Julia Morgan,Architecture Tour-Elmwood&Claremont Ct.+addBerkeley City Club Tour

\Don't be a no-show or a last minute canceller. See the Group's no-show policy below. Do the Meetup tour in the morning, stop for the pizza and then: \On the 4th Sunday of the month there are 45 min. docent led tours of Julia Morgan's Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant St., starting at 1:00pm-3:30pm. (Photo above JM in Paris, 1900, Cathedral Notre Dame in the background. For more information about JM, read here and see the photos below.) We're meeting outside the, Berkeley Playhouse/Julia Morgan Theater on College Ave. at Derby St., our first stop on the tour. (Optional stop after the tour, at nearby, Nabolom Bakery & Pizzeria.) If you're not going for the City Club Tour, consider a matinee performance at the Julia Morgan Theater and a chance to really take in the interior of a classic JM design. Public places like Asilamar and Hearst Castle offer a chance to see a JM interior, a must to fully appreciate her work. (Along the way we'll see Bernard Maybeck's, First Church of Christ Scientist, a Nat'l Landmark site, where free tours are offered on the first Sunday of every month at 12:15 PM. One of the best ways to experience these buildings is to attend an event there. Across the street is Julia Morgan's 1918 Baptist Theological Seminary. (Bowditch & Dwight Way). Built having a brick facade to resemble the Ashmolean Library of Oxford. Britain's first public museum and the world's first university museum. note. The Seminary's windows and Tudor details recall the period when the Baptist Church was founded. (We'll pass 2727 Dwight Way, one of the oldest, non-JM houses on the tour, 1891, remodeled in 1917 by Willis Polk.) Morgan graduated UC in 1894 with a degree in Civil Engineering, one of her specializations was structural engineering. (This benefited her clients greatly, as was seen after the 06' earthquake in her still standing buildings.) She arrived in Paris in 1896. A few years later it was reported in the San Francisco Call: Paris, Oct.30,1902 - Julia Morgan of San Francisco passed the examination with honors at the Architectural section of the School of Fine Arts, Ecole de Beaux Arts, Paris France. The first woman to do so. Ironically one of the greatest architects in history, was made to wait two years, taking entrance exams before admission. By the end of her 45 yr. career she had received over 700 commissions. It was said, "Her rational approach to home design and the public success of her large commissions gave Julia Morgan a solid reputation. It also won her the confidence of her clients. With the hard work, genius, inspiration and true artistic and historic perception to create memorable works. Over the course of her career, Morgan designed nearly one hundred buildings across California and the nation for women’s organizations. Her commissions included social and civic clubs for women; academic, residential, and recreational buildings; primary schools; orphanages; hospitals, sanitariums,and nursing residences. She also designed more than thirty YWCA buildings, including those in San Francisco and Berkeley. We'll concentrate on the many Julia Morgan designed houses, churches and buildings in the Claremont Ct. and Elmwood neighborhoods. Unique here are the Julia Morgan ensemble houses, where she creatively and economically placed two houses on one large lot. We'll see several of these ensembles. In fact when JM bought her own house at Washington & Divisadero in SF in 1925, she bought a pair of houses there. To read more about the many Julia Morgan public buildings, such as the Hearst Castle etc. go to wikipedia. She was one of California's most prolific architects. The first woman to receive the American Institute of Architects highest award, the AIA Gold Medal, awarded posthumously in 2014. The three projects that immediately solidified her future career as a great architect, engineer and fully capable project/construction manager were the rebuilding of the new Fairmount Hotel after its semi-destruction following the earthquake. The design, engineering and building of the beautiful Bell Tower at Mills College and Carnegie Library there, both of which survived the earthquake without a crack. And the completion on time and within budget of the construction of the Greek Theater at UC for John Gayland Howard, campus architect. \Don't be a no-show. Don't be a no-show and lose your membership in the Group. Attendance is always taken per name tags that are not picked up. After the last Julia Morgan home we'll find our way back through what I call the "Pacific Heights" of Berkeley. Look for parking on the smaller side streets or College Ave. Option for lunch afterward. (In my opinion the best slice of organic flour pizza or best overall, in the Bay Area.) Here are some links if you would like to help with Meetup expenses. Here is a Venmo link., for my account. Here is my Paypal account. '[email protected]' \Docent-led, 45-minute tours of Julia Morgan's Berkeley City Club on Durant, are offered on the fourth Sunday of every month (except December) from 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM. These are drop-in, public tours that cost $10 per person.