Hearst Mining Building - A Monument to Mining

Photo: Gabriel Classon (gabeclasson on Flickr), CC BY 2.0 (cropped)

A stop on UC Berkeley Campus Walk, a free self-guided tour.

This stately building facing the Campanile was a widow's tribute. Phoebe Apperson Hearst paid for it in memory of her husband, Senator George Hearst, whose fortune came largely from mining in the West. John Galen Howard designed it, with help from Julia Morgan, and it was dedicated in 1907.

If the doors are open, step into the lobby. Three domes covered in buff Guastavino tile float about 50 feet overhead, carried on slender steel columns and lattice trusses, a design inspired by a famous reading room in Paris. It was built to train mining engineers in the years when California's wealth came out of the ground.

A major renovation finished in 2003 hid a modern trick under the old stone: the building now sits on a base isolation system that lets it move sideways in an earthquake while the ground shakes beneath it. Today it is home to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Getting here: Walk north about 270 meters from the Campanile, up the esplanade, to the large granite building at the top of the slope.

Did you know?: Phoebe Hearst's gift for the building came to more than a million dollars, a staggering sum for a university building in the early 1900s.

Photo op: Stand at the bottom of the steps to frame the building's three great arched entrances.

More on Wikipedia: Hearst Memorial Mining Building · Phoebe Hearst · Julia Morgan · George Hearst

Hearst Mining Building - A Monument to Mining

Stops on this tour