Birth of Julia Morgan

Julia Morgan was born on January 20, 1872, in San Francisco, California, into a comfortable middle-class family. She was the eldest daughter of Charles Bill Morgan, a mining engineer and businessman, and Eliza Woodland Parmelee Morgan.

Raised primarily in Oakland, Morgan grew up in an era when professional careers—especially in technical fields like engineering and architecture—were almost entirely closed to women. Her family, however, valued education, and Morgan was encouraged to pursue academic excellence from a young age.

This early environment of relative privilege and intellectual encouragement would prove pivotal: it enabled Morgan to attend the University of California, Berkeley, at a time when few women pursued higher education, let alone in scientific or technical disciplines. Her birth in this particular time and place set the stage for a career that would systematically dismantle barriers facing women in architecture, culminating in her recognition as one of the most prolific and significant American architects of the twentieth century.

Her birthplace and upbringing in the San Francisco Bay Area would also prove significant professionally, as the region would later become the site of hundreds of her architectural commissions, including her most famous work, Hearst Castle.