Phoebe Hearst shared the cultural and artistic interests of her son, collecting art and patronizing architects. She was also a considerable philanthropist, founding schools and libraries, supporting the fledgling University of California, Berkeley, including the funding of the Hearst Mining Building in memory of her husband, and making major donations to a range of women's organizations, including the YWCA. During this period, probably in the late 1890s, Mrs Hearst encountered Julia Morgan, a young architecture student at Berkeley. On Phoebe Hearst's own death in 1919, Hearst inherited the ranch, which had grown to and of coastline, as well as $11 million. Within days, he was at Morgan's San Francisco office. Julia Morgan was forty-seven when Hearst entered her office in 1919. Born in 1872, her biographer Mark A. Wilson has described her subsequent career as that of "America's first independent full-time woman architect". After studying at Berkeley, where she worked with Bernard Maybeck, in 1898 she became the first woman to win entry to the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Passing out from the École in 1902, Morgan returned to San Francisco and took up a post at the architectural practice of John Galen Howard. Howard recognized Morgan's talents, but also exploited them – "... the best thing about this person is, I pay her almost nothing, as it is a woman" – and in 1904, she passed the California architects' licensing examination, the first woman to do so, establishing her own office at 456 Montgomery Street in 1906. During her time with Howard, Morgan was commissioned by Phoebe Hearst to undertake work at her Hacienda del Pozo de Verona estate at Pleasanton. This led to work at Wyntoon and to a number of commissions from Hearst himself; an unexecuted design for a mansion at Sausalito, north of San Francisco, a cottage at the Grand Canyon, and the Los Angeles Examiner Building. In 1919, when he turned up at Morgan's office, Hearst was fifty-six years old and the owner of a publishing empire that included twenty-eight newspapers, thirteen magazines, eight radio stations, four film studios, extensive real-estate holdings and thirty-one thousand employees. He was also a significant public figure: although his political endeavors had proved largely unsuccessful, the influence he exerted through his very direct control of his media empire attracted fame and opprobrium in equal measure.