Hearst Castle

• 1. Introduction

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  Hearst Castle rises from a hilltop on California's Central Coast, 1,600 feet above the Pacific, and it begins with a boy clinging to the tail of a pony. William Randolph Hearst remembered it that way. "My father brought me to San Simeon as a boy," he recalled. "I had to come up the slope hanging on to the tail of a pony. We lived in a cabin on this spot and I could see forever. That's the West - forever."

  That boy would grow up to own twenty-eight newspapers, thirteen magazines, eight radio stations, four film studios, and thirty-one thousand employees. He would commission a castle on that same hill. He would fill it with Greek vases, Spanish ceilings, medieval choir stalls, and the Hollywood elite of the 1920s and 1930s. And he would never quite finish it.

  The castle that emerged between 1919 and 1947 poses several questions at once. How does a bungalow become a 68,500-square-foot main house with 42 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, and the world's largest private zoo? What kind of woman earns the title "America's first independent full-time woman architect" by collaborating with one of the most difficult patrons of the 20th century? And what becomes of a place built so obsessively that even its owner was forced to leave before it was done?

• 2. Land and Dynasty

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  George Hearst was thirty years old when the California gold rush brought him west from Missouri, where he had been born in 1820. He made his fortune not in gold but in silver and copper, most notably at the Comstock Lode and the Homestake Mine. From those earnings, he built a political career that eventually carried him to the U.S. Senate in 1886 and a media operation that included The San Francisco Examiner.

  His land purchases were quietly methodical. In 1865 he bought the Piedra Blanca property on the California coast, then extended his holdings by acquiring most of the Santa Rosa estate and much of the San Simeon lands. By the 1870s he had built a ranch house on the estate and introduced beef and dairy cattle, extensive fruit orchards, and expanded wharf facilities at San Simeon Bay. A favored camping spot on the property, high on the ridge, was called Camp Hill.

  At George Hearst's death in 1891 he left an estate of $18 million to his widow, Phoebe. She used part of it to fund the Hearst Mining Building at the University of California, Berkeley, to support the YWCA, and to patronize architects. Probably in the late 1890s, Phoebe encountered a young civil engineering student at Berkeley named Julia Morgan. That chance meeting would, two decades later, define the hill above San Simeon.

  When Phoebe Hearst died in 1919, her son inherited the ranch, by then grown to 250,000 acres with fourteen miles of coastline, along with $11 million. Within days he was at Morgan's San Francisco office asking about building "something a little more comfortable up on the hill".

• 3. Morgan and Hearst

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  Julia Morgan was forty-seven when Hearst appeared in her office in 1919. Born in 1872, she had studied at Berkeley under Bernard Maybeck, then in 1898 became the first woman admitted to the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She passed out from the Ecole in 1902, returned to San Francisco, and worked briefly for architect John Galen Howard. Howard acknowledged her talent while paying her almost nothing on account of her sex. In 1904 she passed the California architects' licensing examination, becoming the first woman to do so. She opened her own office at 456 Montgomery Street in 1906.

  Morgan's prior relationship with the Hearst family had begun with Phoebe, who commissioned work at her Hacienda del Pozo de Verona estate at Pleasanton. That connection led to commissions from William himself, including the Los Angeles Examiner Building. When he arrived in her office in 1919 with his inherited fortune and his hill, Morgan already knew the client.

  The partnership that followed ran for twenty-eight years. Their correspondence, preserved in the Julia Morgan archive in the Robert E. Kennedy Library at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, amounts to some 3,700 letters and telegrams. Draughtsman Walter Steilberg once observed the two of them at dinner: "The rest of us could have been a hundred miles away; they didn't pay any attention to anybody... these two very different people just clicked."

  Hearst was a relentless rethinking client. The Neptune Pool was rebuilt three times before he was satisfied. In a letter dated the 18th of March 1920, he wrote to Morgan: "All little houses stunning. Please complete before I can think up any more changes." Morgan's response to his volatility was never resentment. At the height of his financial difficulties in the late 1930s, when his debts stood at over $87 million, she wrote: "I wish you would use me in any way that relieves your mind as to the care of your belongings. There never has been nor will there be, any charge in this connection. It is an honor and a pleasure."

  For twenty-odd years of near-continuous work, Morgan's fees totaled $70,755. Her biographer Mark A. Wilson estimates she made an overall profit of roughly $100,000 on the entire project. Her initial commission rate was 6%, later raised to 8.5%. Late payments and additional expenses ensured she received rather less than that.

• 4. Building the Impossible

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  In the spring of 1919 the site of what would become Casa Grande had no water, no power, and no road adequate for heavy construction. Morgan would leave her San Francisco office on Friday afternoon, take an eight-hour, 200-mile train journey to San Luis Obispo, then drive fifty miles to San Simeon. The isolation made finding and keeping workers a constant problem.

