Julia Morgan

by Wilson, Mark Anthony; Lee, Monica; Puliatti, Joel

• ISBN13: 9781423636540
• ISBN10: 1423636546
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-01
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith

Summary

Julia Morgan, America's first truly independent female architect, left a legacy of more than 700 buildings, many of which are now designated landmarks, in cities throughout California, as well as in Hawaii, Utah, and Illinois. Her work spanned five decades, and the total of her commissions was greater than any other major American architect, including Frank Lloyd Wright. Julia Morgan tells the remarkable story of this architectural pioneer, and features text, drawings, and photographs of the many buildings that still exist.

Excerpts

Over the past thirty-five years I have been asked countless times by historians, architects, and college students what it is about the life and work of Julia Morgan that qualifies her to be placed in the top tier of the pantheon of American architecture. The answer lies partly in the fact that she was America's first truly independent, full-time woman architect.1 Indeed, she was "a cultural revolutionary in a flowered hat" and "a quiet feminist," as I put it in the introduction to thefirst edition of this book. She proved that a woman could do as well as any man in a job men had assumed women were incapable of performing. When Julia Morgan opened her own practice in San Francisco in April 1904, she shattered the glass ceiling in her chosen profession, one that had never allowed women to participate fully until she came along.