(Building) a better mousetrap.

Fireman, Janet

You've heard the adage: "If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door." Widely employed as a metaphor for invention and innovation, the mousetrap grabs hold of the truth.

Building one thing or another is human nature. The phrase "building bridges" evokes increasing understanding between people of differing outlooks, while "building castles in the air" refers to daydreaming or making plans that may never come true. Though building--whether mousetraps, bridges, or castles--signifies constructing an edifice, it first requires all the processes of designing, permissions, materials, and financing the mousetrap of the moment.

Essays in this issue display the art, craft, talent, acumen, genius, and tenacity essential to building structural and cultural icons of change, innovation, modernization, and originality in California, while our Collections feature uncovers attempts to record California's significant architectural landscape.

In "Bridging the Golden Gate: A Photo Essay," we endeavor to encapsulate stories behind the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge seventy-five years ago through images relating to history of place, urban growth, social and economic challenges to what some called "a wild flight of the imagination," the Great Depression, and the "practical proposition" that propelled the bridge's construction. The utility and efficiency, as well as the art, of the bridge--its revolutionary design, modernist profile, and noble stature--gave rise to perhaps California's most widely beloved icon.

In "'Women Who Build': Julia Morgan & Women's Institutions," Karen McNeill delves into the early twentieth century to unveil "the most expansive body of architecture designed of, by, and for women, resulting in a rich source base for exploring feminism from a spatial perspective." The model of a modern woman, Morgan brought fame and creative professionalism to women's club buildings, leaving "a permanent record of (women's) changing place in society and of the many causes they championed throughout the Progressive Era." Although these buildings are relatively unknown compared to her fiber-fabulous Hearst Castle, examining Morgan's women's residences, clubs, YWCA complexes, and orphanages generates a call to investigate further connections between physical spaces and those who use them.

Julia Morgan and builders of the Golden Gate Bridge built real castles in the air and they built real bridges.

Definitely, they built better mousetraps.