The Secret Castle
Exploring Julia Morgan’s Secluded Wyntoon Estate…
By all accounts, Julia Morgan, the first woman to be licensed as an architect in California, was a quiet and unassuming person who steered clear of publicity. The trait stands in marked contrast to her most well-known work, the ostentatious Hearst Castle on California’s central coast in San Simeon.
Despite the challenges posed by working in what was then a male-dominated profession, Morgan went on to design more than 700 buildings before her retirement in 1951 at age 79. One of those projects made an indelible mark on the North State as well. It’s just hard to see.
Wyntoon, the late media mogul William Randolph Hearst’s forested compound on the banks of the upper McCloud River, is a private and secluded marvel usually only admired by kayakers braving the snowmelt-swollen river in the spring.
Named after the native Winnemen Wintu people who lived in the area for thousands of years, Wyntoon began in the 1880s as a humble fishing lodge developed by Justin Sisson, a successful innkeeper and outdoorsman who founded the town that later became Mount Shasta.
The estate changed hands at the turn of the century and its new owner, San Francisco attorney Charles Wheeler, developed a much larger lodge. One of his clients, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, was invited to summer at the lodge and fell in love with the area. She ultimately convinced Wheeler to sell her a 99-year lease for a large piece of the Wyntoon property.
To create her own forest retreat, the elder Hearst engaged esteemed Berkeley architect Bernard Maybeck (First Church of Christ, Scientist in Berkeley and San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts) to design a seven-story medieval castle in the Gothic style. Maybeck in turn retained Morgan, his former University of California student, to help.
The finished project featured a 75-foot-tall central tower and a living room that measured 80 by 36 feet with seven-foot-thick stone walls and a vaulted ceiling that reached 36 feet at its apex, and it was featured in prominent architectural review magazines. Upon Phoebe Hearst’s death in 1919, Wyntoon was willed to her niece, Anne Apperson Flint, much to the chagrin of Hearst, who inherited the bulk of the estate (including the 270,000-acre ranch in San Simeon).
After an acrimonious stretch of time, Hearst was able to purchase Wyntoon outright in 1925. Wyntoon was destroyed by fire during the winter of 1929-30 (a kitchen fire was believed to be the cause) with Hearst’s losses estimated at between $300,000 and $500,000.
Hearst turned to Morgan and asked her to design an even grander castle, one with eight stories, two towers and some 61 bedrooms. He sent his art agent to scour Europe for old stonework to give Wyntoon an “ancient air.” Before work could begin in earnest, though, Hearst was forced to cancel the $50 million project due to crippling financial losses tied to the Great Depression, as well as his ever-expanding castle in San Simeon.
Instead, Morgan was asked to design what the few lucky sightseers admire today: a Bavarian-style village of three-story stone and wood buildings around a common green. Hearst sent Morgan to Europe for inspiration. American and European artists were commissioned to create carvings and inscriptions. Willy Pogany, a well-known Hungarian illustrator, visited Wyntoon to paint exterior murals depicting Russian and German fairy tales, including those of the Brothers Grimm.
Downstream from the village, Morgan’s design included a swimming pool and adjoining pool house, tennis courts, a croquet lawn and a dining hall that was equipped to show films and seat as many as 100 guests.
Hearst and his longtime mistress, Marion Davies, spent a considerable amount of time at Wyntoon. Prominent guests they entertained included Clark Gable, Louis B. Mayer, Charles Lindbergh, Anna Roosevelt and industrialist Joe Kennedy, who brought his son Jack (the future president).
In addition to her decades-long work with Hearst, Morgan’s accomplishments include Asilomar, a stunning conference facility in Pacific Grove. Thanks to her skills and the support she received from Phoebe Hearst, Morgan designed more than 19 other YWCA facilities in California, Hawaii and Nevada, including the Japanese YWCA building in San Francisco.
Morgan’s other credits include the Berkeley City Club; structural repair and interior restoration of the earthquake-damaged Fairmont Hotel in San Francico; the bell tower at Oakland’s Mills College (her use of reinforced concrete is credited with saving the campanile during the ’06 quake); the Hearst Memorial Gymnasium for Women on the Cal campus; and the Examiner Building at Third and Market streets in San Francisco.
In 2008 Morgan was inducted into the California Hall of Fame, alongside Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson and Stanford University founder Leland Stanford. “Drive is what she had, and the most spectacular will,” says Victoria Kastner, Hearst Castle’s official historian and the author of “Julia Morgan: An Intimate Portrait of the Trailblazing Architect.” “She was indomitable.”•
