Public Eye

In a recent column, I took issue with Times columnist George Skelton's questioning the wisdom of inducting, among other worthies, architect Julia Morgan into the California Hall of Fame.

It's not just San Simeon that makes me make the Morgan argument. In fact, wonderful tourist attraction that it is, the castle always seems a bit more of an homage to the riches and ego of Hearst than its designer's own statement, his lovely understatement in this letter to her notwithstanding: "...Miss Morgan, we are tired of camping out in tents at the ranch in San Simeon, I would like to build a little something..."

No, it's that the first licensed woman architect in California is also one of our truly great architects on her own merits. Very little was built or survives in Los Angeles County, though the Pasadena YWCA building -- one of those that makes the Civic Center so great -- and the Herald Examiner building in Los Angeles surely come to mind.

Driving to a writers' retreat in Ojai recently, I came upon this hundred-year-old house just off Thacher Road, and exclaimed, not to my credit: "My God, it's a Maybeck!" Berkeley architect Bernard Maybeck and Morgan certainly shared some Arts + Crafts similarities. But this in fact is the Pierpont house by Morgan, and it's as beautiful and site-specific among the Ojai oaks as any house ever designed in California.

Then, a couple of weeks later, attending a UC Berkeley campus meeting, I shot some images of her Berkeley City Club, straight out of Florence or Barcelona or Oaxaca, and had a swim in her indoor pool: