Ernest Coxhead was born in Eastbourne, England in 1863. He studied architecture at the Royal Academy and Architectural Association in London. In 1886, Coxhead and his brother Almeric moved to Los Angeles, where they started their own architecture practice, in order to build Episcopal churches.

Four years later Coxhead moved to San Francisco and taught at UC Berkley where he met his friends and collegues, Julia Morgan and Bernard Maybeck. Coxhead built his summer residence in San Mateo and moved in the following year. In 1905, he lost his wife to childbirth.

Ernest Coxhead focused on designing churches, primarily in the Gothic Revival style, in the San Francisco Bay Area: the Church of the Holy Innocents in San Francisco; the Foothills Congregational Church in Los Altos; the Prayer Book Cross in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.; the Chapel of Saint John the Evangelist in Monterey; the Church of St. John in Petaluma. In addition, he also designed the 1908 Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Building and the Public Library on Green Street in San Francisco, and Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in Red Bluff and many other buildings.

After 1895, Coxhead concentrated on residential designs, and he was involved in the emergence of the Arts and Crafts style in California. He designed English cottage style houses that advanced the notions of simplicity in construction and use of natural materials. Many of his homes were covered in shingles and left unpainted for that weathered look, while others were finished in terra cotta.

From 1918 to 1919, Coxhead went to LeMans, France, to organize and direct the A.E.F. School of Architecture for members of the United States armed forces stationed in France.

Ernest Coxhead died in Berkeley in 1933. A collection of his work can be found in the Environmental Design Archives at the College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley.

Julia Morgan was born in San Francisco on January 20, 1872. Upon
graduation from the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley in 1894, she entered the Hopkins School of Art Instruction. In 1896, encouraged by architect Bernard Maybeck, she became the first woman admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Upon her graduation in 1902, Morgan returned to California Two years later, she received her architecture license and opened her own office in San Francisco. Morgan received considerable public attention when she was commissioned to rebuild the Fairmont Hotel, heavily damaged by the 1906 earthquake.

William Randolph Hearst was her most significant client. For him Morgan designed “La Cuesta Encantada,” a Beaux-Arts extravaganza built between 1919 and 1937, and popularly known as Hearst Castle.

She also designed several buildings at Wyntoon, the Hearst’s northern California estate.

As the official West Coast architect for the YWCA, Morgan designed clubhouses in many western cities. The YWCA’s Asilomar conference center at Pacific Grove is a superior example of her work in the Arts & Crafts style.

She designed three buildings in Fresno, California for the YMCA: a 1921 Residence Hall, a small bungalow activities building in West Fresno, and a large Recreation Center. From 1945 to 1960 the Recreation Center became Fresno Pacific University, and the Mennonite Brethren Seminary also occupied the building in 1955-56.

Julia Morgan died on February 2, 1957.

Bernard Ralph Maybeck was born in New York in 1862. At nineteen, his love of architectural design drove him to study at Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the atelier of Monsieur Jules-Louis André. He quickly embraced Viollet-le-duc’s theories of combination of medievalism and technological advancement. On his way to Oakland, while passing through Kansas City he met Annie White. The couple fell in love, married and eventually moved to the Berkeley hills. Maybeck began working for Charles M. Plum Company as a designer and salesman.

Maybeck held many short-term drafting jobs. Eventually, he found steady employment as instructor of descriptive geometry, at UC Berkeley. He, also, taught architectural courses at his house to students such as Julia Morgan, John Bakewell, and Arthur Brown Jr. A chance encounter with Charles Augustus Keeler led to the design of Keeler’s home in the Berkeley Hills. This made it possible for him to start his private practice in Berkeley. Maybeck was a lifelong member of the Hillside Club founded by Keeler.

From 1896 to 1899 Maybeck orchestrated the Phoebe Hearst International Competition for the Plan of the University and designed the Phoebe Hearst Reception Hall. In 1899 he founded the Department of Architecture at UC Berkley. Along with his wife Annie and engineer Mark White he opened an architectural office in San Francisco in 1902.

His buildings were eclectic, combining elements of Mediterranean, Swiss chalets, Arts and Crafts, and Gothic styles: the Palace of Fine Arts; the

Lumbermen’s “House of Hoo Hoo;” the livestock pavilion for the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915; and the Phoebe Hearst Memorial Complex at UC Berkeley.

He experimented with materials such as cement, industrial steel sashing and cement-asbestos insulation panels in non-traditional settings. Maybeck designed a reinforced concrete residence, built to withstand earthquakes, for Andrew Lawson. Maybeck tried untested “fireproof” materials such as bubblestone and burlap covered in cement gunite. These materials were used for a Maybeck cottage and the Maybeck studio, known as the “Sack House.”

Maybeck often gave his opinion to others in architectural planning. He designed the plans for the town of Brookings, Oregon, and entered the competition to plan the capital of Australia, Canberra. Maybeck designed a campus plan for Principia College from 1923 to 1938. As the design consultant, Maybeck worked closely with Julia Morgan, the supervising architect, and Edward Hussey, the supervisor on site.

Maybeck’s work was finally recognized by the American Institute of Architects with the prestigious Gold Medal in 1951, shortly before his
death in 1957.