SAN SIMEON: A MEMORIAL TO EGO,
STYLE AND MONEY
Story and photography
by Margaret & Eric Anderson

William Randolph Hearst first imagined creating his Enchanted Hill in 1905 when he was forty-two. Building began in 1919 and work was still in progress when he died in 1951 at the age of eighty-eight. One of the reasons for the length of time was the absolute perfectionism of the ' wealthy owner. Attempts to describe his approach as "Bull Market Renaissance" are quite unfair -- Hearst had style.

He also had money. In fact, his income was $15 million a year at a time when a million dollars meant something. While creating San Simeon, for example, Hearst also built a Santa Monica beach house for his mistress of thirty years, actress Marian Davis. The building consisted of five connected houses with 110 rooms, 55 bathrooms, and 37 fireplaces. The rear of the main building had more columns than the Supreme Court building in Washington. Seventy-five woodcarvers labored for a year on the balustrades alone. The rathskeller was a 1560 Surrey inn. and that was a mere beach house.

However, San Simeon Heartscastle remained his main interest and he constantly returned to it. It was as if the many reversals this mercurial man endured were somehow assuaged when he became immersed in the beauty and tranquility of the house he was building on his Enchanted Hill.

Hearst has defied his many biographers to reveal the true man. The only child of a wealthy mining engineer who was seldom home, Hearst had a lonely childhood. But he was devoted to his mother, Phoebe, and it was in her memory that he built San Simeon. Expelled from Harvard (he was the class clown), Hearst took over management of one of his father's newspapers, the San Francisco Examiner. With great flair he molded it into an exciting vehicle for his concept of a newspaper.

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