Revisiting Julia

In Feb­ru­ary of 2022, I had the op­por­tu­nity to re­visit Ju­lia Mor­gan’s Berke­ley City Club in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia.  Aside from the Hearst Cas­tle at San Simeon, it’s prob­a­bly Mor­gan’s most well-known work. It still op­er­ates as a pub­lic health and well­ness pool/​spa, restau­rant, event space, and ho­tel, which makes it very ac­ces­si­ble for ex­tended stays. This al­lows ad­mir­ers like me the op­por­tu­nity to walk the halls for a cou­ple days and peek into every crevice, re­view every de­tail, pho­to­graph al­most every inch, and dream about the kinds of peo­ple and gath­er­ings that have ven­tured these halls in the 92 years since it was built.

The con­crete build­ing was one of the first of its kind, which Mor­gan used to cre­ate the il­lu­sion of heavy tim­ber and carved stone con­struc­tion through­out.  Its Mo­roc­can in­flu­ence is her sig­na­ture style, and one she would not de­vi­ate from even as the ar­chi­tec­tural com­mu­nity was mov­ing into mid-cen­tury mod­ern trends.  The pool is one of the build­ing’s most cov­eted spaces.  With its beau­ti­ful, vaulted ceil­ing and col­or­ful tile work, it’s hard for me to con­cen­trate on laps and strokes and not cor­nices and columns.  Equally stun­ning is the main stair­case and the var­i­ous ban­quet halls through­out.  The build­ing is quiet dur­ing the day, and I found my­self alone in many spaces, able to soak them in all to my­self.  I even com­man­deered one of the large ban­quet halls one morn­ing to work re­motely and take a meet­ing sit­ting next to the beau­ti­ful win­dows, with the sun beam­ing into this amaz­ing space.

For me, the most amaz­ing de­sign as­pect is the way in which Mor­gan cre­ated op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­door/​out­door re­la­tion­ships, with beau­ti­ful in­te­rior court­yards and rooftop ter­races.  There is a small mu­seum space that is ded­i­cated to her on the first floor, and ac­cord­ing to the archives, “she in­cor­po­rated as much nat­ural light as pos­si­ble and cre­ated an in­door-out­door lifestyle with the use of court­yards, large win­dows, or open porches”.  This mir­rors the de­sign aes­thetic of our fir­m’s founder, Henry Klein, and my own.

I find my­self want­ing to stay even longer, and sit in every cor­ner of every room, sa­vor­ing the beauty, the crafts­man­ship, the lit­tle de­tails, and the play of light­ness with heavy ma­te­ri­al­ity.  When I think about the era in which Mor­gan was prac­tic­ing, and the fact that she was re­jected twice to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris be­cause she was a woman (be­fore fi­nally get­ting ac­cepted), and be­com­ing the first reg­is­tered fe­male ar­chi­tect in Cal­i­for­nia, I’m not sure whether to be more im­pressed with her ar­chi­tec­tural abil­i­ties, or her per­sis­tence and ded­i­ca­tion to con­tinue work­ing when the bar­ri­ers re­lated to her gen­der were every­where through­out her en­tire ca­reer.

It’s not sur­pris­ing to me that her in­tro­duc­tion to the Hearst fam­ily was due to an­other woman, and if not for that in­tro­duc­tion (and prob­a­bly a lot of be­hind-the-scenes WTW* net­work­ing) she may never have got­ten the op­por­tu­nity for those im­por­tant com­mis­sions which launched her ca­reer, made her fa­mous, and inked her into the half-page of my ar­chi­tec­tural his­tory books.  She was the only fe­male ar­chi­tect I ever had read about in his­tory text­books, not be­cause no oth­ers ex­isted, but be­cause she was able to get the ap­pro­pri­ate pub­lic credit for her work.  Her port­fo­lio con­tains mostly YW­CA’s, Wom­en’s Clubs, and Uni­ver­sity Build­ings, af­ford­ing a dif­fer­ent take on these spaces en­joyed by women, though usu­ally de­signed by men.  She con­tin­ues to be some­one that I ad­mire as both a per­son and an ar­chi­tect, and who’s work I want to ex­pe­ri­ence re­peat­edly.

– Julie Blazek, AIA, LEED AP, CPHC®

Part­ner, HKP Ar­chi­tects