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Hearst Castle (La Cuesta Encantada)

Hearst Castle (La Cuesta Encantada)

Julia Morgan

Photo: King of Hearts · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
San Simeon, California, United States
Client / Owner
William Randolph Hearst
Year
Completed 1947
Access
Tickets required
Style
—

Hearst Castle, or La Cuesta Encantada, at San Simeon was designed by Julia Morgan for William Randolph Hearst, with whom she worked for over twenty years. The infobox gives 1919 groundbreaking and 1947 completion, but the text says Casa Grande construction began in April 1922. Work continued until Hearst left in 1947, and the complex was never fully finished.

The style is Spanish Colonial Revival and Mediterranean Revival, with Renaissance and Baroque influence from southern Spain. It has a reinforced concrete core, Manti stone facades and a Siamese teak gable. The infobox gives more than 90,000 square feet for the complex, while the text gives 68,500 square feet (6,364 m²) for Casa Grande alone.

The Hearst Corporation donated the castle to California in 1958. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1976. It closed in March 2020 and reopened on May 11, 2022, as a state park museum with guided tours.

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