan oversaw virtually every detail of the design and con

struction. She consulted closely with her client, and

they both poured over pattern books, photographs, postcards, and magazines, searching out motifs and

decorative elements to incorporate into the build

ings. The voluminous correspondence between

Morgan and Hearst, housed at the Kennedy Library, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis

Obispo, illustrates their collaborative efforts in the

design process. Morgan would rough out plans for

her staff and structural engineers to complete in

detail. She would approve the plans before send

ing them along to Hearst for his comments and

revisions (which were frequent and, at times,

frustrating). When some semblance of agreement was reached, Morgan would forward the working

drawings to her on-site representative. Additional

changes, additions, and renovations would take

place during the twenty-eight years of almost con

tinual construction, requiring a constant flurry of

telegrams, change orders, and drawing revisions.

Morgan was responsible for the landscape design of La Cuesta Encantada as well. According to

Walter Steilberg, Morgan admired the work of architect Charles A. Piatt, and referred her employ ees to Piatt's work when developing designs for

WINTER 1992/93 473

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This interior view of the assembly room in the main house hints at the castle's extensive collection of Old World tapestries and statuary and use of ornately carved exotic hardwoods in wall panels and

furnishings. At the far left is one column of the Spanish baroque gilded entryway, and on the table in the foreground is the statue Descending Night. Courtesy Hearst Monument Archives.

the hilltop's landscaping.22 As in her other design and construction activities, Morgan relied on oth ers to supply her with aesthetic suggestions, as

well as structural recommendations. However, the

responsibility for the overall design of the grounds during Hearst's time, including the placement of

statuary, fountains, ponds, terraces, pergola, ani

mal shelters and pits, and planting schemes, remained with Morgan and Hearst.

The Panama Pacific Exposition's architecture and

landscaping were not the only influences on the

design of La Cuesta Encantada. Some of the art

that had been on display at P.P.I.E. was eventually relocated to San Simeon. One of the most popular

pieces at the exposition, Adolph A. Weinman's

Descending Night, proved to be a particular favorite

of Hearst's. Also known as Setting Sun, the fourteen

foot-high statue had occupied a prominent place on the exposition grounds, at the top of a tall

column in the Court of the Universe, directly oppo site a similarly situated male Rising Sun. Fair visitors

could have a closer look at this statue by viewing a

four-and-one-half-foot bronze of the Setting Sun on

display in the Gallery of the Palace of Fine Arts.

Eugen Neuhaus called it "one of the finest figures of the entire exposition."23 In 1921, a bronze copy

was purchased from Gump's Department Store

and moved to San Simeon, where it has reposed in

Casa Grande's Assembly Room for the past sixty

years.24 A second statue, variously entitled The

474 CALIFORNIA HISTORY

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A favorite feature of the castle grounds, the rambling one-and-a-quarter-mile pergola was

used by both guests and employees for walking and horseback riding. Shown here are the entrance to the pergola and an aerial view, ca. 1946, of its serpentine course. Planted with

almost two thousand fruit trees and grape vines, Julia Morgan once called it "the longest

pergola in captivity." Courtesy Hearst Monument Archives.

WINTER 1992/93 475

Bear Charmer, Arcadia, or Nymph and Bears, can

be found in Casa del Mar, the last of the three Hearst guest houses to be completed. Sculpted by Edgar Walter, the bronze depicts a nude young woman holding a set of pan pipes, flanked by two

grizzly bears.25

Although Hearst and Morgan eventually secured

only these two pieces of sculpture for San Simeon,

plans for acquiring or reproducing additional art

from P.P.I.E. continued for at least twelve years. "Please get books, post cards, etc. of all statuary at

Panama Pacific Exposition," Hearst wrote Morgan in 1925. "We can make some fine effects by adapting

various compositions from the courts."26 Morgan

gathered a large number of postcard-sized prints and books of the exposition. The following month, an obviously gleeful Hearst wrote:

The more I think about those statues and foun tains and decorative bits we looked at this after

noon in albums, the more excited I am about getting them. It was a wonderful idea you had about using this material and it is going to make the hill some

thing more distinguished than it possibly could have been under any other circumstances as we

could not have hoped to have all those great artists

working for us in any other way.27

Acquiring additional statuary, or the rights to

reproduce the exposition works, proved difficult, however. Morgan tried unsuccessfully to secure

the consent of the sculptors. The years wore on,

nevertheless, and by the mid-1930s the hilltop com

plex was fairly well developed. The three guest houses, two pools, main house, and grounds

closely resembled their present configurations.

