>> sundays in february, american history tv is airing a selection of oral history interviews with former korean war pow's recorded by the korean war legacy foundation. first interview is charles ross who soon after enlisting in the army in 1947 became a sergeant in a small unit in south korea. he was captured by the chinese and held as a p.o.w. from 1950 to 1953 today at 10:00 a.m. eastern time here on american history tv on c-span 3. >> february is black history month and the c-span bus is on the road visiting the top historically black colleges and universities to speak with faculty and discuss public policy issues and highlight their role in america's education system. this tuesday will be in fisk university followed by moore house college and spellman college in atlanta. >> historian and author of victoria kastner of william randolph herself. her story "herself castle" about reconstructing the estate in california. the author hosted this event in november of 2000. >> now pleased to introduce to you victoria kastner. she has a master's degree with an emphasis with architectural history from california in santa barbara. in her book "hearst castle," she tells the untold story and the 28 years of a relationship between hearst and architect julia morgan. victoria chronicles the victorian hill top. the slides tonight are beautiful of it. not only do we view the hill top but the pools and the astounding collection of fine arts and antiques. sprinkled throughout her book are stories of the famous parties that are hosted at the hearst castle. and with his companion movie star marian davies and their celebrated guests which all combine together to bring to life meeshgs most glamorous country home. please join with me in welcoming victoria kastner. >> very glad to be here in america's oldest museums to talk about a uniquely american subject. that is william randolph hearst and his beloved home. he had more than half a dozen houses, all very large and filled with art. but the one he loved the most was this one. i think it's been most known like william randolph hearst not through historic events but through media event. that was orson welles' film "citizen kane" a great film, but not a documentary. i think by the end of the evening you'll agree with me that william randolph hearst called the house formally la questa en kantada. it was a lively house filled with people, companionship, and with a fascinating art collection that deals a lot about the past history. glad to see you all here. you're civic minded and it will please you to know that all of the royalties for hearst castle the biography of a country house goes to a nonprofit organization called the friends of first castle. that raises money for art restoration, and other castle projects. so when he was being formal about it, william randolph hearst called it the enchanted hill but usually just the ranch at san simian. and actually it was comprised of four large buildings, these cottages as they were known. and then this, the main building which in itself has 115 rooms on four major stories and 54,000 square feet of enclosed floor space. plus a 15,000 square foot basement. it was built between 1919 and 1947 and it's been open in a state park since william randolph hearst's death. and in 1957, his family and his company, the hearst corporation gave it to the people of california where it's a state park. as a matter of fact, in 42 years, it's been seen by 32 million visitors. so it's particularly interesting that mine is the first book to be written about the subject in all of that time. this is the photograph of william randolph hearst who came on a visit in january of 1937 and talked about hearst. hearst built the house for 28 years and it really was a labor of love for him and his architect, julia morgan, the first woman architect of prominence in america who was 47 at the time this photograph was taken and in her 40s when william randolph hearst hired her to begin building, she had designed 500 buildings in her career. and you'd think this would have occupied all of her time but actually she designed several hundred more structures -- several hundred structures while sam simian was under way. i think the other way the castle has been known is as a home for glamorous movie star visitors because in complete defiance with convention, william randolph hearst separated from his wife mill sent veronica wilson in 19 -- well, about 1925 after five sons and 20 years of marriage. mrs. hearst while they never divorced lived on the east coast and william randolph hearst went out west with a hollywood actress who was the hostess on the hill. on the opposite side you can see cary grant on the right leaning against a roman first century fuminary marker. what hasn't been discussed is william randolph hearst wasn't just an art collector. he was very different from most of them, someone who made a fortune. he collected art gathering art as a small boy. i began by reading you a mother when he was 26 about his statue. he desperated wanted to buy. dear mother, why didn't you buy it? it is superb. i have a great notion to buy it myself in fact. the one thing that prevents me is a scarcity of funds as it were. the man wants $8,000 for the blooming thing and that is a little above my head. i have the art fever terribly. queer, isn't it? i never thought i would get it this way. i never miss a gallery now. i go and wish you were mine. my longings are not distinct from average, i'm afraid. so i want some of these fine things and i want you to have some of these fine things and did you know, my beloved mother, there is a way in which you might get them. if instead of buying half a dozen fairly nice things you would wait and buy one fine thing, all would be well. as it is at present, we have things scattered from new york to washington to san francisco more than a house could hold. not among them half a dozen things that are superb. the people are heavily taxed. the government is nearly bankrupt and cannot buy up the opportunities itself as it has done and some wealthy american or englishman will soon step in and taking his chances will have a collection almost equal to some of these national galleries. i wish i could be the rich american. i wish you could be. how nice it would be if we could exchange all our alleged pictures for two or three masterpieces such as i have mentioned. in price, they are the same. but in value, how different. i am not going buy anymore trinkets. then when advanced in years, i will not have had all that i wanted but i will want all that i have which is better. go thou and do likewise, mama, dear if you don't, you'll be mad at yourself the next time you come abroad. what good are more trinkets with all we have. save your money and wait. a duke of spain is coming with a collection of old masters. get a maurio or velasquez. don't get four or five old masters no one heard anything about. get a maurio