  Water was the first crisis. Limited supplies came from three natural springs on Pine Mountain, a 3,500-foot peak seven miles east of the castle. Morgan devised a gravity-based system to carry water from those springs to a series of reservoirs, including the main one on Rocky Butte, a 2,000-foot knoll less than a mile southeast of the castle. Beyond supplying the pools and fountains Hearst wanted, the water powered a private hydroelectric plant until the San Joaquin Light and Power Corporation extended service to the castle in 1924.

  The main structural material was concrete, and Morgan had substantial experience with steel-reinforced concrete construction. Working with the engineering firm Earl and Wright, she tested stone from the mountain itself, eventually mixing it with desalinated sand from San Simeon Bay. The result was concrete of high quality. Later, white sand was brought from Carmel. Brick and tile works were developed on site; Morgan used several tile companies, including Grueby Faience, Batchelder, California Faience, and Solon and Schemmel.

  Material arrived either by train and truck or by sea to a wharf in San Simeon Bay below the site. In time a light railway was built from the wharf up to the castle, and Morgan constructed a compound of warehouses and worker accommodation by the bay. Construction managers succeeded one another: Henry Washburn from 1919 to 1922, then Camille Rossi from 1922 until Hearst fired him in 1932, and finally George Loorz until 1940. At its peak, between 25 and 150 workmen were employed on site at any given time.

  Casa Grande's construction began in April 1922. The main western facade is four stories, and its entrance front, inspired by a gateway in Seville, is flanked by twin bell towers modeled on the tower of the church of Santa Maria la Mayor. In October 1927, Morgan wrote to her supplier Arthur Byne that she was "facing the entire main building with a Manti stone from Utah," assuring Hearst it would be "the making of the building." The large wooden gable above the third floor was built in Siamese teak originally intended for a ship, located by Morgan in San Francisco and carved by her senior carver Jules Suppo.

• 5. The Great Accumulator

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  The dealer Joseph Duveen, from whom Hearst bought despite their mutual dislike, called him the "Great Accumulator." Hearst's own stated ambition was to make the castle "a museum of the best things that I can secure." He pursued that goal with methods that occasionally provoked outrage.

  His deconstruction of the 14th-century Bradenstoke Priory in England drew such a furious campaign from the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings that the language on its protest posters had to be pasted over to avoid a libel suit. The dismantling of a monastery in Sacramenia, which Hearst bought in its entirety in the 1920s, saw his workmen physically attacked by villagers. In Spain, he wrote to Morgan about "the patio from Bergos which, by the way, I own but cannot get out of Spain."

  The antiquities in the collection span from ancient Egypt through Rome and Greece. The oldest pieces are stone figures of the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, dating from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, approximately 1550 to 1189 BC. In the courtyard of Casa del Monte stands a Roman sarcophagus dated to 230 AD, previously held at the Palazzo Barberini, acquired at the Charles T. Yerkes sale in 1910.

  Hearst began collecting Greek vases in 1901, and at the peak of his buying the collection numbered over 400 pieces. About 65 were purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York after his death; those remaining at the castle still constitute one of the world's largest holdings. When the vases were moved from his New York homes to the castle in 1935, they were placed atop bookshelves in the library, each wired in place against earthquake vibrations.

  The tapestries represent some of the finest material in the castle. The billiard room holds a Millefleur hunting scene woven in Flanders in the 15th century, described as one of only a handful from that period remaining in the world. In the assembly room hang four tapestries from a set celebrating the Roman general Scipio Africanus, designed by Giulio Romano. Among the paintings, a Madonna and Child from the school of Duccio di Buoninsegna, dating from the early 14th century, was a gift from Hearst's friend the editor Cissy Patterson and hangs in Hearst's own bedroom. In 2018, a previously unattributed Annunciation in the assembly room was identified as a work of 1690 by Bartolomé Pérez.

  In 1975, the Hearst Corporation donated the archive of Hearst's Brooklyn warehouses, the clearing point for almost all of his European acquisitions, to Long Island University. As of 2015, the university was undertaking a digitization project to make the 125 albums of records available online.

• 6. The Golden Guest List

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  Hearst and his family occupied Casa Grande for the first time at Christmas in 1925. Within months, his wife Millicent had returned to New York and Marion Davies, the actress who was Hearst's mistress, became the chatelaine of the castle. From 1926 until they left for the last time in 1947, the weekend gatherings at San Simeon became one of the great social spectacles of the era.

  Guests arrived by private train from Glendale Station north of Los Angeles, then by car to the castle, or flew directly into Hearst's airstrip. Among the regulars were Calvin Coolidge, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Jean Harlow, and Clark Gable. Churchill described his host in a letter to his wife as "a grave simple child - with no doubt a nasty temper - playing with the most costly toys." He dismissed criticism of the castle in a second letter to Clementine: "his house is rudely described as Monte Carlo Casino on top of the Rock of Gibraltar - but it is better than this."

  The photographer Cecil Beaton described his first impressions during a visit for New Year's Eve in 1931: "we caught sight of a vast, sparkling white castle in Spain. It was out of a fairy story. The sun poured down with theatrical brilliance on tons of white marble and white stone."

