Who was Julia Morgan?
JULIA MORGAN BUILT A CASTLE Written by Celeste Davidson Mannis Illustrated by Miles Hyman Viking, 2006 Julia’s Early Life Julia Morgan was born in 1872 and raised in Oakland, California. Her father was an engineer who “enjoyed taking the family on tours through construction sites” in San Francisco. To Julia, the buildings seemed like “huge puzzles”—and she “wanted to know how everything fit together.” Sometimes her family visited her cousin Pierre LeBrun in New York. LeBrun was an architect. He designed the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower, one of the first skyscrapers constructed in Manhattan. It would seem these early experiences must have inspired Julia’s dream of becoming an architect some day. There were no schools nearby that taught architecture so Julia studied engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. She was the only female in her class. There was much to learn and think about: the effect of earthquakes, wind, and gravity on buildings; how to anchor buildings s
