A visit to Asilomar provides a chance to walk on the beach at sunset, hear the tale of the FishWife, see the work of Julia Morgan and get to know oneself better.
To visit Asilomar is to step back in time, as the primary buildings are key works of Julia Morgan, one of the first female architects. Arts and Crafts and influences by Frank Lloyd Wright, Maybeck and others that later defined the Bay Area school of design, the buildings sit reverently perched just above the horizon overlooking the dunes and the ocean beyond. One of the buildings is a chapel, which may explain why it sits reverently, and this night it was being used by a women’s group from a large Baptist church near Sacramento. I stumbled on the meeting, but as a guy I suppose I would’ve been out of place.
Asilomar also provides introspective or eternal time in a place where limited cell and internet connectivity is rapidly disappearing, given the proximity of the golf courses encroaching on the land which now belongs to the state (it had originally been a YWCA camp, hence the chapel).
So who was Julia Morgan? She was one of the first women architects. Born in San Francisco and reared in Oakland, she received an undergraduate degree in civil engineering at the University of California in 1894, as the only woman to complete the program that year.
One of her instructors, architect Bernard Maybeck who would continue to influence her life’s work, suggested she study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. No women had ever been admitted to study there, and she was initially refused admission. During the two years she waited to be admitted, she entered many prestigious European architecture competitions – and won most of them. Morgan was eventually admitted to the school – and the field of architecture.
The rest, as they say, is history.