  The rules of the house were peculiar. Alcohol was rationed; guests were not permitted to have liquor in their rooms and were limited to one cocktail before the 7:30 Saturday evening gathering in the assembly room. This was not parsimony. It was Hearst's concern about Davies's alcoholism, a rule frequently ignored. The actor David Niven later reflected on supplying Davies with illicit drink: "what a disloyal and crummy betrayal of (him) and what a nasty potential nail to put in her coffin."

  Dinner in the refectory, served at 9:00 each evening, featured wine from Hearst's 7,000-bottle cellar. Charlie Chaplin noted the elaborate fare - pheasant, wild duck, partridge, and venison - but also the odd informality: "amidst the opulence, we were served paper napkins. It was only when Mrs. Hearst was in residence that the guests were given linen ones." Ketchup bottles and condiment jars on the tables were remarked upon by many visitors.

  Every dinner ended with a film, typically from Hearst's own Cosmopolitan Productions and often featuring Davies. Sherman Eubanks, whose father worked as an electrician at the castle, recalled in an oral history: "Mr Hearst would push a button and call up to the projectionist and say 'Put on Marion's Peg o' My Heart'. So I've seen Peg o' My Heart about fifty times." The actress Ilka Chase recorded that the repetition tended to "put a slight strain on the guests' gratitude."

• 7. Citizen Kane and Its Consequences

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  Orson Welles arrived in Hollywood in 1939 after making his name with the Mercury Theatre production of The War of the Worlds in 1938. He had come to adapt Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for RKO Pictures. That film was never made. Instead, Welles began collaborating with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz on a screenplay originally called American.

  The film they produced tells the story of Charles Foster Kane, a media magnate and failed politician who inhabits a Florida castle filled with "paintings, pictures, statues, the very stones of many another palace - a collection of everything so big it can never be cataloged or appraised; enough for ten museums; the loot of the world." Filming began in June 1940. The film premiered on the 1st of June 1941.

  Welles and RKO publicly denied the film was based on Hearst. But Welles's longtime collaborator John Houseman was direct: "the truth is simple: for the basic concept of Charles Foster Kane and for the main lines and significant events of his public life, Mankiewicz used as his model the figure of William Randolph Hearst."

  Hearst learned of the film's content before its release through his friends, the gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, who attended early screenings. He tried to stop the premiere. When that failed, he alternately forbade all mention of the film in his media outlets and used those same outlets to attack both the movie and Welles directly. The campaign damaged the film at the box office and harmed Welles's subsequent career.

  From its inception in 1952 through to 2012, the Sight and Sound Critics' Poll voted Citizen Kane the greatest film ever made in every decade of polling. On the 9th of March 2012, the film was screened in the movie theater at Hearst Castle itself for the first time, as part of the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival.

• 8. Ruin, Gift, and Afterlife

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  By the late 1930s, the combined weight of the Great Depression and Hearst's own extravagance had brought him to the edge of financial collapse. His debts totaled $126 million. He was compelled to cede financial control of the Hearst Corporation. Newspapers and radio stations were sold. Much of his art collection was dispersed, often for considerably less than he had paid. Hearst protested the sales, writing that the agents Parish-Watson and Co. had "greatly cheapened them and us... I am heartbroken."

  After Pearl Harbor the castle was closed. Hearst and Davies retreated to Wyntoon, another Hearst property judged less vulnerable to enemy attack. They returned in 1945 and construction resumed on a limited scale, finally ending on the 2nd of May 1947, when Hearst's declining health compelled them to leave the castle for the last time. The two settled at 1007 North Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills. Hearst died in Los Angeles in 1951. His death abruptly severed him from Davies, who was excluded from the funeral by Hearst's family. She later said: "For thirty-two years I had him, and they leave me with his empty room."

  Julia Morgan closed her San Francisco office in 1950 after a forty-two-year career. She died in early 1957, largely a recluse.

  The following year, the Hearst Corporation donated the castle, its gardens, and many of its contents to the state of California. A dedicatory plaque was installed reading: "La Cuesta Encantada presented to the State of California in 1958 by the Hearst Corporation in memory of William Randolph Hearst who created this Enchanted Hill, and of his mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who inspired it." The castle opened to the public in June 1958.

  Hearst Castle was added to the National Register of Historic Places on the 22nd of June 1972 and became a National Historic Landmark on the 11th of May 1976. A 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck on the 22nd of December 2003, with its epicenter three miles north of the castle. The very limited structural damage was taken as evidence of the quality of the construction.

  The Hearst family has maintained its connection to the place. In 2005, a conservation arrangement between the Hearst Corporation, the California State Parks Department, and the American Land Conservancy protected the broader estate in exchange for $80 million in cash and $15 million in state tax credits to the family. The castle welcomed over 850,000 visitors in 2018 and was closed in August 2019 for a single day for the wedding of Amanda Hearst, Hearst's great-granddaughter. It closed again in March 2020 due to the pandemic and reopened on the 11th of May 2022.