San Francisco, Thekabarnews.com – There were strict rules in the world where Julia Morgan was born, and they were never difficult to understand. Women could be teachers. They could take care of it and make the inside look lovely. But males were responsible for designing buildings and shaping cities. Julia Morgan never disagreed with their regulations.

Morgan started studying civil engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, when she was only 18. She was often the sole woman in lecture halls full of guys who were skeptical and thought she would drop out. She didn’t. Morgan was the only woman in her engineering class to graduate in 1894.

Her teachers saw it. One of her mentors told her to set her sights much higher than California and go to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the best architecture school in the world. The only problem was that Morgan went to the school even though it had never let a woman in before.

The École ultimately let women take its entrance exam in 1897, when French women painters put pressure on them. Morgan took it and failed, coming in 42nd out of 376 applicants. Only 30 were chosen. She tried again six months later and failed again. Historians later suggested that they might have intentionally lowered her ratings due to her gender. There was no doubt about the message: she did not fit in.

Table Of Content

Morgan took the test for the third time
She worked hard without complaining or making a fuss
She kept her money and planned quietly

Morgan took the test for the third time

This time, she came in 13th out of 392 people who applied. The school has no excuses left. Julia Morgan was the first woman to be accepted to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts. Another obstacle was ahead. Students had to graduate before turning 30. Morgan was 25 years old at the time. She had less than five years to finish a program that usually took much longer.

She worked hard without complaining or making a fuss

Morgan got her certificate in February 1902, barely a month before her 30th birthday. She was the first woman ever to get an architecture degree from the École des Beaux-Arts. Morgan got a job with an architecture business when he got back to California. Her boss lauded her skills in public but then told her secretly that he could pay her “nearly nothing” since she was a woman.

She kept her money and planned quietly

In 1904, she established her own business in San Francisco, becoming the first woman in California to receive a license as an architect. On April 18, 1906, two years later, a giant earthquake shook the city. The fires lasted for days. More than 3,000 individuals died. Almost 80% of San Francisco was in ruins. A 72-foot bell tower that Morgan had designed using reinforced concrete, which was a relatively new method at the time, stood uninjured over the bay at Mills College in Oakland.

While the buildings around hers fell down, hers stayed put. The news quickly spread. There were many clients at her workplace. It took Morgan less than a year to rebuild the Fairmont Hotel. She went on to construct more than 30 YWCA facilities in different states, making secure, dignified places for women to stay when there were not many. She took on the biggest job of her life: Hearst Castle, a 165-room house that she would directly manage for 28 years.

Julia Morgan had created more than 700 buildings by the time she retired in 1951. Many of them are still standing, admired, and used. She passed away in 1957 when she was 85 years old. History did not pay much attention for a long time.

In 1988, a biography brought her work back into the public eye. Researchers started to understand how big her legacy really was. The American Institute of Architects gave Julia Morgan the AIA Gold Medal, its highest accolade, in 2014, 57 years after she died. She was the first woman to get it. Julia Morgan never used speeches or slogans to fight the world. She battled it with buildings.

She was not paid enough. Not enough thought. Told “no” at every important stage. She kept working, though. And in the most modest act of disobedience possible, almost everything she built is still standing.