Clan Castle Envy

If there was ever a clan castle (by which we meant a house big enough for our whole clan to line in) it is the mansion of William Randolph Hearst near San Simeon. This “weekend ranch house” is commonly called the Hearst Castle – and with good reason. Hearst made his massive fortune in newspapers. He was just about the original media mogul. There is this old movie you may have heard of called Citizen Kane. It’s partially inspired by Hearst and his big house. In 1919 he decided to build a weekend cabin on some ranch land that had been in the family for years. The Casa Grande on La Cuesta Enchantada was the result. Hearst hired famous architect Julia Morgan and kept having her expand and improve the main house and the guest cottages for the next 30 years. Money was literally no object. The house is furnished – almost literally stuffed to the seams – with a vast collection of antique carpets, ceilings, chairs, church alters, mosaics, paintings, statues, tables, tapestries and wall hangings from medieval, gothic and renaissance Europe. Hearst bought the art in loads from Europeans looking to eat during the lean inter-war years over there.

Not all of the art is imported. There is a lot of carving – like the animal cornice – and quite a lot of cast plaster work that was done just for the house. Often Morgan would have only one carved pillar to work with or a corbelled ceiling too small for a room so she would have it copied in plaster by this team of brothers that specialized in that sort of thing. They seem to have been good at what they did because you can’t tell – at least not by looking (and they don’t let you touch) – which is the original 300 year old statue and which is the 50 year old plaster copy. These guys did some original paintings too to match various frescos from Italy.

Most of the house is made from concrete and rebar and just gussied up on the surface. Morgan apparently didn’t believe in other building materials. At least not for buildings in California. She first came to fame, apparently, when her buildings in San Francisco were the only ones to survive both the 1906 quake and the subsequent fire. On the back side of the house (the part still not finished when Hearst died) the walls are just bare concrete – not even stuccoed. Also some time in the stairwells the rebar sticks out and has just been bent over against the walls. The tours tend to use the parts of the house that weren’t intended for guests so we saw the unfinished aspects to the house all the time.

On our honeymoon we took the main tour where you see the ground floor of the main house. You see parlors, sitting rooms, the dinning room, the billiard room and the movie theater. A few days after the zoon, we drove up and took the second tour where you see the second and third floors of the main house. This is where all the guest bedrooms are as well as Hearst’s personal apartments.

One of the really amazing rooms on this tour is called the Princess Bedroom. It’s in one of the towers just below the bells. The stone tracery windows use animal motifs (including rabbits!) and all the details in the molding are gold leafed. There are little balconies too from which one can see the ocean and mountains, or eavesdrop on other guests. Hearst’s office was also quite impressive. Bookshelf lined with a large table in the middle it would have been quite a place to jot off notes to his editors and underlings. There was a balcony attached and a big portrait of Hearst in his youthful prime. Matt didn’t get a shot of it, but the guest library was almost as nice.
So, take note those of you who want to be in on the clan castle: this is the level to which we would like to become accustomed! We’d take this place – if the state of California would sell it to us. It’s currently operated as Hearst San Simeon State Historic Monument. They charge $24 a ticket! On second thought, maybe it’s just too fancy for our tastes. The BIG is nice, the view is nice, the location leaves something to be desired, and the upkeep would probably be preventative. Some day we will have a Hearst Castle of our own. Except we won’t call it that, “Hearst Castle” is a registered trademark.

Across Highway 1 from the castle is Hearst Memorial State Beach. After seeing the Castle, we went down to fry our kites. Matt had much fun flying that one we took to Dog Island that we got all excited about kites and bought a small one called a 3-D micro kite. The larger one was easy enough to fly but the just wasn’t enough wind for the little one, despite some valiant efforts. We’ll have to try again some other day. There is a creek that meets that ocean right at the beach. The water doesn’t flow all the way out into the waves but reaches halfway across the beach and sinks into the sand. There ends up being a kind of back-up and the water at the creek’s mouth is essentially a stagnant pool. It was kinda gross (as are most stagnant pools) and the kite fun ended when the big one dove right into the creek water. It was wet, sandy, and kinda stinky. Plus it wouldn’t fly anymore. With both our kites out of commission we called it a day and headed home.