Hearst Castle - cooking without gas

Mr Hearst was a proper Californian, with a proper Californian fear of earthquakes. He had all the buildings at the ranch constructed out of steel reinforced concrete and he refused to have any gas in his kitchen. So, from when building started in 1919, everything had to be electric. Imagine this enormous kitchen bustling with staff, cooking to feed the huge staff of the ranch, as well as Mr Hearst's family and guests.


Pay no attention to the unattractive strips of "tour carpet." They aren't part of the original design. They're there to protect the ranch from the damaging feet of tourists like me and we were not permitted to stray from them at any point. As Russ told us, if we looked down and saw anything even vaguely attractive beneath our feet, then we were standing in the wrong place.

As in the rest of the ranch, there are realistic objects scattered about the kitchen to create an illusion that life is still going on as it did in the 1930s. Still, it's hard to imagine that this room was ever so quiet during the heyday of the ranch.

This is one of the sights that most impressed me during the entire tour: a wooden refrigerator produced by Frigidaire. Only the best for Mr Hearst. Russ told us that the fridge was kept stocked especially for raiding by guests in the night.

There are amazing little details even here in the kitchen. Check out the taps on this kitchen sink!

This was definitely a commercial kitchen. A lot of the heavy equipment looks positively industrial. This is not a room for home cooking, it's a room for manufacturing food.

Of course the food they manufactured here was unusually good. Even the fake food looked pretty good, right down to the pretend lobsters.

Almost all of the food served at the ranch was produced on the grounds. The meat and poultry came from the Hearst herds. So did the dairy products. Fruit was grown in the orchards and vegetables in the gardens on site. Speciality foods were imported in bulk, but the majority of the food on the table was genuine Hearst fodder.

The tradition continues in a small way. There are still Hearst herds on much of the land around the ranch and Hearst branded beef is on sale in the visitor's centre. I didn't buy any. It wouldn't have been the same cooked in any other kitchen.

Hearst Castle - guest bedrooms

The little houses are beautiful, of course, but the best of the guest rooms are in Casa Grande. Both Russ, and our second tour guide Emily, invited us to pick our favourite room from the tour.


This was my first choice. The Celestial Suites in the bell towers. Remember the lattice windows in the towers? These octagonal rooms have huge windows on every wall and are luminous with a rich yellow light.

It's even my favourite ceiling., intricate and light and gold. I would love to be woken by the dawn light in that room and see that ceiling grow brighter with the start of day.

The celestial suite is my favourite, but all the guest rooms are amazing. Selected highlights appear below.

Hearst Castle - inner sanctum

Naturally, one of my favourite rooms in the castle is the library. Thousands of books are stacked all the way up to the glorious antique ceiling.

If I'd ever really been a guest here I don't think I would have needed a bedroom. I could have cheerfully slept in the library. I wouldn't have been in anyone's way either. The room is enormous.

Mr Hearst's own bedroom is surprisingly simple. It has the obligatory fabulous ceiling and antique furniture, but so do all the guest rooms. The portrait of Mr Hearst's mother still hanging on the wall by the bed is the most personal touch in the entire museum house.

Mr Hearst's bedroom adjoins a spacious sitting room. On the other side of that sitting room is the bedroom of his long-term, movie star companion, Marion Davies. He never divorced his wife, but Marion Davies, 34 years his junior, was Mr Hearst's devoted partner until the end of his life.

I would write a lot more letters if I had a desk like this in my room. I might do very little else.

By far the most interesting room in the inner sanctum is Mr Hearst's private office, above. As he grew older, Mr Hearst spent increasing amounts of time at the ranch, and needed a place to work. He instructed Miss Morgan to build him an office, just a small place where he could get some work done. Miss Morgan knew her client well enough to make the scale match the man. She asked him if it would be okay to raise the ceiling and extend the room. Mr Hearst asked if that was really necessary. She said "Oh yes, I think you'll be very happy." I'm pretty sure he was.

I was pretty chuffed when I checked out a shelf in Mr Hearst's office and found The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. I'd been somewhat in awe of Mr Hearst until this point. After visiting this room I felt that I rather liked him, even if he did have his own portrait hanging in his office.

