The Julia Morgan House, a historic masterpiece and one of Sacramento’s architecturally distinguished homes, was designed by Julia Morgan in 1918 and constructed from 1919 – 1922. The house was commissioned by Lizzie Glide as a wedding gift for her daughter, Mary Glide Goethe and husband Charles Goethe. At the time, the Glides were one of the largest landholding families in California. Following the passing of Charles Goethe in 1966, the home was bequeathed to The Foundation at Sacramento State, now University Enterprises, Inc. (UEI).
The home is an exceptional example of Julia Morgan’s residential architecture and the only one in Sacramento. In 1982 the mansion was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1999, the home was extensively remodeled and carefully restored by UEI to preserve its authenticity. Most recently, several rooms in the house were renovated and transformed into state-of-the-art conference rooms.
The house is characteristic of one of Julia Morgan’s favorite architectural styles—the Mediterranean style. The floor plan of the house is symmetrical in design. The front of the house exemplifies her classic treatment with its central doorway and large number of evenly spaced windows—all balanced and in proportion. True to her attention to detail, decorative friezes, capitals, molding, and ironwork embellish a perfectly balanced Mediterranean-style façade. Inside, the floors, doors, friezes, decorative panels, window frames, stairs, and balustrades are all crafted of natural teak. Many of the architectural details in the house were designed by Julia Morgan herself and made by master craftsmen, often times borrowed from the Hearst Castle project.
Julia Morgan received a civil engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She was the first woman licensed to practice architecture by the state of California and is regarded as America’s greatest female architect. Best known as the designer of the world-renowned Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California, Julia Morgan also designed some of the most distinguished homes, many YWCA facilities, and public buildings on the West Coast in the early twentieth century. Julia Morgan studied at the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, at the time, the finest architectural school in the world. In 2014, Julia Morgan was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal by the American Institute of Architects. She was the first woman to ever receive the profession’s highest honor.
