A Race to Splendor Read online

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2011 by Ciji Ware

  Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Susan Zucker

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  FAX: (630) 961-2168

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ware, Ciji.

  A race to splendor / by Ciji Ware.

  p. cm.

  1. Women architects—California—Fiction. 2. Architects—California—Fiction. 3. San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, Calif., 1906—Fiction. 4. San Francisco (Calif.)—History—20th century—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3573.A7435R33 2011

  813’.54—dc22

  2010049267

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  This novel is dedicated to: JOY McCULLOUGH WARE, my loving sister with whom I share a California childhood and a passion for writing;

  LOY, our great-grandmother’s Chinese houseboy whom Elfie McCullough treated like a slave and whose last name we never knew;

  my husband, TONY COOK, whose refined sensibilities, generosity of spirit, and ability to make me laugh create a journey worth taking;

  JENNIFER JAHNER, whose sure eye dug me out of the rubble;

  and the nameless Chinese forced into prostitution who perished in the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire—and whose numbers weren’t included in the official death toll.

  Author’s Note

  Sometimes the seeds of an historical novel sprout many decades after they’re sown.

  And so it is with great pleasure that A Race to Splendor, published by Sourcebooks Landmark in April 2011, commemorates not only the 105th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and firestorm, but also a germ of an idea that probably began to gestate when I was sixteen years old.

  A figure not necessarily heralded nationally in telling the story of San Francisco’s remarkable recovery from utter devastation is Julia Morgan, the first licensed woman architect in California who accepted the task of restoring the fabled but deeply scarred Fairmont Hotel atop Nob Hill.

  I first heard Morgan’s name as a teenager when I stood with a gaggle of “grown-ups” in the forecourt of Hearst Castle, the fantastical Shangri-la built during the years 1919 through 1947 in Central California by the newspaper baron, William Randolph Hearst. The guide drew our attention to the massive structure’s wedding-cake towers and, later, the incredibly ornate wood-paneled interiors. During a pause, I timidly raised my hand.

  “Who designed this place?” I asked, awed by its over-the-top magnificence.

  “Julia Morgan,” the guide said, and in the next breath announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, shall we step into the reception hall?”

  I remember thinking, “Wow! A woman designed and built this?” but in those pre-feminist days, I posed no follow-up questions for the taciturn tour guide who obviously felt it was more important to keep to the schedule than waste time elaborating on some “lady that old man Hearst had hired back then.” (These days Morgan merits her own, full page on the Hearst Castle-California State Park website.)

  In the late 1990s, I “re-encountered” California’s preeminent woman architect when my husband and I moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco and rented a flat in an early twentieth-century apartment building on Nob Hill, designed by none other than… Julia Morgan.

  Remembering that moment of wonder at Hearst Castle so long ago, I pressed our building manager for more details and learned that Morgan was also the architect who won the post-quake commission to restore the beaux arts-styled Fairmont Hotel on Mason and California streets, located only a few blocks from our second-floor apartment at Taylor and Jackson.

  The speculation was that the female doctor who hired Morgan in 1906 to replace her home and infirmary neighboring the Fairmont after her original buildings were destroyed by the 8.25 temblor was either the architect’s personal physician, a sorority sister, or classmate at UC Berkeley where Julia Morgan had received a degree in engineering in 1894—the only woman student in the entire department. Talk about your Old Girls Network!

  After graduating from Berkeley, Morgan had gone on to L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and received her diploma in architecture, the first woman in the world to gain that honor.

  As my husband and I settled into our Northern California environment, I was curious to learn more about my new city and the cataclysmic 1906 event. I soon stumbled across more material relating to Julia Morgan’s restoration of the Fairmont, including insurance pictures of the hotel’s interior destruction and the absolute obliteration of the surrounding area, including harrowing images of the corner at Taylor and Jackson, the exact spot where we were then living!

  What historical novelist could resist such a call to her computer?

  Added to this was discovering that Morgan, who was only thirty-four when she signed on to restore the Fairmont, had a nearly morbid abhorrence of my former profession, journalism. She rarely gave interviews and despised notoriety. Anyone who worked for her and ran afoul of her edict to “let my buildings speak for themselves” suffered harsh reprimands.

  I also found it curious that there wasn’t much evidence that Julia Morgan made a practice of mentoring other women architects coming along behind her—and from that observation sprang the plot of this book.

  I have chosen to cast the “real” Julia Morgan as a secondary character, and tell the story of San Francisco’s initial recovery from the devastating quake and fire, along with its subsequent “race to splendor,” through the lens of a composite heroine drawn from the lives of the people who worked for or knew this extraordinarily talented trailblazer.

