Hearst Memorial Mining Building

Commissioned by Phoebe Hearst in memory of her late husband Senator George Hearst who had made his fortune in the mining business, the Hearst Memorial Mining Building was the first building John Galen Howard designed as campus supervising architect. Julia Morgan worked on this project as an employee in John Galen Howard’s firm. When the building opened in 1907, one in five male students on campus majored in mining. Howard drew inspiration for the grand three-story lobby as pictured on the panel above from the reading room of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.