This article was originally published in August 2017.

I have just returned from my old and dear friends’ week-long 25th wedding anniversary celebration at Wyntoon, the 60,000 acre Hearst estate located near Mt. Shasta in Northern California. William Randolph Hearst, the famous tycoon and newspaper proprietor, purchased the property in 1929.

After leaving Harvard, this son of a wealthy 49er who made his fortune in gold and silver mining asked his father if he could take over the San Francisco Examiner, which he did in 1887, because he saw a future in the media. ‘WR’, as he is referred to by the family, had many grand and ambitious plans. One was to build a 68 bedroom castle at Wyntoon on the bend of the McCloud River. This design by Bernard Maybeck was not dissimilar in form but considerably larger than the present day Disney Castle as seen at Disneyworld. However, at this time, his accountants told him he had to scale back his spending so what he built instead, with the help of Julia Morgan, his female Beaux Arts trained architect, was a cluster of houses that imitated a Bavarian village. Here is the genesis of fairy tale architecture in California.

WR had wide interests in all European cultures, as witnessed by his purchase and construction of numerous large palaces all over the world to house his vast and varied collections. At the height of his collecting, it has been estimated that he controlled 20% of the world’s art and antiques. However, WR’s first trips to Europe, accompanied by his mother and tutor, took him to Bavaria among other places, and Germany remained his favourite destination. We forget this, but at this time before the First World War many wealthy Americans looked to Germany for their cultural lead. Consisting of three houses named after Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Wyntoon was also to be the repository of his German art and antique collection which it is to this day.  Angel House, Cinderella House and Bear House were completed in 1933 and were decorated on the exterior by the Hungarian illustrator Willy Pogany who also happened to work for Walt Disney. These murals, however, are bright and cheerful in contrast to the often dark tales of the Brothers Grimm.

Bear House, Wyntoon, by Julia Morgan (completed 1933)

So why was there this obsession so early on with fairy tales and castles and make-believe? First of all, WR’s happiest times occurred as a child when he was exploring Europe with his mother and these tales reminded him of those times. Secondly, all the California tycoons such as Louis B. Mayer at MGM and Walt Disney were very interested in the commercial potential of these stories. These stories, told as comic strips in the Hearst newspapers or as cartoons in the Walt Disney films, were extremely popular in America at the time – an America that was open to all European immigrants not just those from the British Isles, as had been the case before the Civil War. They were selling fantasies to the people and there was a consensus that these stories should be the happy, cheerful versions that would be appropriate for a country deep in the worst economic depression ever witnessed. Fairy tales were stories everyone could understand.

In parts of Europe in the 19th century there was also a fascination with fairy tales. Ludwig II built some extraordinary castles in Germany in the 19th century. However, after the First World War, with all the horrors witnessed on Flanders fields, Germany fell out of favour in America and its folklore was appropriated to make the American dream believable. Hearst and other American plutocrats were buying vast quantities of art and antiquities from Spain, Italy, Germany and even England because they believed they were saving a civilisation and culture that was destroying itself. They perceived that their purchases were true acts of altruism. But when they took this art and culture they often turned it into a more commercially viable and ultimately more palatable form that could be sold across the vast American continent and even back to Europe.

To this day, the fairy tale in California architecture is alive and strong. And I am not just talking about Disneyland or the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. (By the way, I would definitely recommend a ride just for the pure thrill of the exhilarating and vertiginous 3D graphics – but not to the faint hearted.) I am also talking about more recent fairy tale architecture.

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Universal Studios, Los Angeles

In downtown Los Angeles, two recent buildings sit next to each other on the same street but actually could be from different planets. The Eli Broad museum was funded by the well-known property developer and contemporary art collector, Eli Broad. It was completed in 2015 and is designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.  Immediately next door is Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Hall which was completed in 2003 and serves as the concert hall for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Both buildings were part of a planned regeneration of the downtown area of Los Angeles.

Broad Museum, by Diller Scofidio + Renfro (completed 2015)

The Broad Museum is a rectangular box that reluctantly opens itself up to the street and funnels visitors up through its dark bowels to the second floor gallery space where a large collection of one dimensional contemporary art is displayed. Of course, the big names are all here, like every other contemporary art museum in the world, which all seem to use the same curator. It is not only the art that disappoints, but also the architecture. This is a building that has its roots in orthogonal modernism and the building envelope is its only redeeming feature; the only feature that is recognisably 21st century. 10,000 bespoke pieces form the façade (which I suspect contributed to the tripling of initially anticipated construction costs) and this complex geometry could only have been made with the most up-to-date CAD software.

However, it is the older Walt Disney Hall that seems the more advanced. It is, in contrast, pure fairy tale and its roots lie more in the cartoons of Disney and the fantasies of Julia Morgan (such as Wyntoon or the more famous Hearst Castle at San Simeon). The form of the building is only vaguely related externally to the concert hall itself thus breaking one of the great modernist tenets that is ‘form follows function’. The concert hall is asymmetrically aligned to the street but one could not tell this by looking at the exterior. No fenestration is visible, only cracks or crevasses to let light in. What appears is a series of vast, majestic titanium sails and forms that are pure fantasy. All are arranged in a balanced composition so that from whatever angle it is almost impossible to take an ugly photograph of this building. This is especially apparent now that we can see the Broad Museum immediately adjacent which is so arid, expressionless and intellectual.

Walt Disney Hall, Los Angeles, by Frank Gehry (completed 2003)

The entrance to the Walt Disney Hall is generous and welcoming. Warm materials, such as pine and even felt, are in abundance in the spill out areas. Lighting is from above through generous slit skylights. It seems to be a building designed for the people, although the reality is that it is catering to an elite crowd. But at least it is open every day for tours, either handheld or in groups. There is no need to book because you can just walk in off the street and see the inside of the concert hall for yourself. In contrast, to see the Broad Museum, one is required to wait in line. Fortunately, some kind soul agreed to keep my place in the queue for an hour, while I wandered casually over to Walt Disney Hall next door. By the time I got back the queue had stretched to a few hundred metres with anticipated waiting times of over two hours long.

Walt Disney Hall is the more successful building and despite being over ten years older, it still feels more contemporary than the Broad Museum. More importantly, Walt Disney Hall falls into that (by now) almost 100 year old tradition of fairy tale architecture and the world of make-believe that is unique to California.  It is giving the people the stories and the fantasies that they want to believe in. It is the American dream at its best.

All photos (c) the author