  After Julia Morgan, no other woman would graduate in architecture from L�
��Ecole des Beaux Arts for years to come. However, in this novel, I pit the fictional Amelia Hunter Bradshaw, determined to follow in Morgan’s footsteps, against J.D. Thayer, a tall, dark, and dangerous young entrepreneur who vows his hotel will open before the Fairmont, even if he has to resort to some less-than-aboveboard tactics to accomplish this feat.

  As with other heroines I’ve created in my historical novels, I wanted Amelia’s story, based on the facts that are known about this era, to illustrate how a few, feisty women overcame unimaginable obstacles to forge careers in formerly all-male realms—in this instance, that of designing and constructing buildings. What makes these women even more noteworthy is that, despite tumultuous times in post-quake San Francisco, some also fought hard to achieve that elusive balance between work, love, personal relationships, and everyday life.

  Given the fact that the San Francisco earthquake rendered some four hundred city blocks a pile of cinders and left 250,000 of its citizens homeless for up to two-and-a-half years, the novel focuses on the whirlwind competition between several legendary hotels vying to re-open their doors before the first anniversary of the quake in April 1907—putting to lie the dire predictions that the City by the Bay was “Pompeii, never to rise again.”

  Remember when Bette Davis declared in the classic film, All About Eve, “You’d better fasten your seat belts?” As with all earthquakes, what follows is likely to be a bumpy ride…

  Ciji Ware

  Sausalito, California

  Ciji Ware enjoys hearing from readers at www.cijiware.com

  California 1906

  A grave danger lurked below the placid crust,

  beneath the cypress trees clinging to cliffs,

  under eucalyptus and sea grass and soil and sand,

  lulled by pulsing tides sweeping in and out of San Francisco Bay

  and along the coast of western North America.

  For eons, this capricious natural force tiptoed

  along tectonic sheets of layered rock,

  shifting, settling, sending coded warnings of its impending wrath.

  Poised like a predator,

  the unspent power waited, silent and sinister,

  for the uncharted moment when it would explode

  from its compacted lair to confront each soul who crossed its path

  —and teach humility to all who survived its brutal assault.

  —Anonymous

  Prologue

  16 February 1906

  No. 7 Rue de Lille, Paris

  By post to:

  Miss Julia Morgan, Architect

  456 Montgomery Street

  San Francisco, California

  United States of America

  My dear Julia:

  I write to you both in sorrow and elation—the sorrow, as you can well imagine, occasioned by the news last month of the passing of my adored grandfather, Charles McQuinty Hunter.

  I am sure you have read by now in some vile publication of our most recent family disgrace involving my father and our beloved Bay View. The unhappy news of my grandfather’s death and the loss of our family’s hotel due to my father’s misdeeds arrived in the person of Mother herself, standing at my very door on the Rue de Lille, surrounded by a clutch of massive trunks. Presently, she refuses to return home, despite my own pending departure from Paris for the City by the Bay.

  Needless to say, the elation I felt over finishing my architecture degree now hardly seems anything to celebrate.

  Even so, I wish you to be the first to know that I have, indeed, passed my final examinations at L’École des Beaux Arts—and, as you did, on the first try!

  According to the French, at least, I am now a full-fledged architect “comme Mlle. Julia Morgan”—although I still must pass the California State Licensing Exam and be judged a bona fide American practitioner of the “building arts” in a region long known for its terra infirma.

  When I look back at these years of hard work, I am humbled to recall how you bravely forged the way. Of course, like yourself, I have had to withstand the slings and arrows of disgruntled professors and fellow students at L’École who do not wish a female in their midst, but I have survived by smiling sweetly—and silently counting to ten.

  I will be forever grateful to you for your benevolence and enduring support dating as far back as my entry into the engineering program at the University of California at Berkeley. Your letters of encouragement to me here in Paris spurred me forward when I seriously thought many times of quitting the entire enterprise.

  I am very impressed to learn that you have founded your own practice on Montgomery Street. You once said that you might offer me a drafting table in your San Francisco office, “but only on condition that you earn your certificate.” Well, now that I have officially done so, I lay claim to your proposal to work for you—if the offer still stands.

  I will get in touch with you immediately upon my arrival. It would appear that I am very much in need of becoming instantly self-supporting, especially if I am to legally challenge my father’s right to hazard my legacy as he has—and to contest the “new” owner of the Bay View Hotel, James Diaz Thayer, whose complicity in that all-night game of chance has the markings of a man of predatory temperament, utterly without honor.

