In 1904, a newly licensed young architect, Julia Morgan, designed the North Star House to be a multi-use structure with several objectives – impressing potential investors and local leaders, providing an office for a working woman, and creating a home for a family. Morgan certainly achieved those objectives.
There is so much more to the historic role played by the North Star House; gold mines, inventions, literature, women’s rights, World War I Hostess Houses, and, of course, architecture are all woven into the tapestry of the North Star House history.
What no one could have known at the time was the role the North Star House would play in future events.
Mary Hallock Foote wrote her most impactful novels in her office at the North Star House, providing an alternate view of life and of women’s roles in the West to the more “Wild West” male narratives that dominated the genre well into the 20th century.
Julia Morgan utilized the multi-functional concepts found in the North Star House as the standard for over a hundred of World War I’s Hostess Houses, serving millions of servicemen and their loved ones.