That paradigm didn’t last at the Chinatown YWCA, however. “By and large, they did not question the class and racial hierarchy in California or the nation…” “Elite white women dominate this particular story of the California women’s movement,” McNeill confirms. Typically, women’s institutions of the time saw power automatically ceded to white women of status. Morgan’s design for the YWCA in San Francisco’s Chinatown, founded in 1916, connects deeply to California history and shows the racial tensions in a state now celebrated for its acceptance. The Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) was one of these. Consequently, our understanding of Morgan’s place in history depends almost entirely on the critical analysis of her buildings, not on her thoughts about them and her design processes.Ī lasting legacy of Morgan’s career, then, is her completed work, particularly the buildings she designed for Progressive Era women’s organizations, which supported her throughout her career. When it came to pioneering women architects, “their presence often erased, their tracks disguised, their papers destroyed.”Īny bit of criticism from their male peers or public could become reason enough as to why “they” shouldn’t be in the field of architecture. Who were taught to be assertive and self-promotional, women were expected to be modest, self-effacing as a result, many of them-including pioneers like Julia Morgan and Eileen Gray-made little effort to preserve their files or save their letters.Īnd even when women did chronicle their work, their archives weren’t awarded the same treatment as those of their male counterparts. While white male architects were writing memoirs and creating public personae, architects who didn’t “fit the mold” were expected to downplay their differences. Clausen notes that the few women architects practicing at the time weren’t encouraged to preserve or record their work.
Today Morgan is celebrated as a groundbreaking architect who opened a pathway for other women to follow, but during her lifetime, she spoke and wrote little about her own work. And yet again, she became the first woman to be awarded the AIA Gold Medal by the American Institute of Architects, though this time posthumously, in 2014. In the following half century, she designed it all: churches, hotels, homes, museums, and more. Upon returning to the San Francisco Bay Area for work, Morgan became the first licensed woman architect in California. (Courtesy Special Collections and Archives, California Polytechnic State University) She was the first woman admitted to the architecture program at École des Beaux-Arts. As historian Karen McNeill explains, “Morgan failed the examinations three times, at least once for legitimate errors and once, she was told, because she was a woman.” Architect Julia Morgan in front of Notre Dame in Paris.
There she became one of the first women to study and graduate from the prestigious architecture program at the École des Beaux-Arts-but not without a great deal of effort, as she didn’t easily pass the notorious entrance exam. After encouragement from the architect Bernard Maybeck, she decided to leave the San Francisco Bay Area for Paris.
Growing up in Oakland, Morgan was one of the first women to graduate from the civil engineering program at the University of California. Read our reviews and get out and about with our thinking woman’s guide to the hottest tickets in town.She became one of the first women to study and graduate from the prestigious architecture program at the École des Beaux-Arts-but not without a great deal of effort.
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