  And so, with an anxious, heavy heart, I now pack my trunk and portmanteau. On Friday, I sail on the City of Paris for New York, and thence by train to California. I yearn to see the fairest city of all—San Francisco—and to once again greet fast friends like you, dear Julia.

  I pray this letter arrives home before I do, so you will know I am

  Most Sincerely Yours,

  Amelia Hunter Bradshaw

  Chapter 1

  James Diaz Thayer scooped the deck of cards bearing his initials into a pile on top of the late Charlie Hunter’s desk in the bowels of Nob Hill’s celebrated Bay View Hotel.

  “You lose again, my friend,” J.D. announced to Henry Bradshaw, the deceased Hunter’s son-in-law. “I not only now own this hotel, but virtually the clothes on your back.”

  The losing poker player’s bloodshot eyes bulged below his perspiring brow in an alarming fashion. Bradshaw was so drunk by now, his words were barely intelligible.

  “I wan’ a rematch… for the hotel, theesh time. And the gamblin’ club. The whole damnable lot!”

  J.D. ignored these slurred demands and shifted his gaze to his other business associate, Ezra Kemp, who repeatedly stroked his mutton-chop whiskers from ear to chin, as if the recurring motion might offer solace for his own recent losses to J.D.

  Fatigue strained Thayer’s usually rigid self-control and he slapped a fist on his desktop. “Now, get out of here! The both of you! For God sake, we’ve been here all night. I’ve had no sleep and I have a mountain of things to do to get this place ready for the gambling club’s opening next week.”

  At that same moment, the office door slammed against the wall and a slender young woman stood ramrod straight at the threshold. Thayer and Kemp jerked their heads in surprise while Henry Bradshaw took one look at the visitor and slumped in his chair.

  The intruder gazed directly at the disheveled creature grasping the chair’s arms for support as she addressed all three.

  “Gentlemen, if this is a meeting about the future of the Bay View Hotel and that shoddy, disgraceful gambling club you’ve erected next door, you had better include me.”

  J.D. reckoned the young woman was dressed too conservatively to be a potential barkeep or disgruntled upstairs maid seeking back wages. She was slim and held herself erect as if she’d been born with a book on her head. She had appealing wisps of dark brown hair escaping her upswept hairstyle, and from her well-formed earlobes, black marcasite fobs sparkled fetchingly against her graceful neck. Though hidden beneath a beautifully tailored jacket and a gored skirt brushing the tips of expensive kid boots, he considered her fine figure, which had little need of a corset to render a waist as trim as hers.

  Nor did she appear wanting in confiden
ce. In fact, her self-assured demeanor indicated that she had dealt with difficult men before and wasn’t in the slightest intimidated by them.

  “And just who might you be?” J.D. asked, intrigued by this sudden and rather welcomed interruption.

  “A-Amelia…” stuttered Henry Bradshaw, slumping lower after an unsuccessful attempt to heave himself out of his chair. “Your train… the ferry… I-I’m sorry, daughter,” he slurred. “Business prevented me—”

  “Ah, yes, business.” She advanced into the room a few feet. “Mr. Thayer has the right idea, though.” Her glance in his direction bordered on contemptuous. “There’ll be no more rounds of poker because, as of this minute, gambling is strictly prohibited at the Bay View. I also demand you immediately cease additional construction of that ill-built edifice out there, and that you, Mr. Thayer, remove yourself and that concubine of yours from the Hunter family suite upstairs.”

  So their fiery visitor had met Ling Lee on her way down to the basement office, thought J.D.

  Amelia’s voice wavered only slightly as she continued her tirade.

  “There will be no gambling or other illicit activities at this hotel,” she declared. “This was my grandfather’s home, as well as his business—and it is now mine. I intend to take full possession of it. Now.”

  Her sweeping gaze indicated all three men were being addressed. “If you have any questions about the ownership and operation of this hotel, you can take them up with my grandfather’s lawyer. He assures me that my father had no right to wager my newly inherited legacy while I was studying in France, and therefore the transference of this property to Mr. Thayer by virtue of a poker game was entirely illegal.”

  Aha, J.D. thought. So the daughter has returned from Paris, even as the mother had fled to the same city. Well, he could deal with this. He’d even half expected it, given what he’d already learned about a woman he’d known when he was in knee britches and she but a child, but hadn’t seen in years.

  So this is the celebrated Amelia Hunter Bradshaw, newly minted architect.

  J.D. summoned a welcoming smile. “Please, Miss Bradshaw, do come in.”