Hearst Castle

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Hearst San Simeon Estate
(U.S. National Historic Landmark)
The Hearst Castle facade is patterned after a Spanish cathedral.
The Hearst Castle facade is patterned after a Spanish cathedral.
Nearest city: San Simeon, California
Built/Founded: 1919
Architect: Hearst,William Randolph; Morgan,Julia
Architectural style(s): Late 19th And 20th Century Revivals, Other
Added to NRHP: June 22, 1972
NRHP Reference#: 72000253

[1]
Governing body: State
Not to be confused with Hurst Castle, Henry VIII's Device Fort near Portsmouth in the United Kingdom.

Hearst Castle was the palatial estate of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. It is located near San Simeon, California, on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Donated by the Hearst Corporation to the state of California in 1957, it is now a State Historical Monument and a National Historic Landmark, open for public tours. Hearst formally named the estate 'La Cuesta Encantada' ('The Enchanted Hill'), but he usually just called it 'the ranch'.

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Hearst Castle was built on a 40,000 acre (160 km²) ranch that William Randolph Hearst's father, George Hearst, originally purchased in 1865. The younger Hearst grew fond of this site over many childhood family camping trips. He inherited the ranch, which had grown to 250,000 acres (1000 km²), from his mother, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, upon her death in 1919. Construction began that same year and continued through 1947, when he stopped living at the estate due to ill health. San Francisco architect Julia Morgan designed most of the buildings. Hearst was an inveterate tinkerer, and would tear down structures and rebuild them at a whim, so the estate was never completed in his lifetime.

The indoor pool, modeled after Roman baths, with gold mosaic tiles.
The indoor pool, modeled after Roman baths, with gold mosaic tiles.

The estate is a pastiche of historic architectural styles that Hearst admired in his travels around Europe. For example, the main house is modeled after a 16th century Spanish cathedral, while the outdoor pool features an ancient Roman temple front transported wholesale from Europe and reconstructed at the site. Hearst furnished the estate with truckloads of art, antiques, and even whole ceilings that he acquired en masse from Europe and Egypt. Hearst Castle was like a small self-contained city, with 56 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, 19 sitting rooms, 127 acres of gardens, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, a movie theater, an airfield, and the world's largest private zoo. Zebras and other exotic animals still roam the grounds. Morgan, an accomplished civil engineer, devised a gravity-based water delivery system from a nearby mountain. Some of the highlights of the estate include the Neptune Pool, which features an expansive vista of the mountains, ocean and the main house.

The Neptune Pool looks out to the mountains of the central coast.
The Neptune Pool looks out to the mountains of the central coast.

Invitations to Hearst Castle were highly coveted during its heyday in the 1920s and '30s. The Hollywood and political elite often visited, usually flying into the estate's airfield or taking a private Hearst-owned train car from Los Angeles. Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Joan Crawford, Calvin Coolidge, and Winston Churchill were among Hearst's A-list guests. While guests were expected to attend the formal dinners each evening, they were normally left to their own devices during the day while Hearst directed his business affairs. Since "the Ranch" had so many facilities, guests were rarely at a loss for things to do. The estate's theater usually screened films from Hearst's own movie studio, Cosmopolitan Productions. Hearst Castle became so famous that it was caricatured in the 1941 Orson Welles film Citizen Kane as Charles Foster Kane's "Xanadu." The estate is shown as a gloomy and ridiculously self-indulgent barony.

The Gothic Study.
The Gothic Study.

One condition of the Hearst Corporation's donation of the estate was that the Hearst family would be allowed to use it when they wished. Patty Hearst, a granddaughter of William Randolph, related that as a child, she hid behind statues in the Neptune Pool while tours passed by. After a room in the estate was bombed in the 1970s during her crime spree with the Symbionese Liberation Army, no member of the family has ever returned to live there. However, the media has enlisted Hearst family members for publicity purposes, as when Patty Hearst hosted a Travel Channel show on the estate in 2001, and Amanda Hearst modeled for a fashion photo shoot at the estate for a Hearst Corporation magazine, Town and Country, in 2006.

The total square footage of the castles on the estate exceed 90,000 square feet (8,300 m²). The area of Casa Grande, the largest castle, is 60,645 square feet (5,634 m²). The area of the other castles on the property are:[1]

  • Casa del Mar: 5,875 square feet (546 m²)
  • Casa del Monte: 2,291 square feet (213 m²)
  • Casa del Sol: 2,604 square feet (242 m²)

Hearst Castle is located near San Simeon, California about 250 miles (400 km) from both Los Angeles and San Francisco, and 43 miles from San Luis Obispo, the nearest city with an airport.

The castle itself is five miles (eight kilometers) inland on a hill. Access is only by a scheduled tour bus, and as of 2007 tickets are USD$20-$30 depending on the season and time of day. Reservations are recommended during busy periods such as summer, weekends and holidays.

To make the tours more accessible to international visitors, the recorded tour guides on the bus ride from the visitor center to the castle give the areas of the castle grounds and Hearst's estate in "square hectometers", rather than the more common "square kilometers."[citation needed] Directly across the street from the entrance is San Simeon State Park, which features a fishing pier and a public park.

Hearst Castle, Neptune Pool, October 2003, near San Simeon, California .

Hearst Castle, Neptune Pool, October 2003.

Hearst Castle, Main house, October 2003.

Hearst Castle, Veranda looking west, October 2003.

Zebra are present in San Simeon's private zoo.

  1. ^ National Register Information System. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service (2007-01-23).

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