Hearst Castle - unfinished business

The Ranch had all modern conveniences, not just plumbing, but electricity as well. Mr Hearst was constantly adding new rooms, features and technology to his home. When he decided to add an elevator, Miss Morgan apparently had some reservations. She agreed, but warned Mr Hearst that he would have to watch his diet if he cut down on his stair climbing.



Evidence of the constant construction and reconstruction of the house is visible here and there. Walking in an otherwise beautifully finished stairwell you can suddenly come upon an abandoned window, walled in by the addition of a new wing but never finished.

Even the ceilings were in a constant state of flux. A stairwell, unexpectedly elevated after many years features a pillar that just stops where the former ceiling had been.

Some parts of the buildings were still bare concrete, not yet textured to mimic the mock block structure elsewhere. One of the sweeping balconies was also bare concrete. It's strange in such opulent surroundings to encounter so much unfinished business.

One of my favourite of Julia Morgan's solutions to the constantly shifting shape of the house is the creation of two duplex loft bedrooms. What had been two symmetrical indentations in the building design were made asymmetrical by the later addition of an extra wing. Mr Hearst instructed Miss Morgan to fill them with something.

She considered the tall, narrow spaces and came up with a design for these loft bedrooms. The bed and armchairs were upstairs. Down a narrow spiral staircase was a bathroom, walk-in wardrobe, desk and a larger sitting room.

I liked these cosy little rooms a lot. They were among my favourites of the guest rooms. In typical Julia Morgan style, just because the rooms were an afterthought doesn't mean they didn't get the full ceiling treatment.

Hearst Castle - don't look down

Russ told us that Mr Hearst once advised his architect Miss Julia Morgan: "There's nothing wrong with adding rooms to display the things that I collect." The meaning of that statement changes subtly when you learn that Mr Hearst collected antique ceilings. You can't go wrong looking up as you walk through Hearst Castle.




These are ceilings of a type that we just don't see in the modern world. Ceilings these days are plain and white, not ornately carved out of exotic timber.

All of the antique ceilings needed to be resized to fit the rooms they are displayed in. Moulded plaster was hand painted to match seamlessly.

All of the ceilings were amazing examples of craftsmanship, but most were also extraordinary works of art. This ceiling started its life as an artwork and was converted to ceiling duty at the ranch.


My favourites were the bold geometric ceilings like the one above.

This is the ceiling from the pool room. The hand painted illustrations depict sporting scenes to go with the gaming theme. It is about to receive a million dollar face lift courtesy of a grant for its restoration. The project is expected to take 5 years, hardly a blip in the long life of this ceiling.

The main hall boasts this extraordinary ceiling. The story of its installation was less smooth than than the finished product might suggest. When the ceiling was first purchased Hearst had the room specially sized to fit it. However, when the ceiling arrived, it was the wrong size and needed to be adjusted after all. He needn't have worried. If Russ hadn't told us, we would never have known.

The ceilings in the guest houses were elaborate too, but the most impressive ones were in Casa Grande.



This is the ceiling in Mr Hearst's private office. Actually, it's a fake. This is Miss Morgan's creation based on a ceiling that he wanted to purchase, but was unable to acquire. Every day this extraordinary collector spent at the ranch he would have looked up and seen the one that got away.

Mr Hearst's private bedroom features the amazing ceiling above. I'm not sure I'd want religious imagery hanging over my bed at night, but then I also wouldn't want my mother's portrait on the bedroom wall. Mr Hearst obviously had different tastes.

Hearst Castle - evening routine

For all their luxury, the little houses contain no kitchens and the many staff did not provide room service. Russ tells us that Mr Hearst regarded the ranch as his home and expected guests to join him in the dining room for their meals.

For breakfast and lunch that just meant wandering up to Casa Grande and ordering whatever you wanted from the staff, who would then serve it to you in the dining room or a sunny antechamber nearby. Dinner, however, was a rather more elaborate affair. Dress was casual, so naturally the gentlemen wore suits and the ladies wore cocktail dresses. At 7pm the guests would come up to the main hall for cocktails.


During the day this room might have been configured differently. Table tennis tables or other games were sometimes set up for guests to play, but in the evening this glorious room was the social centre of the ranch.



Everything in this room is interesting. Above is a single panel from the medieval church pews imported from Europe to line the room and provide additional seating. The mantel below is another European antique imported especially for this room. Every detail, down to the paintings, the wall hangings and the mosaic in the entranceway was chosen and placed by Julia Morgan. This room alone would have been a massive undertaking.

