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Hearst Castle, known formally as La Cuesta Encantada (Spanish for "The Enchanted Hill"), is a historic estate in San Simeon, located on the Central Coast of California. Conceived by William Randolph Hearst, the publishing tycoon, and his architect Julia Morgan, the castle was built between 1919 and 1947. Today, Hearst Castle is a museum open to the public as a California State Park and registered as a National Historic Landmark and California Historical Landmark.
George Hearst, William Randolph Hearst's father, had purchased the original 40,000-acre (162 km2) estate in 1865 and Camp Hill, the site for the future Hearst Castle, was used for family camping vacations during Hearst's youth. In 1919, William Randolph inherited some $11,000,000 (equivalent to $193,000,000 in 2023) and estates including the land at San Simeon. He used his fortune to further develop his media empire of newspapers, magazines and radio stations, the profits from which supported a lifetime of building and collecting. Within a few months of the death of his mother, Phoebe Hearst, he had commissioned Morgan to build "something a little more comfortable up on the hill", the genesis of the present castle. Morgan was an architectural pioneer; "America's first truly independent female architect",[4] she was the first woman to study architecture at the School of Beaux-Arts in Paris, the first to have her own architectural practice in California and the first female winner of the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal. She worked in close collaboration with Hearst for over twenty years, and the castle at San Simeon is her best-known creation.
In the Roaring Twenties and into the 1930s, Hearst Castle reached its social peak. Originally intended to be a family home for Hearst, his wife Millicent and their five sons, by 1925 Hearst's marriage was effectively over and San Simeon became his domain and that of his mistress, the actress Marion Davies. Their guest list included many of the Hollywood stars of the period; Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, Greta Garbo, Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford, Jean Harlow and Clark Gable all visited, some on multiple occasions. Political luminaries encompassed Calvin Coolidge and Winston Churchill while other notables included Charles Lindbergh, P. G. Wodehouse and Bernard Shaw. Visitors gathered each evening at Casa Grande for drinks in the assembly room, dined in the refectory and watched the latest movie in the theater before retiring to the luxurious accommodation provided by the guest houses of Casa del Mar, Casa del Monte and Casa del Sol. During the days, they admired the views, rode, played tennis, bowls or golf and swam in the "most sumptuous swimming pool on earth".[5] While Hearst entertained, Morgan built; the castle was under almost continual construction from 1920 until 1939, with work resuming after the end of World War II until Hearst's final departure in 1947.
In May 1947, Hearst's health compelled him and Marion Davies to leave the castle for the last time. He died in Los Angeles in 1951. Morgan died in 1957. The following year, the Hearst family gave the castle and many of its contents to the State of California and the mansion was opened to the public in June 1958. It has since operated as the Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument and attracts about 750,000 visitors annually. The Hearst family retains ownership of the majority of the wider estate of 82,000 acres (332 km2) and, under a land conservation agreement reached in 2005, has worked with the California State Parks Department and American Land Conservancy to preserve the undeveloped character of the area; the setting for the castle which Bernard Shaw is said to have described as "what God would have built if he had had the money".[8]
Morgan and Hearst's partnership at San Simeon lasted from 1919, until his final departure from the castle in 1947. Their correspondence, preserved in the Julia Morgan archive in the Robert E. Kennedy Library at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, runs to some 3,700 letters and telegrams.[c][41] Victoria Kastner, Hearst Castle's in-house custodian, has described the partnership as "a rare, true collaboration" and there are many contemporary accounts of the closeness of the relationship. Walter Steilberg, a draughtsman in Morgan's office, once observed them at dinner; "The rest of us could have been a hundred miles away; they didn't pay any attention to anybody ... these two very different people just clicked".[42] Thomas Aidala, in his 1984 history of the castle, made a similar observation: "seated opposite each other, they would discuss and review work, consider design changes, pass drawings back and forth ... seemingly oblivious of the rest of the guests".[43]
In 1937, Patricia Van Cleeve married at the castle, the grandest social occasion there since the visit of President and Mrs Coolidge in February 1930.[64] Ken Murray records these two events as the only occasions when formal attire was required of guests to the castle.[65] Van Cleeve, who married the actor, Arthur Lake, was always introduced as Marion Davies' favorite niece.[66] It was frequently rumored that she was in fact Davies and Hearst's daughter, something she herself acknowledged just before her death in 1993.[67][68] In February 1938, a plane crash at the San Simeon airstrip led to the deaths of Lord and Lady Plunket, who were traveling to the castle as Hearst's guests, and the pilot Tex Phillips. The only other passenger, the bobsledding champion, James Lawrence, survived.[69]
