[Photo Credit: Morgan-Boutelle Collection, Special Collections and Archives, California Polytechnic State University]
A few of the birthday greetings Julia received from her family still survive. They were mailed to her in Paris, where she was studying architecture. Her mother Eliza wrote on Julia’s twenty-ninth birthday, January 20, 1901: “I send you lots of love and wishes for many returns and I do so hope some one will invite you to dine and that you are well and not ill or anyways unhappy.” On that same day, her sister Emma’s thoughts were on the weather: “This is your birthday – raining [in Oakland] of course – I hope it is happy with you – and remember how many stormy celebrations you have had – Perhaps next January you will be back here.”
Julia was still in Paris for her birthday in 1902. It was an especially meaningful one—her thirtieth—since the École des Beaux-Arts mandated that all students must depart when they reached that age. Just before her birthday, Julia had accomplished the nearly impossible: She won a sufficient number of architecture competitions to be awarded the École’s certificat—becoming the first woman ever to do so. Eliza may have been thinking of this impressive achievement when she wrote on January 4, 1902: “This is to wish you a very happy Birthday and many returns of the day – prosperity, health, wealth and every wish of your kind heart including professional success – I do hope it will reach you in time and that you will give yourself a good feed of ‘meat victuals,’ as Aunt used to say.”
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