Cocktails at the ranch were notoriously weak. Mr Hearst personally added the liquor to the punch and a number of former guests have commented that you could drink a lot at the ranch without ever getting drunk. Russ delicately suggested that Mr Hearst's uncharacteristic stinginess was a reaction to the alcoholism of his companion, movie actress Marion Davies.

After cocktails the guests amused themselves in the pool room before dinner. Playing pool at the ranch was a thoroughly progressive affair because ladies were permitted to participate.

Dinner was served at 9pm in the massive dining room. According to Russ, the dining room was visited by the set designers for the Harry Potter films and was part of the inspiration for the Hogwarts Great Hall. I had previously heard that the hall at Hogwarts was based on the Great Hall of Christ Church College Oxford, but I can certainly see elements of Mr Hearst's Gothic dining room in the final set design.

Former guests of Mr Hearst have noted that although an invitation to stay at the ranch was always open ended, the nameplate that marked your place at dinner moved further down the table the longer you stayed. Russ told us that the British author P.G. Wodehouse noticed his nightly progression away from his host and elected to leave when he reached the last place at the table. "One more night and my plate would have been in the fireplace," he said.


Note the flags and the lanterns hanging from the ceiling. The ceiling of the Hogwarts Great Hall is bewitched to look like the sky outside, but I think the dining room ceiling at Hearst Castle is just as impressive in its own way.

At a quarter to midnight, Mr Hearst would round up his guests to join him for a film to be screened in the cinema. The light in this room was too low for me to get any more photographs than the one below so you'll just have to take my word about its magnificence.

The cinema was as big as ... a cinema. Instead of modern plastic moulded seating, Mr Hearst's home theatre was decked out with rows of custom built armchairs. Each armchair had its own padded footrest, cosy rug, cushions and a table for drinks and cigarettes. Everyone smoked, of course, except Mr Hearst, but he did provide cigarettes for his guests.

Movie producers competed keenly to have their movies screened there because if Mr Hearst liked the film it would be well reviewed in the Hearst newspapers. If Mr Hearst didn't like the film he would phone the projectionist and have it stopped at once. An alternative film would then commence, usually one starring his companion Marion Davies. The screening started at 11.45 pm sharp and, depending on the film, might not finish until 3 or 4 am. Russ assures us that Mr Hearst was never offended if his guests fell asleep. He just wanted them to be there.

At the end of the film guests were free to wander off to bed or amuse themselves as they saw fit. Mr Hearst, a lifetime insomniac, would go upstairs to his office and start phoning around the country to talk to the editors of his newspapers.

Hearst Castle - little house

Russ walked us through the guest quarters of one of the little houses, pointing out interesting architectural features as we went. The designs are faithful to the principles of the renaissance Italian village that the little houses are intended to invoke, emphasising balance, proportion and astonishing detail. Note the moulding trim under the roof of the little house below.



The entire grounds and every building of the ranch were designed or overseen by Julia Morgan, who also personally contracted all the work. Ms Morgan was a fascinating woman in her own right. She was the only female architect registered in the State of California when William Randolf Hearst commissioned her to work on the ranch. She was also the first female graduate of the famous Ecole des Beaux-Arts school of architecture. The ranch at San Simeon was a work in progress for 28 years and remains unfinished to this day, abandoned when Mr Hearst died. The property was donated to the State of California on the condition that it be maintained as Mr Hearst had left it. Ms Morgan also designed a number of other homes for Mr Hearst over their long creative partnership, but Russ believes that the ranch was her particular passion.



Inside the little house, Russ explained the special significance of the plumbing. In the 1930s less than 1% of rural properties had indoor plumbing. Hearst Castle, on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, was a miracle of the day. For every bed, in every room, in every house, there was a separate bathroom with hot and cold running water. The water came from a gravity fed system that piped water from a nearby natural spring into a giant reservoir under the bell towers. From there the water was distributed throughout the many buildings on the property.

We were invited to choose our bedroom as we toured through the guest house. I chose this one. The furniture is antique, but the mattress is made in the USA circa 1930. Riding clothes had already been laid out by the servants, and a Stetson is sitting by the bed. My kind of room, I thought.

Of course, as a single lady, I would not have been housed in the guest house. I would have been in one of the guest rooms in Casa Grande, Mr Hearst's own home. This is just as well, because I was quick to revise my room selection once I had seen the big house.

