Allen: Women architects of the Bay Area topic of lecture

Events and programs for Women's History Month continue with a lecture Thursday about women architects of the San Francisco Bay Area hosted by the Oakland Heritage Alliance at the Julia Morgan designed Chapel of the Chimes.

Thursday's speaker is Inge Horton, who extensively researched Julia Morgan's 40-year career and other lesser known women who were architects in the Bay Area from in the first half of the 20th century. The talk is based on her book Early Women Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area -- The Lives and Work of Fifty Professionals, 1890-1951.

The author sets the stage for her topic by laying out the closely protected lives of young upper and middle class girls and women at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century. The expectations were that members of the "fairer" sex embarked on higher education primarily to enhance their chances to marry and to produce and care for children. According to Horton, this started to change when many women became involved in the suffrage and temperance movements.

There was a rise in women's clubs and church groups signaling that women were leaving the confines of their homes and beginning to exert their influence in the public sphere. Western states, including California achieved voting rights for women earlier passage of suffrage occurred in 1911 as opposed to nationwide in 1920, when the constitutional amendment was passed. In 50 years, California had grown from a rough, male dominated mining frontier, population 92,000 in 1850, to a population of 1.5 million in 1900; 45 percent were women.

Horton highlights Phoebe Apperson Hearst (1842-1919), who was the first female regent for the University of California. Hearst, whose mining magnate husband was George Hearst, used her wealth to enhance the growing university, and to encourage policies that would benefit women students. History files reveal that one of those students was a young Julia Morgan, then studying civil engineering.

At the time Morgan (1872-1957) entered the University in 1890, it was a small and relatively unknown institution, states Horton, with 432 undergraduates, 100 of whom were women. There was not an architecture course of study, but the university had hired a talented draftsman, Bernard Maybeck (1862-1957), to teach students "descriptive geometry." Maybeck, only a decade older than his students, had trained at the prestigious Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. He encouraged Morgan, one of his most promising students to do the same, even though up until that time no female had been admitted to the school.

Horton's book profiles the careers of 50 women bay area architects, in addition to Julia Morgan. One of these, Mildred Meyers (1898-1982), came along a generation later than Morgan. By the time Meyers entered UC Berkeley, it had an architecture department. Mildred was one of three daughters of a respected local architect and she followed in her father's footsteps. The sisters lived all their lives in the family home in central Alameda, and Mildred assisted in her father's firm, designing the Veterans Memorial Buildings in Alameda County (including Oakland's) and Highland Hospital.

Today, the Meyers Neo-Colonial style home and gardens is a museum, where the public can see the environment where this not as well known female architect spent her days. The property also has the studio building where she and her father worked on their commissions.

Julia Morgan's childhood home in Oakland does not survive, unfortunately, and can only be seen in photographs.

Horton's lecture will begin at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Chapel of the Chimes, 4499 Piedmont Ave. For more about the Heritage Alliance program, and to make a reservation, go to http://www.oaklandheritage.org.

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Allen: Women architects of the Bay Area topic of lecture