In 1958 the Hearst Corporation donated Hearst Castle, its gardens, and many of its contents, to the state of California. A dedicatory plaque at the castle reads: "La Cuesta Encantada presented to the State of California in 1958 by the Hearst Corporation in memory of William Randolph Hearst who created this Enchanted Hill, and of his mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, who inspired it".[93] The castle was opened to the public for the first time in June 1958.[94] Hearst Castle was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 22, 1972, and became a United States National Historic Landmark on May 11, 1976.[2][95] Hearst was always keen to protect the mystique of his castle. In 1926, he wrote to Morgan to congratulate her after a successful party was held on the hill: "those wild movie people said it was wonderful and that the most extravagant dream of a movie picture fell far short of this reality. They all wanted to make a picture there but they are NOT going to be allowed to do this...".[96] Commercial filming at the castle is still rarely allowed; since 1957 only two projects have been granted permission. Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film Spartacus used the castle to stand in as Crassus' villa,[97] and in 2014, Lady Gaga's music video for "G.U.Y." was filmed at the Neptune and Roman Pools.[98]
On February 12, 1976, the Casa del Sol guesthouse was damaged by a bomb. The device was placed by allies of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), in retaliation for Patty Hearst, Hearst's granddaughter, testifying in court at her trial for armed robbery, following her kidnapping by the SLA in 1974.[99] On December 22, 2003, an earthquake occurred with its epicenter some three miles north of the castle. With a magnitude of 6.5, it was the largest earthquake recorded at San Simeon - the very limited structural damage which resulted was a testament to the quality of the castle's construction.[100] Since its opening, the castle has become a major California tourist attraction, attracting over 850,000 visitors in 2018. Recent changes to the tour arrangements now allow visitors time to explore the grounds independently, at the conclusion of the conducted tours.[101] The Hearst family maintains a connection with the castle, which was closed for a day in early August 2019 for the wedding of Amanda Hearst, Hearst's great-granddaughter.[102]
The castle closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many projects and repairs that would have been impossible to undertake with the castle open to tourists were completed during the closure.[103] The castle reopened on May 11, 2022.[104]
Within a month, Hearst's original ideas for a modest dwelling had greatly expanded. Discussion on the style began with consideration of "Jappo-Swisso" themes.[105] Then the Spanish Colonial Revival style was favored.[106] Morgan had used this style when she worked on Hearst's Los Angeles Herald Examiner headquarters in 1915.[l][18] Hearst appreciated the Spanish Revival but was dissatisfied with the crudeness of the colonial structures in California.[27] Mexican colonial architecture had more sophistication, but he objected to its abundance of ornamentation. Thomas Aidala, in his 1984 study of the castle, notes the Churrigueresque influence on the design of the main block, "flat and unembellished exterior surfaces; decorative urges are particularized and isolated, focused mainly on doorways, windows (and) towers".[109] The Panama-California Exposition of 1915 in San Diego held the closest approximations in California to the approach Hearst desired.[110] But his European tours, and specifically the inspiration of the Iberian Peninsula, led him to Renaissance and Baroque examples in southern Spain that more exactly suited his tastes.[m][110] He particularly admired a church in Ronda, Spain and asked Morgan to model the Casa Grande towers after it.[112] In a letter to Morgan dated December 31, 1919, Hearst wrote, "The San Diego Exposition is the best source of Spanish in California. The alternative is to build in the Renaissance style of southern Spain. We picked out the towers of the church at Ronda... a Renaissance decoration, particularly that of the very southern part of Spain, could harmonize well with them. I would very much like to have your views on... what style of architecture we should select."[113] This blend of Southern Spanish Renaissance, Revival and Mediterranean examples became San Simeon's defining style; "something a little different than other people are doing out in California".[113] The architectural writers Arrol Gellner and Douglas Keister describe Casa Grande as "a palatial fusion of Classicism and Mediterranean architecture... [that] transcended the Mission Revival era and instead belonged to the more archaeological Period Revival styles that gained favor after the Panama-California Exposition of 1915".[114]
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