Long before any female presidential candidate banged her head against the highest and hardest glass ceiling in the land, a sisterhood of California women were swinging their lady-grip hammers at another transparent barrier \u2014 the entrance to the boys club known as architecture.<\/p>\n
When UC Berkeley enrolled its first architecture class in 1904 \u2014 the roster was evenly divided, with five women and five men. But education was only half the battle. There was also the thorny problem of creating a career, of making a life for oneself. The evidence seems to point to a price for these successful early-20th century women architects: domestic solitude. But they had each other.<\/p>\n Alice Klauber<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n She might be best known as a socialite and art patron, but Alice Klauber was also an accomplished fine artist, an inspiration to her peers and a groundbreaking interior designer.<\/p>\n Lately she\u2019s also become something of a feminist \u201coutlier,\u201d a woman of verve and action who sparked a revolution in art and culture. In a new bio, \u201cLadies of the Canyon,\u201d Lesley Poling-Kempes tells how Klauber, daughter of an early San Diego merchant, helped establish Santa Fe, New Mexico as an artist colony, and helped connect the East Coast art establishment with the freewheeling West. And she did it all on horseback, without a husband, camping under the stars, while wearing trousers. Well, I made up the part about the trousers. She wasn\u2019t that big of an outlier.<\/p>\n Klauber designed the Persimmon Room at the Panama-California Exposition, a ladies-only retreat that was a portent of design trends to come. Out go the earth tones, the stiff-backed oak chairs and the leather. In come the Navajo rugs, black lacquered wicker furniture and a daring color scheme of persimmon, black and soft brown. More than 100,000 women visited the Persimmon Room, put their feet up and thought, \u201cNow isn\u2019t this nice!\u201d<\/p>\n Julia Morgan<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the first women to get a degree in civil engineering from UC Berkeley (in 1894), Morgan became the first female graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1902. She was also the first licensed female architect in California.<\/p>\n Upon returning to the U.S., she went back to working with mentor Bernard Maybeck, then branched out on her own, designing more than 800 buildings, including William Hearst\u2019s San Simeon, making her one of the most prolific architects in America.<\/p>\n In San Diego, Morgan designed the YWCA downtown and the \u201cHostess House\u201d at Camp Kearny (near today\u2019s Kearny Mesa). Both buildings had interiors designed by Alice Klauber.<\/p>\n The fact that Camp Kearny needed a Hostess House says something about America circa 1917. Before women could go anywhere on the base, they had to first check in at the Hostess House. The war department issued a statement that year directed at free-spirited women: \u201cNo young woman should approach or converse familiarly with a man in uniform unless introduced by a mutual friend or unless he has been properly vouched for by the community organizations.\u201d And if they want to vote, they should just ask their husbands to do it!<\/p>\n Morgan was very private about her private life. Or maybe she just didn\u2019t have one. Hearst Castle consumed much of her energy. She worked on it from 1919 to her retirement in 1951. Architectural writer Esther McCoy wonders how she could have \u201csubmerged herself in the demands of the master of San Simeon for 30 years. One of his habits, for instance, was to make revisions directly on the tracings \u2014 a big X over what he disapproved, reinforced by the word OUT.\u201d<\/p>\n Hazel Wood Waterman<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Many of the early female architects were single women of means. Hazel Wood came from a middleclass family \u2014 her father was a school superintendent in the Central Valley \u2014 but she did end up marrying into money. Her husband Waldo was the son of California Gov. Robert Whitney Waterman, who had interests in mining and railroads. They met at Berkeley, where she studied art.<\/p>\n In 1902 the couple hired Irving Gill to build a small stone cottage on a hill overlooking the harbor. Hazel began to make her own contributions to the house\u2019s design, with Gill\u2019s approval. She rearranged the sink, serving table and stove in the kitchen.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/sduptownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/topwebStoneCottage1.jpg\")
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