Hearst Castle

Hearst Castle is the house that was never finished — the 165-room estate William Randolph Hearst and Julia Morgan spent 28 years building on the Enchanted Hill, still incomplete in 1947 when Hearst left for the last time. He was 84, sick, crying as they drove away; Marion Davies told him they'd come back. He died in Beverly Hills four years later.

The hill was his father's — George Hearst bought 40,000 acres of San Simeon ranchland in 1865 with mining money; the son grew it to 250,000 and built La Cuesta Encantada on the peak where the family had camped. Morgan — the first woman licensed to practice architecture in California, École des Beaux-Arts trained — designed Casa Grande with its twin Spanish towers, the Neptune Pool, the Roman Pool, and the guest houses, while Hearst filled it with the art collection that museums now borrow back.

The guests were the country — Chaplin and Garbo and Churchill and Lindbergh, Hollywood's elite flown to the ranch for the weekends, the private zoo's animals loose on the hills below. The castle was a working newspaper baron's retreat and a museum-in-progress at once; the state took it in 1957 and opened the doors the guests had used.

Hearst Castle is the archive's unfinished file — the 28-year collaboration between the press lord and the woman architect, the Enchanted Hill with its zoo and pools and art, and the estate Hearst left crying and never saw again.