and a velasquez if you can. but get at least one good picture and wait again, and reverent son, wrh. he was dispensing advice in his 20s which he had no intention of following later in life, mr. "i am not going to buy any trinkets" of course became one of the most astonishing art -- so the question is why. what changes in the letter in 1889 filled with good intention and the acquiring of objects. one big thing was changed by the american congress in 1909. that was the payne-aldridge tariff. if something was more than a work of art or more than 100 years in age, you didn't have to pay duty. it was muted because of the first world war, in the end of the war, it was the beginning of the flood gates and the great objects of the magnificent art museums of this city were acquired in the window of opportunity between the world wars. but i think that it's more than the advantage of the americans having to buy duties and taxes and december magss of war are causing the europeans especially to sell. it was william randolph hearst's on background. he was born an only child and i think it was a significant factor in his life. his father was a minor. george hearst came out west. struck it rich with the come stock silver and the gold and the anaconda copper mines was ap business rival of your great donor, mr. clark in the anaconda mines at montana. joshlg haes at 41 married 19-year-old phoebe actorson haes. she was from missouri. she came west. settled with her husband in san francisco, determined to become an art collector herself. she became one of america's greatest philanthropist, the co-founder of the pta, the builder of free kindergartens, she built the national cathedral girl's school here in washington. william away in 1863 he had an indulged childhood. his father george bought up land to the california coast exactly equi distant between san francisco and los angeles. this large ranch in san simian. and 1865 california had only been a state for 15 years and he was buying up mexican land grants. this is the valley of the cross. and the slide on the left is san simian bay. when william was a boy, the family would take the steamers down from san francisco which they would dock at the bay and the family would make a habit to come up to top of the hill to camp on a high prominence, 1600 feet up above the coastal fog. william joked later in life he was so young the first time he made the trek, he only managed it by hanging on the the tail of his pony. there they set up a spot called camp hill. but phoebe had a lot of cultural aspirations and travelled abroad with him. the first time he went to new york, he was 10. phoebe wrote back to george in the mines, he is picture crazy. he wants to buy everything that he sees. he did at the age of 10 begin collecting. he started collecting me papal medallions cartoons, and that would figure later. he like a lot of rich americans was educated back east. he went to st. paul and harvard but never got a degree. he was dispelled -- rustic action t ex-d as they put it sent home, for as he put it a deficiency in studies and lack of attendance in classes. he was completely unphased by this expulsion. he was a rebel rouser and joked late in life that it takes a good mind to resist education. but william randolph hearst did get something out of his harvard experience. it was there as a rich man's son that he was given the job of the business manager of the harvard lampoon, always a money loser. but under his tutelage, he began to sell advertising after the first whiff of printer's ink, he was never the same. he asked the father for a newspaper. hoping that mining and ranching the family businesses would interest him instead. but given the san francisco examiner when he was 34, third rate money-losing newspaper which he poured $750,000 into. he changed the masthead to make it "the hon -- monarch of the dailies." he made it successful and then headed east. he had a lifelong fascination with journalism. he said if i had my life to live over again, i would be the great academic sculptor. and this is bone part at the sphynx. you can see napoleon encountering the sphynx and the shadow of his cavalry officers behind him. these two meet each other. it was charles mckim who commissioned this to create this great statue. he was going to give it to the boston library. but they refused. a naked lady in an extreme state of inibrium. it soared in popularity. several bronzes were made. it was exhibited in chicago in 1893. and on the opposite side, pigmalian and galatalia. a woman who's so beautiful he falls in love with her and the gods take pity on her and bring her to life. a painting on the same subject at the met. this came from the collection of charles yerkes the streetcar magnate from whom hearst also bought in 1910, this roman box, this sarcophagus from 230 a.d. shows apollo athena, and the nine muses. it's carved in a -- carved by a different hand. looks much longer and unlike the other daughters of zeus, athena from whom we get the word museum. this was left blank, a block, and carved at a later time as a funirary portrait for the deceased who loved art in life and in death payment one with the muses. the isabella stuart gardiner of the west. the university of california. donate millions to it, funded to the architectural competition for the campus design in 19d 89 89 -- 1899 and befriended many students. there was no architecture department in the 1890s. and to fund julia morgan's architectural obligation, she refused saying your confidence is enough of an inspiration to me. she had been born in well off circumstances. her family lived in oakland, california. but it was true that phoebe hearst remained a patroness of julie morgan. they were introduced by the architect who worked at the university of california and helped phoebe with the competition, a building he designed for her was a rustic structure in the northern part of california which seemed to rise out of a pine forest out of a bah varian hunting lodge. she built it to the 1900s and it burnt to the ground and william randolph hearst rebuilt wind tomb in the 190s as his own private bavarian refuge used by the family today. there's phoebe hearst with three of her five grandchildren and veronica wilson. phoebe did keep tags on julia morgan and encouraged her to be an applicant when mabeck found out that the greatest school for architects might be willing to accept her as a woman student. she travelled to paris and took the examination as did so many american architects after richard morris hunt, the very first one to study. she didn't pass the first time. and that was a pretty common experience. there was worry and talk that he gender had been failed out that she failed. she did on the third attempt succeed. she came in 14th in the 376 aspirants. she went there. there she learned on the right, learned to use historic precedent and think and design buildings from the inside out. she