| Between 1902 and 1932, Julia Morgan and her clients literally built their way out of the Victorian notion of separate spheres to create a landscape for modern womanhood. Their houses, clubs, and various organizations not only contributed to the growth and modernization of the cities, but served as a mode of political expression and left a permanent, material, and very public record of their contributions to California during the Progressive Era. Morgan's life serves as a gateway to and path through the historical transformation of this landscape. Because Morgan accorded to her clients an unusually high level of influence during the design process, and because her career intersected with so many individuals and groups comprised of multiple ethnicities and classes, this one person's life provides an important window into the broader relationship between gender, social change, and the built environment. The landscapes of her childhood and the people who inhabited them inspired Morgan to embark on a long and daring journey through the masculine world of the architectural profession. Morgan's experiences at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, in Paris, directly affected her gender consciousness and awakened the budding architect to the direct relationship between the spaces of women's lives and the breadth of opportunities women had in the world outside the home. After earning her architectural degree, Morgan spent a lifetime creating a new landscape for women that would help expand those opportunities. This period of building activity reinforced the already notable influence of women and their organizations in the California landscape, as well as their sophisticated understanding of the capitalist economy, property rights, and the accumulation of wealth. No single issue united the women's groups; rather, the buildings stand as public and material investments in the intellectual, cultural, social, and economic growth of California and its urban centers. |
