A Maverick's Country House

William Randolph Hearst, shown at age 31 in an 1894 portrait by Orrin Peck, built a still-mighty publishing empire and lived lavishly on a grand scale.  He was an art collector who personally selected and placed every object in his vast collection at the magnificent castle La Costa Enchanted (The Enchanted Hill), San Simeon, California, on the Pacific coast half-way between Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Working for 28 years with Julia Morgan, the first female architect to achieve national prominence, Hearst created a hybrid of informal California traditions infused with English country house sensibilities.  With actress Marion Davies as hostess, media mogul Hearst famously entertained the Hollywood in-set, such Charlie Chaplin and Gary Grant, mixed with the likes of Calvin Coolidge and Bernard Shaw for weekend house parties.

Guests usually arrived by train to the village that consisted mainly of warehouses for Hearst's treasures, the buildings often mistaken for the remnants of a historic colonial mission.  The five mile drive up to The Enchanted Hill complex winds upward giving occassional glimpses of the picturesque massing, disappearing again and again before dramatically arrive at Casa Grande, a castle-like main house with twin towers modeled after the Cathedral at Ronda, Spain.

Hearst had camped and picnicked on the 1,600 foot high hill as a child and continued that tradition until he decided it was time to give up the village of tents for a more permanent building.  There is some question as to whether it was Hearst or Morgan who came up with the idea of utilizing the Spanish colonial style, but clearly both embraced it completely.

The main entrance of Casa Grande combines contemporary limestone and cast stone with historic sculptural fragments.  The statue of "Galatea" by Leopoldo Ansiglioni in the fishpond is just one of many placed around the complex.

An early 1920s sketch by Julia Morgan for the rear of Casa Grande is similar to what was eventually built.

Just as architecturally significant and as fabulously furnished, there are three guest houses, pictured above:  Casa del Mar (House of the Sea), Casa del Monte (House of the Mountain), and Casa del Sol (House of the Sun).  There are two swimming pools.  The outdoor Neptune Pool is the most fantastic one could ever imagine.

Until you saw the indoor pool, located in the separate athletic building, that gives the effect of being in a classical aquarium because of the shimmering mosaic glass tiles.  This view below shows the diving balcony and the more shallow wading alcove beyond.

All the photos shown here are by Curtis Bruce and appear in the wonderfully informative book Hearst Castle, San Simeon with text by Thomas R. Aidala, published by Hudson Hills Press, 1981.  Additional photos, including some shots of the interior, taken by a fellow blogger and reproduced by permission of Hearst Castle, were published in a recent series of posts in the ArchitectDesign blog, at http://architectdesign.blogspot.com/.

As a fan of the Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, an unfair but fictionalized portrayal of Hearst that is none-the-less an incredible film, I thoroughly enjoyed visiting the estate some years ago with architect and film buff Emiliano F. Castro.  It is a state park and there are guided tours of the main house and the mini-mansion guest houses.

Victoria Kastner, the historian at Hearst Castle for 30 years, will present "A Maverick's Country House:  William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon" at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Saturday, March 12, 2011, at 2 pm.  There is no charge for the talk with museum admission.  The Devoted Classicist is the President of Decorative Arts Trust which is co-sponsor of the event with The Royal Oak Foundation, so it is hoped that blog readers in the area will be able to attend.