Julia Morgan - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

Morgan's father, Charles Bill Morgan, was born to a prominent East Coast family which included successful military men, politicians and influential businessmen. He studied to be a mining engineer then in 1867 sailed for San Francisco, California, to speculate in mines and oil. He returned the next year to marry Eliza Woodland Parmelee, favored daughter of Albert O. Parmelee, a cotton trader and self-made millionaire. The wedding was in Brooklyn, New York, where she had grown up. As a wedding present, Parmelee gave his daughter an envelope full of money so that she could raise a family in comfort. He indicated that more money would follow.

The newlyweds traveled to San Francisco and settled downtown in a family-oriented but luxurious residential hotel. In April 1870 a son was born, named Parmelee Morgan. On January 20, 1872, Julia Morgan was born. Two years after this, the Morgans moved across the San Francisco Bay to Oakland, to live in a large house they had built in the Stick-Eastlake style at 754 14th Street at its intersection with Brush Street at the downtown edge of what is now known as West Oakland. (This Victorian-era building has since been demolished.) Three more children were born to the family in Oakland. At every new birth, grandfather Parmelee paid for the Morgans to travel to the East Coast by transcontinental train so that the grandchild could be christened in the traditional family church in New York.

Charles Morgan was not successful in any of his business ventures, so the family relied upon money from grandfather Parmelee. Eliza Morgan ran the household with a strong hand, providing young Julia with a role model of womanly competence and independence. Beginning in mid-1878, Eliza took the children to live near the Parmelees in New York for a year while Charles worked in San Francisco. In New York, Julia was introduced to her older cousin Lucy Thornton who was married to successful architect Pierre Le Brun. After returning to Oakland, Julia kept in contact with Le Brun; he encouraged her to pursue a higher education. Also in New York, Julia got sick with scarlet fever and was kept in bed for a few weeks. As a result of this illness, throughout her adult life she was prone to ear infections.

In July 1880, grandfather Parmelee died. Soon, grandmother Parmelee moved into the Oakland house, bringing with her the Parmelee wealth. This reinforced Julia's impression that women provided the foundation of social means.

Morgan resisted her mother's suggestion that she have a debutante party to celebrate her availability for marriage. She argued that she should first gain a career. Her parents were supportive of this wish, and after she graduated from Oakland High School in 1890, she enrolled in the University of California, in nearby Berkeley. At Cal, she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. One of the engineering lecturers of her senior year was Bernard Maybeck, an eccentrically dressed architect who designed buildings that Morgan admired for their respect for the surrounding topography and environment. Along with classmates Arthur Brown, Jr., Edward H. Bennett and Lewis P. Hobart, Maybeck mentored Morgan in architecture at his Berkeley home. He encouraged Morgan to continue her studies at the prestigious École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he had distinguished himself. She graduated from Cal in 1894 with a degree in civil engineering, the only woman in her engineering class. In 1896, she headed to Paris to the Beaux-Arts school, even though they had never before allowed a woman to study architecture.

The institution first denied entrance to Morgan because they did not accept women. In 1897, the school opened its entry process to women applicants, largely because of pressure from a union of French women artists that Morgan characterized as "bohemians". Morgan met with these women and was exposed to their feminist views; they discussed how to increase the influence of women in professional careers. The school denied entry to Morgan a second time because she failed some questions on the entrance exam. After two years of study, tutored by François-Benjamin Chaussemiche, a winner of the Prix de Rome, she finally passed the entrance exams in the Architecture Program, placing 13th out of 376 applicants, and was duly admitted. She could study until her 30th birthday; the school prohibited older scholars. In early 1902 as her birthday approached, Morgan submitted an outstanding design for a palatial theatre. This earned her a certificate in architecture, the first woman to receive one from the school in Paris. She stayed in Paris long enough to collaborate with Chaussemiche on a project for Harriet Fearing, an ex-New Yorker who contracted for a "grand salon" design for her residence in Fontainebleau.