By June 1937, the Great Depression and his

many years of profligate spending combined

to confront Hearst with financial disaster.

The spending spree was over, and work on La

Cuesta Encantada was halted indefinitely. A mas

sive reorganization of his numerous companies, the selling of deficit-ridden newspapers and over

priced real estate, and the liquidation of a large portion of his art collection saved the Hearst Cor

poration and its founder from financial ruin. Con

struction work at San Simeon resumed following World War II, but the subject of the exposition never came up again in Hearst and Morgan's cor

respondence. Two world wars and a depression had tarnished the dream of California's cultural

ascendance. California was on its way to becoming a world power in its own right, but not in the same

sense that Hearst had envisioned. Despite the

bright accoutrements of culture, there were, for some Californians, bleak conditions of industriali

zation, pollution, overpopulation, and poverty. The San Simeon complex, however, hearkened

to an earlier era of ambition and optimism. La

Cuesta Encantada was constructed at a time when

Californians were increasingly optimistic about their cultural legacy and place in history. The

region's colonization by Spain and its geographical

similarity to other Mediterranean countries pro vided ample inspiration for a number of Hearst's

turn-of-the-century contemporaries, such as writer

Charles Lummis and land developer Abbott Kin

ney. Lummis is best known as the founder of the

Southwest Museum in Los Angeles, president of

the Landmarks Club to preserve the state's crum

bling missions, and a tireless promoter of southern

California. Kinney founded Venice, an Italian-like

city imposed on the shore south of Santa Monica,

complete with canals and gondoliers. The two expo sitions held in the state in 1915, commemorating the opening of the Panama Canal, were stunning

displays of make-believe cities whose designs were

inspired by Spanish-Colonial, Italian Renaissance, and Greco-Roman themes.

The Hearst family was instrumental in and influ

enced by these various movements and attempts to define the state's heritage and its future. William

Randolph Hearst's own creation, on a remote

hilltop along the central California coast, reflects

the dreams, values, and aspirations commonly held

by the state's wealthy leaders at the turn of the

century. The castle proved to be successful because, in Hearst's words, he wanted "to do something a little different than other people are doing out

in California."

In 1947, when ill health forced Hearst to leave San Simeon, it was for the last time. "The Chief"

was now eighty-four years old. He and Miss Davies

took up residence in a home she had purchased on

North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, where William

Randolph Hearst died on August 14, 1951, at the

age of eighty-eight. The Hearst Corporation approached the Univer

sity of California in 1952 and raised the possibility of the university accepting the castle as an adjunct campus for the study of art and architecture.

476 CALIFORNIA HISTORY

hs' it^^h j^^^^V jjBUF j^^^^^^^^^^^^HH_M|^^^^HHP^^P_MHHIP9 Mlliii -IPIipfii' :flnfll SjSHs HMMBlHHP^i^-^'Wi^^5

Between 1924 and 1936, the Neptune (outdoor) Pool went through three renovations that increased its size and added the Neptune Temple, seen at the left in this recent photograph. Julia Morgan designed the pool floor in a pattern of verde antique serpentinite and white marble tiles from Vermont. West of the pool, which sits at an elevation of 1,600 feet, the hillside drops abruptly away, offering a spectacular, unbroken sweep of the sky and the Pacific. Courtesy Hearst Monument.

Photograph by Doug Allen.

President Robert Gordon Sproul used the occasion of the fortieth reunion of the class of 1912 to redirect the offer to one of his classmates, Newton Drury, then director of the state Division of Beaches and Parks. While the property made its way through probate, a preliminary plan for opening the estate

to the public was prepared by ranger-historian Glenn Price, under the direction of Drury.28 Nego tiations between the corporation and the State Parks

Commission reached fruition in 1957, when the

hilltop buildings and a staging area near Highway 1 were officially transferred to the state to become

a historical monument, "in memory of William

Randolph Hearst, who created this enchanted hill, and of his mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who

inspired it."29

La Cuesta Encantada has often been compared to villas found in various Mediterranean coun

tries. The Enchanted Hill's unique location and

eclectic fusion of architectural, decorative, and

landscape elements, however, anchor it firmly in

the physical, cultural, and historical landscape of

California. 0

See notes beginning on page 548.

Robert Pavlik is historian for the San Simeon District, Cali

fornia Department of Parks and Recreation. He is a graduate of the Public Historical Studies Program, University of Cali

fornia, Santa Barbara, where he earned his M.A. degree.

WINTER 1992/93 477