worked at -- she worked for an architect. it's much the way she read her own architectural office. she received her certificate, which is something you acquired by the number of medals, first and second prize medals you achieve by the age of 30, beyond the cutoff limit. she received the certificate and was the first woman to achieve that. she went back to the san francisco bay area. and one of her first commissions was this on the left-hand side at oakland's mills college. it was done in mission revival style in steel reinforced concrete in 1904 and survived the 1906 earthquake without cracking which is a marvelous advertisement of julia morgan's skill. and there was a tremendous amount of work for architects at the fairmont hotel, a brand new building on knob hill demolished in the quake which julia morgan redesigned. the last project that bernhard made back when william randolph hearst phoebe actorson hearst and julie martin had occasion to work on together, the world's fair in san francisco, the panama expedition or the ppi ex-. william randolph hearst said he had never seen a greater combination of architectural loveliness at that world's fair in which his mother was the head of the board. she designed the buildings interiors, and bernhard mayb ex-contraction kks made permanent the pal lace of fine arts, a magnificent rotunda and colonnade in front of a lagoon. on the right-hand side, you see arcadia, one of the bronze sculptures from the fair was exhibited the edgard walters in 1915 in which yuchl randolph hearst acquired for san simian. soon after the fair, phoebe hearst died. she died in the influenza epidemic that swept not just across america but the entire world after the first world war. in april of 1919, william randolph hearst found himself the inheriter of the fortune. george hearst died in 1891 and the mining money reverted to phoebe. he found himself the inheriter of a vast cattle ranch in san simian which grew with the land acquisitions combined to over a quarter million acres. and one of her employees overheard hearst walk into an office and announce, ms. morgan, i've grown tired of camping in san simian. no more tents. i'm getting a little old for that. i'm thinking of building a little something. the same employee said and within a month, they were going on the grand scale. actually the only scale to which william randolph hearst was accustomed. he was thinking of a california bungalow a simple house. but it soon evolved to a group of simple buildings. sleeping in separate dining tents in the days he camped in san simian. and so julia morgan started drawing up schemes like a mediterranean hill town where the three out buildings encircled the main house and very early on, they decided to use not the stylings of the san diego worlds fair, but the stylings of the buildings of the spanish and italian renaissance. there on the right you can see a presentation drawing of the middle sized guest house on 18 rooms and three stories formally named casa del sol for the view of the setting sun. he was well travelled in his life. but going to an influential book called ed callede klees yas call. the forward was written by bertram goodhew who designed the worlds fair building. you can see the church first illustrated in that book in southern spap which he decided would make a very nice inspiration for the towers of the main house which he called casa grande. no chapel at san simian. it's a great country house but no areas for worship. i think he was really feeling like he could create a hill city with a mediterranean approach and on the right-hand slide, what you see is an early drawing by julia morgan emulating the cathedral. for the doorway of the main entrance, he saw in the same book, a church facade from 16th century spain in sevilla. and so on the left-hand side, you see the original. here are the gothic limestone soldiers, flat, an eagle, a lion. you can see here at the san simian doorway that julia morgan has imitated it, but improved the scale. she's using actually 15th century spanish carvings. here's the flat and instead of the rod iron grille, she placed a niche which they placed the sculpture of the virgin mary of a church in zamoa=. he was===== >> she was unmindful with money all his life. while julia morgan was often to run into debt. he paid eventually, but it was never prompt. one of the ironies of the association was she died without having made really proper financial investments. she died in 1957, the year that the the thess -- the estate was donated. but her heirs sold off her library. in part to pay the bills. so a lot of references to which she and hearst referred were cast to the four winds. i think it led along with the xanadu impression that san simian was hodgepodged of ill assembled and ill conceived elements. every aspect minutely discussed between the architect and clients. we have drawings and letters. here you can see the west porch in the house of cordoba and the west porch of casa del sol. william randolph hearst was by enthusiasm and patience and love of san simian. it was unmindful that the fact that he kaept changing his mind was what slowed up the plan. julia morgan said he does suffer from a great changeableness of mind for which he chomp sates to some extent by allowing me to change mine now and then. and the fact is that they had a rare, true collaboration. a falsenating aspect of their relationship. i suppose history can see it as good fortune that hearst didn't live there year round. it was a country house. he spent perhaps a total of four to five months a year. and julia morgan had an office in san francisco with 15 employees and a fulltime firm. so she commuted by train. and they corresponded and we know a great deal more about the house than we ever would have known than if we stood and talked to each other. it's clear that hearst was overbrimming with ideas. think of the difficulties. world war i had ended, labor was short. materials were in very short supply. there was a huge long shoreman stock strike in 1919. the first thing they had do was ship in all of the materials to san simian bay. and then build a road to haul everything six miles from the bottom to the top of the hill. the main thing in the ranch is the view. having lived through the 1906 earthquake they early on determined that the only material for all construction would be steel reinforced concrete. and for this, they used the rock of the hillside which is called fransican mellange it was churt and other stone and concrete they mixed by the barrel full with 60 to 90 men living in tents at the top of the hill. they had a crew that lived with her. some of them didn't even take the chance to unpack. hearst was paying union scale wages and the men said the food was fine and the surroundings nice, but they just didn't like feeling so far away from things. i'm hiring countrymen as fast as i can. they did indeed hire a bunch of local