Hearst Castle - Neptune Pool

Our tour started on the steps at the front of one of the "little" houses. Russ explained that as guests of Mr Hearst in the 1930s, we would have arrived by pretty much the same route that our shuttle bus took when it dropped us off at the equestrian entrance.

What could be nicer after our hot, sweaty trip than to jump straight in the pool? Mr Hearst has thoughtfully provided for that desire. The pool is right there along with a large number of gentlemen's and ladies' individual changing rooms, each with its own shower and a supply of bathing suits in various sizes. The bathing suits were fashionable for the day, which in the 1930s meant they were rather voluminous and made out of wool. They were itchy when dry and absorbed enormous amounts of water when wet. They were hardly conducive to swimming, but that wasn't really a problem since most of the guests couldn't swim very well.

There were a few notable exceptions, including Olympic athletes like Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim across the English Channel. It was 1926 and Gertrude slashed the previous record speed by over 2 hours. She achieved this, according to Russ, by being the first person to cross the channel using the Australian Crawl. On behalf of all Australians I graciously accepted the cheer from our tour group.

The Neptune Pool itself is magnificent. Fed by mountain water, lined with marble, it is surrounded by ancient Greek sculptures imported and restored for this sole purpose as well as new artworks commissioned for the project. It would be hard to pay attention to finishing your laps in this pool.

Russ told us that once a year the staff at the ranch get to swim in the pool and take 3 friends with them. He mentioned this, he said, just on the off chance that any of us wanted to be his friend. It's nice to see that retired diplomats stay corruptible even after they leave the service.

As beautiful as it is, I don't know that I'd actually want to swim in the pool for very long. Although William Randolph Hearst had the money to keep it heated, the State of California apparently does not. I bet it's freezing.

Hearst Castle

Last weekend I visited a truly Californian tourist destination, the San Simeon home of the late William Randolf Hearst. Known informally as Hearst Castle, Mr Hearst himself would never have referred to the property that way, mainly because he actually owned a castle in Wales. To Mr Hearst, this was always the ranch. In fact, it was the smallest of his ranches, 250,000 acres, pretty small when compared with his big ranch of a million acres. A ranch it may have been to Mr Hearst, but it certainly looks like a castle as you wind up to the Enchanted Hill.


There are three "little" houses on the property, each with multiple bedrooms and bathrooms for visiting guests. The smallest of these is Casa Del Sol, at 2,604 square feet or 242 m². To put that into perspective, you could park my house in it 3 times and still have room for the cars.

Then there is the big house, Casa Grande. It is 60,645 square feet or 5,634 m². The smallest guest house would fit in the living room, and the facade is styled after a Spanish Cathedral. Everything about it is impressive.

The imposing structures, museum quality exhibits and landscaped gardens would be remarkable enough, but there is more to the Ranch than the bricks and mortar. It's also such a good story. Our tour guide, Russ, brought the experience alive for us as he guided us through our first day at the Ranch guests of Mr Hearst in the 1930s. Urbane, gregarious, funny and immensely well-informed, Russ is a retired American diplomat who now amuses himself by painting vivid pictures of the 1930s for those lucky enough to pretend to be guests of William Randolf Hearst. I may be slightly biased due to the fondness that Russ expressed for the Australian people. Apparently, while still in service as a Diplomat, he had an Australian secretary who made quite an impression on him. She even taught him how to pronounce "Australian" correctly - the first American I've ever heard do so.

Actually, all the people who worked at the ranch seemed unusually ... well ... happy. It was a little disconcerting. Everybody smiled, even the security guards. The guides seemed excited by the subject and their enthusiasm was contagious. Even the bus drivers went above and beyond the call of duty, slowing down to point out interesting animals from the collection of sheep, goats, cattle and zebra still roaming the property. Even after the tour finished and we'd been packed back onto a shuttle bus, Russ and Ruth (the assistant guide on our tour) waved a cheerful goodbye.

Oh, and those bells in the towers are real. They're connected to a piano in the main house. If you look closely you'll notice that only 36 of the keys are available. That's because there are only 36 bells. Guests were encouraged to play the bells, Russ told us, but only between 10am and 2pm, because those lattice windows under the bells are actually guest bedrooms. More about those later.