Julia Morgan & Phoebe Hearst: Building Legacies Together - Annenberg Community Beach House

Annenberg Beach House & Santa Monica Conservancy present a program honoring Julia Morgan, California’s first licensed female architect. American architect and engineer Julia Morgan is one of three remarkable individuals, along with Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst, that shaped the Annenberg Community Beach House site’s legacy. Best known as the architect of Hearst Castle, Morgan left a legacy of more than 700 projects in her nearly five decades of practice. Posthumously awarded the AIA’s highest honor, a Gold Medal, her brilliant and pioneering work continues to gain public recognition. Morgan designed the Guest House and pool, which comprise the historic core of the Beach House. McNeill’s scholarship focuses on women and gender in the architectural profession as well as how Progressive Era women used the built environment to expand their roles in society as consumers, reformers, educators, and professionals. Her work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Autry National Center, the Bancroft Library, and the University of California Humanities Research Institute. McNeill has taught history and architectural history at colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay Area and has been involved in historic preservation, successfully nominating a range of buildings to the National Register of Historic Places.