laborers to do the work. the first thing built went up quickly. all under construction in 1923 to 1924. hearst was very involved, not just two the interior designs with the spanish and italian renaissance presence but with the interiors. he sent julia morgan this photograph of the house of payne whitney at 1975th pine after in new york. this was one of white's last commissions. it was built posthumously. white died in 1906, shot in the scandal over evelyn nesbitt, the chorus girl. in 1909, the house was constructed. i don't know if i can get enough red velvet from genoise and obviously we can't have antique ceilings shipped in. so we'll have to make due with ones we can make here. this is a plaster ceiling which is made in oakland california, cast in molds and gold leafed at san simian. they did find some old genoise vel set. you can see how they're following the organization of this particular room. haes is entombed in stanford white white, his objects all of his life, even though the after the scandal of white's death there was a huge backlash and many of his former proponents became just as vigorously his -- against him. hearst went to the 1907 sales. including in the left-hand side, the ceiling had been in white's drawing room. it was a composite of a couple of different paintings. the centers, the me dalians of the angels is a netherlandish painting from the 17th century. the virtues in the 18th century. it was doubtless white that put them together. he hung the chandelier from the center. it was in his living room. he crew sated for american terrorists to be reduced so they could buy. he acted as a dealer as well as a decorator and an architect. he bought this mantlepiece he bought it from the chateau du jour and built it in charles barney's mansion in new york. when barney dies, hearst bought it many years later in 1922 and gave it a pride and place of san simian. william randolph hearst was the same kind of omnivorous collector that he had been. specialized in the pottery, stained glass pieces, lots of furniture. in 1920, his son, laurence grant white published a monogram, a spirited defense of his father's an attempt to reguild a tarnished reputation. and he said my father put little stock in paintings. he wasn't interest in the minor works. he was much more interested in the decorative arts. what white and hearst did later was build around objects. i don't mean literally around them. they would alter the pieces to make them fit. but take a piece of architecture like a ceiling or a mantlepiece and make it the feature of the room and mix things in such a way that what you ended up with was a rich cultural layering that achieved the effect of generations of family and centuries of collecting in a short amount of time. these are the rod iron doors of the house of the sun, sasa del sol. this is the detail, a portrait of the artist. his name was edward trinkeller. he was born and did it in the 1920s, you note that every other member of the doors is a characature with a large nose. hit's given himself a small one. this is from the cartoons max and maurice. here's the drawing by julia morgan in which two figures looking very much like morgan herself and william randolph hearst are standing at a garden in consulting and here on the other side, you can see on the right-hand slide the two working. hearst face obscured by a beam. no romance but a remarkable relationship perhaps because it was his mother who introduced him so many years ago. walter said about these two, next to mrs. hearst, ms. davies miss morgan was the woman who meant the most. not in a romantic way. but these two had a remarkable friendship. he said i can't go back to san simian would feeling that that place is haunted by the two great personalities. you could see them bent over the drawing and almost watch the spark as it travelled to one or the other of their foreheads for these two very different people just sort of clicked. i've often wondered how many of her journeys really got to use the grand schemes and architectural techniques that they all learned there the way that she did working with craftsmen in the '20s designing the mermaid tiles and bunny tiles, sometimes working from precedence, as in this case. this is a cornice on a building in spain which hearst had seen and wanted to make it imitate. instead of making it level, they made it gabled and a cornice that is a distinct feature all carved out of teak which had been ordered for a boat building project in a warehouse in san francisco and julia morgan found out about it, cabled hearst, and he bought the whole lot for $5,000. >> greco roman portrait bust, the double bust and the modern translation of the bust to a lamp standard. most of it was this molded beach sand from the region used in the concrete packed into wooden forms in the shops allowed to cure in water until it got harder. this is san simian, they generated their own power. they had water from the early day, they had a source from higher mountains of gravity flow springs which generated a hydroelectric plant until the mid 20s when they hooked up to public power. they always had electric light. and here you can see the lamp standards turned around the neptune pool which we'll get into more later but one of san simian's most con conspicuously beautiful areas. the night lighting like this swan lamp standard done by one of her employees, thadias joy. here's the shot on the hill. and the shot of the hill you can see from the air in the middle 30s. it's like a small city. all of the southern portion of the hilltop here. these are workers' quarters. they had -- they started out with tents and those blew down in the first rain. and so they constructed barracks buildings. there could be as many as 90 men living in the camps on the south side of the hill. here are the guest houses to the front. that's the neptune pool. they're doing additions on the back of the main building. it had both the south and the north wing added on. also added on we'll see later, tennis courts that formed the roof of yet another swimming pool. in all the years of construction with literally totals of thousands of construction workers, there never were any fatalities on the job. the way that julia morgan worked is she worked from a model. in the early years, she would shift the model back and forth to hearst. it got too large to send. so she had a woman architect in her office as she worked on this model. they would take photographs of the model and then tint the photographs and send them to hearst so they could try out new ideas. he wanted things to come together quickly but the great hall or the assembly room was a complicated room to put together. they were working on it from 1922 to 1928. but hearst used whatever portions of the house were ready. the large gathering spot. the mantlepiece given the pride of place. and also the idea to take seats of churches, choir stalls and use then for