Hearst Castle
castle, chateau
-191m
San Luis Obispo County, California

Hearst Castle, San Simeon, is a National Historic Landmark and California Historical Landmark located on the Central Coast of California in the United States

https://media.whitetown.sk/pictures/us/hearst/hearst.jpg
https://media.whitetown.sk/pictures/us/hearst/hearst1.jpg
Previous names
Hearst Castle
You need to sign in to save your wishes
Description

Hearst Castle, San Simeon, is a National Historic Landmark and California Historical Landmark located on the Central Coast of California in the United States. Conceived by William Randolph Hearst, the publishing tycoon, and his architect Julia Morgan, it was built between 1919 and 1947. Known formally as "La Cuesta Encantada" (The Enchanted Hill), and often referred to simply as San Simeon, Hearst called his castle “the ranch". His father George Hearst had purchased the original 40,000 acres (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 Hearst inherited some $11 million (equivalent to $164,197,697 in 2020) 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 Phoebe Hearst's death, 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", 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. Working in close collaboration with Hearst for over twenty years, 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 as a family home for Hearst, his wife Millicent and their five sons, by 1925 he and Millicent had effectively separated and he held court at San Simeon with his mistress, the actress Marion Davies. Their guest list comprised most 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". 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.

Hearst, his castle and his lifestyle were satirized by Orson Welles in his 1941 film Citizen Kane. In the film, which Hearst sought to suppress, Charles Foster Kane's palace Xanadu is said to contain "paintings, pictures, statues, the very stones of many another palace – a collection of everything so big it can never be cataloged or appraised; enough for ten museums; the loot of the world". Welles's allusion referred to Hearst's mania for collecting; the dealer Joseph Duveen called him the "Great Accumulator". With a passion for acquisition almost from childhood, he bought architectural elements, art, antiques, statuary, silverware and textiles on an epic scale. Shortly after starting San Simeon, he began to conceive of making the castle "a museum of the best things that I can secure". Foremost among his purchases were architectural elements from Western Europe, particularly Spain; over thirty ceilings, doorcases, fireplaces and mantels, entire monasteries, paneling and a medieval tithe barn were purchased, shipped to Hearst's Brooklyn warehouses and transported on to California. Much was then incorporated into the fabric of Hearst Castle. In addition, he built up collections of more conventional art and antiques of high quality; his assemblage of ancient Greek vases was one of the world's largest.

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. In the same year, the Hearst family gave the castle and many of its contents to the State of California. 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 82,000 acres (332 km2) wider estate 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 Shaw is said to have described as "what God would have built if he had had the money".

Hearst was a voracious collector of art, with the stated intention of making the castle "a museum of the best things that I can secure". The dealer Joseph Duveen, from whom Hearst bought despite their mutual dislike, called him the "Great Accumulator". His robust approach to buying, particularly the purchase and removal of entire historic structures, generated considerable ill-feeling and sometimes outright opposition. His deconstruction and removal of the 14th century Bradenstoke Priory in England led the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings to organize a campaign which used language so violent that its posters had to be pasted over for fear of a libel suit. Hearst sometimes encountered similar opposition elsewhere. In 1919 he was writing to Morgan about; "the patio from Bergos (sic) which, by the way, I own but cannot get out of Spain". The dismantling of a monastery in Sacramenia, which Hearst bought in its entirety in the 1920s, saw his workmen attacked by enraged villagers. Hearst's tardiness in paying his bills was another less attractive feature of his purchasing approach; in 1925 Morgan was obliged to write to Arthur Byne, "Mr. Hearst accepts your dictum – cash or nothing".

Some of the finest pieces from the collections of books and manuscripts, tapestries, paintings, antiquities and sculpture, amounting to about half of Hearst's total art holdings, were sold in sales in the late 1930s and early 1940s, when Hearst's publishing empire was facing financial collapse, but a great deal remains. His art buying had started when he was young and, in his tested fashion, he established a company, the International Studio Arts Corporation, as a vehicle for purchasing works and as a means of dealing with their export and import. The curator Mary Levkoff divides the collection into four parts, the antiquities, the sculptures, the tapestries and the paintings, of which she considers the last of least significance. In 1975, the Hearst Corporation donated the archive of Hearst's Brooklyn warehouses, the gathering point for almost all of his European acquisitions before their dispersal to his many homes, to Long Island University. As of 2015, the university has embarked on a digitization project which will ultimately see the 125 albums of records, and sundry other materials, made available online.

The Esplanade, a curving, paved walkway, connects the main house with the guest cottages; Hearst described it as giving "a finished touch to the big house, to frame it in, as it were". Morgan designed the pedestrianized pavement with great care, to create a coup de théâtre for guests, desiring "a strikingly noble and saississant effect be impressed upon everyone on arrival". Hearst concurred; "Heartily approve. I certainly want that saississant effect. I don't know what it is but I think we ought to have at least one such on the premises". A feature of the gardens are the lampposts topped with alabaster globes; modeled on "janiform hermae", the concept was Hearst's. The Swan lamps, remodeled with alabaster globe lights to match the hermae, were designed by Morgan's chief draftsman, Thaddeus Joy. Others whose ideas and approach influenced Hearst and Morgan in their landscaping include Charles Adams Platt, an artist and gardener who had made a particular study of the layout and planting of Italian villas; Nigel Keep, Hearst's orchardman, who worked at San Simeon from 1922 to 1947, and Albert Webb, Hearst's English head gardener who was at the hill during 1922–1948.

Hearst Castle is located near the town of San Simeon, California, approximately 250 miles (400 km) from both Los Angeles and San Francisco, and 43 miles (69 km) from San Luis Obispo at the northern end of San Luis Obispo County. The estate itself is five miles (eight km) inland atop a hill of the Santa Lucia Range at an altitude of 1,600 feet (490 m). The region is sparsely populated because the Santa Lucia Range abuts the Pacific Ocean, which provides dramatic vistas but offers few opportunities for development and hampers transportation. The surrounding countryside remains largely undeveloped. The castle's entrance is approximately five miles north of Hearst San Simeon State Park.

At the height of Hearst's ownership, the estate totaled more than 250,000 acres. W. C. Fields commented on the extent of the estate while on a visit; "Wonderful place to bring up children. You can send them out to play. They won't come back till they're grown". Some 23 miles to the north of the castle, Morgan constructed the Milpitas Hacienda, a ranchhouse that acted as a trianon to the main estate, and as a focus for riding expeditions. In 1957, the castle and its contents, with 120 acres of the gardens, were transferred to the guardianship of the California State Parks Department. In 2005, the wider setting for the castle was protected by a conservation arrangement between the Department, American Land Conservancy and the Hearst Corporation which aimed to preserve the undeveloped character of the coast. Years earlier, the writer Henry Miller had described the Big Sur area as "the California that men dreamed of ... the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look". Miller's comment echoes an earlier observation on San Simeon made by Bernard Shaw; "This is what God would have built if he had had the money". The agreement reached between the state and the family has not been without controversy. The deal, which saw the Hearst family receive $80 million in cash together with $15 million in state tax credits in exchange for ceding development rights on the majority of the estate, has been criticized as being too generous to the Hearsts, and for restricting public access to the estate. The deal's sponsors disagreed, Mike Chrisman, California's then Secretary for Resources, describing the agreement as "a landmark effort ... and a big deal for the state, for Hearst Corp. and the family and the public".

Useful information

Free

25.00 USD

Children (5-12): 12.00 USD

Children under 12: free

WC

hccurator@parks.ca.gov

- Accessible for wheelchairs

- Guided tours are offered