California’s first licensed female architect, Julia Morgan, will be celebrated this fall with 6 weeks of tours, lectures, and events, called the Julia Morgan 2012 Festival Gala.

The Festival Gala will benefit the non-profit Landmark Heritage Foundation, which helps preserve the Berkeley City Club Hotel, also called Julia Morgan’s “Little Castle.”

Born in San Francisco in 1872, Ms. Morgan was also one of the first women to receive a civil engineering degree from UC Berkeley, and the first admitted to the architecture program at L'ecole des Beaux Arts.

This determined and forward thinking Californian wanted a career, and that desire has left us with beautiful buildings; dozens of hospitals, churches, public buildings, private residences, and YMCAs, along with her most famous work – Hearst Castle. Her design style ranged from the Arts and Crafts Movement of the West, to the grandeur of Beaux Arts, and often found a serene blend of the two.