wanesinscottwainscotting. he was a specialist in architecture. elements of architecture, renaissance furniture, fabric of every type pottery, and english silver are his areas of specialty. but he was an omnivorous collector that found everything of interest. and this was a country house and dedicated to informal pure suits so you can see things like the venus here by antonio canova next to this poker table at the north end of the room. alice marvel won wimbledon in 1938 and can time san simian as a young girl. she had one of her first columnist asking her if she would mind taking over his hand. he had been called upstairs with a meeting with hearst. she sat down and won $11,000 playing poker. hearst came back down as the other people were taking out their checkbooks and she said, i can't accept that, my mother would kill me. she wouldn't take the money. after that she was a frequent guest. but this whole notion of informal activities and the outdoor life and lots of socializing in the backdrop of fine art is borrowed from the great country houses of new port long island rhode island, florida, and also, the great country houses of britain. here's the venus atalica. i thought i would spent a moment on it which is one of the four that antonio carved. this is the second one. those familiar with the hope venus perhaps will note that here in around 1805 she's hugging the draperies close to her chest whereas in the hope venus, she lets the draperies drop and she's more at waist level. it was after this piece was taken by napoleon that antonio canova was approached to create the carving. he didn't like the copy classic statue statues. he created not a copy of the origin nal original but his own unique work. he did four of them. this is the second one which was carved and sold to the prince lucian bone part. -- bonapart. his collection in 1930 was put up for sale. hearst bought it in 1930 and had an agent bid for him his own father-in-law, george wilson bid on the piece. hearst did that, he said, when i sit on the floor of an auction the price seems to keep going up. so he had agents. the interesting thing about it is that from 1930 to the present day, many art scholars have listed this venus as missing. not missing because it was bought by the representative of the collector, missing, i think is an especially unusual term considering in the last 42 years, its's been seen by 32 million people. but san simian is not been thought a place where fine art resided or art scholars had any reason to go. and i think that's why it's been under the radar and is only recently been discovered and reported as existing there. one of the few other places it's listed is in york catalog of the clark collection on its anniversary, the 50th anniversary which was published in the 1970s. hearst did go to auction sales. basically bought in america not abroad at new york galleries. and was such a good customer of mitchel samuels of the great dealing house french and company that in 19 -- the late 1920s, he feels given the presentation casket, a box of raw crystal and gilt bronze and ebony with a floor laid in semiprecious stones. he was interested in acquiring elements of architecture and san simian contains the finest collections of antique ceilings in the country. run in the garden library, one in viscaya, one in the garden museum. a couple in the met. san simian has 40 antique ceiling, spanish and italian. to give you a sense of the scale, this is from that same building, the assembly room the same room. these panels are each eight feet long, all carved in renaissance walnut. a close-up of one panel of neptune and his wife and the dolphins at his feet. this ceiling was not the right size for the room. nothing ever was. it was made to fit. all of the beams that run across it are plaster. it's not a structural ceiling, none of them are. in this case, the ceiling is suspended by cables of concrete and -- by cables of copper and hemp to concrete beams above. the refektry is where they dined. he said it would look good to have the tapestries low, miss morgan as they are in hampton court. they're from the earlier part of the 14th century. a 14th century iron gate has above it in fragmentary cloister of columns, a gallery where they could stand and serenade the guests. you can see them dining. here's hearst in the center. bottles of mustard and ketchup in prominent delay. he knew the value of a gesture. this must have shocked people just like one of the front headlines of the papers. this is the west, this is not the way it was done on the east coast. you can see it decorated at christmas time. the typical habit hearst sat at the center of the table with marian davies, the actress he lived with for so many years opposite of him. and when they would come an hour south of san simian, they had to get out of the train and get into taxis and up dirt roads. a long trip of several hours for usually a country house weekend visit. they first arrived, sitting near the center. but as the stay lengthened and new rivals would replace them, they would find the card making its way down to the edges of the table. p.g. wood house said when he got to the last seat he left lest he return the following evening and find his plate on the floor. cary grant who i met in the 1980s talked about being a guest on a couple of dozen occasions but the time he remembered the best was the long weekend when he was the only guest. and just he, hearst, and marian davies singing. there was a bill yard room like any good country house with this gaming scene in the tapestry. you can see colleen moore colleen moore, one of the '20s flappers posed on her colleen moore davies film because he promoted her movies but did produce 120 films in his career. he would have the guests in the front rows and then invite all of his staff to join the guests, he and the guests for the movie. they would sit in the back rows at 11:00 p.m. and when it was pointed out the him that this was late for staff that had to get up in the morning, he instituted an earlier showing so that the gardiners -- gardeners could see the film m before the guests. and only the groundskeepers would join the guests. it was the secretary's job to assign the guests to their rooms. and you can see the leading man in the one room everybody asked for which had this cardinal bed in it. it was not french. it was named by a construction worker on the site. it was grand. it's a 17th century baroque bed from italy. everybody asked for an evening in it. he was filling it quite deliberately with all of the wrong people. built by a woman architect presided over by a movie star, the home of media mogul. there are many ways in which san simian says a lot about how culture has changed and social hierarchy has broken down in our 20th cent rip. -- century. he had a strongly didactic reason he did what he did. business people, sports figures, literary figures, and movie stars. but it was a departure from convention to socialize that in the 1920s. the beautiful library has greek faces. since mr. clark also donated greek vases, he started collecting them in 1901 when he was young and collected them until 1951, the year of his death. he didn't buy things en masse. he did not like to buy collections that other people form md. he went after object by object. his possessions and always had a large say in the selecting to the despair of the dealers he never followed their advice. the greek vase collection was one of the finest in the 20th century. one of the finest examples on the far slide on the bearing and lord revistoke cecil baring owned this before hearst bought it in the '30s. his room is this south gothic bedroom where the windows are doors that lead out to balconies. marian davies had the north gothic bedroom on the opposite side. on the floor was the library. his private reserve called the gothic study with plaster inspired by a 14th century ceiling and fine metal work including this clock from oxford made in the 16th century. rooms higher yet. they were called the celestial suite. this is the bell tower with 18 bells on each side with the celestial suite. the magnificent setting. all of it was country stone behind it. he said, i don't know what i like the best, going out on the balconies, there were three watching the figures drawing in the ocean or drawing every drape because i felt i was in a gold jewelry case. harry c had a hopper. frances coleman. what are they doing? orson welles never came to san simian and used it for loneliness and despair in citizen kane. you can see hearst, the son of a pioneer dressed up and see pope davies looking like my darling clementine as they posed for one of the many costume parties that were a tradition at the ranch. hooer's jimmy stewart, 1938 looking absolutely astonished at being there he said w.r. was a very fine host but not socialble. he would greet the guests and then disappeared. a lot of the social details fell to marian. it was she who animated the house. warmhearted, funny, a soft touch. sent the cooks's daughter to college. hard to find anyone who said anything bad about marian davies a beloved figure on the hill. he and julia morgan also collaborated. san simian had she as architect no interior designer, no landscape architect. just the two of them constantly working. i would say 45% of the contents of their letters concerns the gardens. julia morgan, a great admirer of charles plat who did a beautiful wing and she, i think, used his inspiration to create this mixture of english country gardens, the cottage-style plantings, very rich and lavish plantings. this is outside casa del sol. the views, the cypress, the vistas, the terraces from italian gardens that was a platt hallmark. a few ancient reasons but other pieces like this girl with goat in 1930. i noticed some of the statues seemed not up to snuff, almost cheap, jack. he said it was very surprising but then i thought, i had been overwhelmed by donatellas and romeos that it was nice to see a nymph with bobbed hair eating an apple. thought i'd show you how the gardens grew as the building grews. this is the central terrace. and there's the statue he coveted. he did indeed buy and gave it in the pride of the place in front of the main house. you can see the oak tree in front of the fountain. they felt it interfered and added a lot of leafs to the fountain. they rebuilt the terrace. this pool was moved and they moved the oak. none of the native trees was ever cut down. the oak is now back there. they moved five trees, 250-year-old trees by encasing it in concrete and greece skids and house moving equipment. none was cut down. the cypress making the way up the hill after the topsoil arrived by the ton to support them. and another part of the country house tradition, hearst had a me image rooe. you can see marian with the elephant, marian. he had cages for the carnevoirses but 2,000 acre where is the animals roamed. this is one of the animal shelters they kept open fronted. what they did was give the antelope and ostriches, giraffes, all of the country to roam in. they disappeared, headed for the hills, you know? so they belt the structures to get the animals accustomed to eating there and they stayed by the road. the guests were invariably astonished by this as they were any other aspect of this country house as p.g. woodhouse wrote, you're apt to see a lion, a bear or even sam goldwin when you came. it was one of the workers who talked about the groups of the animals with their eyes catching the headlights of the cars all shining like the lights of a distant city. it was another world. and and the director said i'd fancied i arrived. i fancied myself enormously. the guests did go off on the the trails with dude wranglers along to show them the way. hearst travelling abroad also with his guests. would take a lot of people who had never been to europe, and teach them all of the sights. here you can see marian davies standing. he said after seeing it that it strikes me in just in this, miss morgan, our gardens are inferior to the renaissance gardens, we need fountains, fountains which fount. i'm sending you pictures. maybe they'll affect you. water is a scarce item in san simian. they created the two loveliest pools in existence, i imagine. the neptune pool, part roman empire, part maxfield parish painting. he was an illustrator who worked for the hearst press, by the way. these are ancient roman columns, a renaissance neptune, three dimensional pieces sunk into concrete to look like a relief pediments carving. and in 1930s marble statues around the pool, including that group on the opposite side called the birth of venus. he argued that they really ought to have some low figures out here little tortoises and fish coming up. it wasn't just a water effect. this was a pool. heated year round with a kerosene oil boil system, 345,000 gallons of water and the last thing they needed was a marble statue you were going to bang your head into while you were swimming. the whole point was this was water used not for architectural effect but for par 'tis pa toir pleasure. the pool is white marble when empty. white marble and green serpentanite from vermont. he was an animal lover. this is a pool they have today known as the norman castle he owned in wales. of course one spectacular pool like that would be quite a trophy. but san simian has two. as i said, the tennis courts at hearst's inspiration, were excavated beneath and beneath the courts they built the roman plunge as they called it. this pool all lined in the glass tile, which has the feeling of being subterranean, even though it's above ground. it's like a rich renaissance water got toe. it's the gold and blue lapis mosaic tile. photographs. but you can see are here. her face has a droop on one side. she had been deeply self-effacing. never was consented to be interviewed. a private person. said her buildings would speak for her. but after this loss of equilibrium and facial disfigurement, she said architects should be symmetrical. well william randolph hearst could no longer be optimistic in the face of contrary evidence. his business affairs were decided for him. his business was going to be incorporated. and his art was going to be sold. and in such massive quantities that it's never been precedented -- there's never been a precedent like it before since the history of arts. they started to liquidate in the late 30s. first the silver in london. and then the books. but nobody had any money to buy. as a matter of fact, they said in the late '30s that liquidating hearst's art collection by auction sale was the equivalent of emptying an oil tanker with an eye dropper. so what they did instead was opened the fifth floor of gable's department store and turned to arm & hammer had luck with this before selling russian objects at department stores at macy's. and they had what amounted to a fire sale. people came and objects came up for sale and thus many pieces went to private hands, into public collections. the quantity of his holdings so fast that san simian represents 10% of hearst's objects as a collector. and mostly san simian was not decimated. it was warehouses and other houses. 30-room, five story apartment and 137 riverside drive, large french chateau in sands point in long island. wales, a million acre ranch in mexico. the bavarian nshgsn village of windtomb. it pulled him out of the red and that and the liquidations and corporations. but the vast array of objects brought hearst to public ridicule as well. he wasn't like the 19th or 20th century american collector. he was more like the great collectors of the renaissance through the 1800s. who didn't rely on dealer, gentlemen collectors who travelled by curiosities as well as fine works of art. i have on the right side, a broom from amsterdam made out of human hair. and here a ceremonial ox yolk. a 400-year-old ox yolk that showed bread baking and plows and implements. nothing the pieces sold are some you may recognize. actually this was a donation from the hearst foundation to the metropolitan museum in new york. this grille, a magnificent 50-by-70-foot 18th century church grill which he bought at the back of san simian. you have me up nights wondering what to do with a 50-by-70-foot-raja. they were going to put it in the grand ballroom never built. now it's in the entrance of the medieval wing and will soon have the famous christmas tree in front of them and great italian ornaments every season. and then at the national gallery in washington, this piece was put up for sale. this vandyke painting refuting that hearst didn't buy good paintings. he bought this from joseph duvine. the paint inging -- this was painted in 1633. went up for sale, wasn't bought -- bought back in. samuel crest bought it in the early 1950s and presented it to the national gallery of washington. fitting there should be an andy warhol reception tonight because he was one of the first to embrace high art and low art simultaneously, an uncommon thing to do in the 1920s. you can see the painting from about 1320 and this vienna statue made into the lamp in the 1920s in austria. world class pieces of art like this chest cabinet made in france and in the center medallion signed and dated by the the enamelist john decor, he was the enamelist for mary queen of scots. there's an eight-year hiatus of building. the bare areas of concrete never faced by the stone and the antique stone window frames were set into concrete. and this ballroom was supposed to stretch across the back court-yard but none of that was ever done. he made his money back and came back and triumphed at age 82 in 1945 for a final explosion of buying and building a northern wing of the house, full of bedrooms for guests and lavish marble lime baths of the '40s. mare yap 44 years his junior and in her 50s now when hearst was in the 80s. what do you in this house? live here year round. party home, marian, what do you do? she said oh, a little sewing, and a little ironing. i don't think it was so much about occupants as it was about architect that he wanted to display. through the open window here the gothic win dope, you can see sealed in areas of the north -- of the southern wing of the house added on but never completed in the north wing. so there's casa grande as it stands today with five buildings, three small houses, the main house, the indoor pool, and the neptune pool. hearst spent his last couple of years in san simian back in the house where he first lived in casa del mar, the largest of the three houses with the magnificent views of the coastline. orson welles had never been in san simian. when they wanted to create xanadu, they had lavish sets in mind, not the budget to overtake them. instead, decided most of the rooms of the great hall used a lot of velvet cloth, hung it around. used low lighting. one staircase they found on the set in the great big fire mantle. and that became the image in the public's mind, the vast gloomy cavernous -- these are the first houses be built in the '20s. the rooms were light and airy. hearst didn't want to leave them. when he was 84 with a worsening heart condition, he left from los angeles only after an attempt to talk los angeles's leading heart surgeon into moving up to san simian to reside was not suck saysful. marian davies bought a house, the guest residence 1007. it was there he spent the last four years of life buying a lot of art, collecting, mentally keen up to the end. he died in 1951, august 14, a it age 88. and that very sad photograph is of his beloved little dog helena after the body was removed and she was waiting in vain for her master's return on his bed. there's a tremendous feeling and a lot of ways in which it encapsulates the 20th century. and all its aspirations. marian davies said herself, he didn't like it when people called the castle. always the ranch. he wanted it to be the museum. and julia said, of course, this isn't just for him. the country needs architectural museums, not just places where you keep paintings and statues. and william randolph hearst said in 1843 as the amount of money you spent in the art collection justified from the amount of enjoyment that you had from it. he said the enjoyment i had from these objects is nothing. from the enjoyment others might have from them, art always ends up in museums and some should come to america. the enchanted hill, thank you. [ applause ] >> if you have questions? i'll enjoy answering them for you. yes? >> couple of questions -- could you speak about what is involved with the buildings -- the maintenance. and second unrelated question, has the staff ever tried to figure out how much money hearst spent on the -- in terms of the grounds staff, we had about 15 to 20 people. there are 15 to 20 people to do the maintenance and cleaning. >> we spent $1 million a year on maintenance and a quarter million dollar annual art restoration. budget. which is why raising money with things like my book royalties is so important. we're part of the department of parks and recreation who have done a wonderful job of maintaining and opening the house. but we're one of 275 parks. so we don't receive the revenues that we generate. we -- all of the money goes to a fund. and we and everyone else takes from that fund as far as the ticket sales. as far as how far as it costs, it's one of the most fascinating aspects. that's one of the most documented process. holding up the construction costs and we know what hearst spent on the art collection. remember the years, 1919 to 1947 with an eight-year hiatus in there. two decades of building in a 28-year interval. hep spent about $5 million total on the construction. and another 2 $2.5 million to $3.5 million in the collection. he didn't do anything but hire emmro iees to work in the warehouses and keep the acquisition records for all of his purposes. we have all of that. it was built and furnished. >> this is the first book that's -- been a documentary or keeping of one? >> actually, i just worked with a tv crew who are going to show on the discovery channel, travel network a documentary on san simian. a documentary by julia morgan. she had a book on julia morgan. such a hard thing to do on such a recalcitrant subject and not an extensive document on san simian before. there are general ones. other things? >> i remember reading somewhere that mr. hearst changed the drive up to the house, that she changed the trees numerous times. talking about not cutting them all down. he didn't them so he moved them all three feet or something. >> the question of changing the trees. they were going to plant that driveway at one point with italian cypress, part of the whole idea of a renaissance villa garden which they drew on so heavily and charles platt did so much to study and popularize with a style with his gardens book in 1894. he decided not to do that. i don't know why. just giving you my surmise they never had enough water. they had -- they never did. when they were using the water to generate their own power. when they hooked to the public power, you can imagine what it took to plant the gardens and the grounds. they may well have decided to concentrate the plantings at the top of the hill which gives it much more of the feeling of a renaissance city. the sites of the park in country house parlance. it's a park, a quarter of a million acres. the hearst family and foundation owns it, its's virtually unaltered. it looks the way it looked in 1769 when the spanish walked by except for highway 1 and a few buildings. that's a wonderful thing to look out and see that much land. and, of course, very little naturally grows there. because there's so little water. just oaks, chapparell, bay trees, that's about it. otherwise, it's grassland. yes? >> when i was there, still a victorian house at the bottom of the hill? >> the hearst family, comprised today of one of the five sons one of the descendents and great grandchildren and more. they do still sometimes stay at the bottom of the hill and yulz it -- use it as a family retreat. for a while they lived in the house i showed you last, casa del mar, they lived in that in the middle '70s. there were tours walking by, they did use the portion of the house that recently. >> are the descendents of the animals still roaming around? >> things like the polar bears are gone. can you imagine giving that up? he gave the exotic -- you know the carnivorous animals away in the '30s to other zoos. he couldn't keep a zoo going in the depression either. but there are zebras and a couple of kinds of goats from north africa. tar goats and udads and indian gear called san bar who are still in herds on the hill. >> is it still in warehouses? >> there is still art in warehouses staggering to contemplate that there could be more. but indeed, it's so. there are pieces in crates and major museums and rooms and chimney pieces that have been donated that have not yet been used in museum exhibits and then there's a warehouse in new york which still has objects in it. now it's not things like paintings, it's ceilings, marble staircases, you know, massive elements of architecture. [ inaudible question ] >> joseph duvene who sold so many pieces here said it was a prime example of a grand accumulator. i don't think so. always a bargain hunter. so much to think about. occasionally he paid a lot like for the vandyke painting. a middle six figure purchase price. but usually had the eye for a bargain. and, of course, he had a different motivation. said more like the renaissance of the 18th century. not necessarily only by the best. but suiting his own personal taste and buying things that delighted him. so there's this wide range, not the age and the origin, but the quality of his objects varies widely. it was a house. he liked the pieces around him. >> is there an account of guests coming in messing with the art trying to take away or defacing it or you know whatever -- >> what about the guests in this behavior? frances marian, a woman architect. the head of the british magazine operation was a woman. the top reporters were women. and roger st. johns. and he also used frances marian one of the top screen writers in hollywood. she wrote screen plays for marian davies and for every other leading star. she said that the place had almost nothing human about it is magical. hearst is not a drinker. and very sadly, i think, marian davies was. this is something truly characatured in citizen kane and it's kind to one and all. susan alexander kane was -- that might have been based on hope hampton or one of the millions of other opera singer else. i mean opera singers that couldn't act. i didn't think it was a temptation to marian and danger to the art collection. not many stories, he after all was in the 60s 70s, 80s, some of the guests were heart hardly out of their teens. cary grant was told to leave the hill. he had gone up in the airplane. hearst had planes and pilots by the late 20s. he went up in an airplane and took paper bags and filled them full of flour and dropped them as bombs on the roof of the poultry ranch at the bottom of the hill. it looked like a mushroom cloud. it was going straight through the -- they thought it was hilarious, not realizing the impact that something like that could have on the ground. they got to the top of the hill the housekeeper said mr. grant, your bags are packed. he said someone interceded and didn't have to leave the hill. i suppose he was following the dictates of the son, the host. but if things did get out of hand there certainly was a tight anything of the reins. he said the wine flowed like glue. cary grant said you got one weak martini or two if you were qu

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