Hearst Castle a monument to eccentric excess

Nearly a century ago, when newspaper publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst conceived a summer dwelling for a ridge top on the central California coast, he wanted it to make an unequivocal statement about himself.

Mission accomplished. Hearst Castle, as it is known today, is certainly a monument to the man: to his vanity, his eccentricity, his force of will, his uneven taste in art. As visitors walk the terraces and hallways today, they can't help but conclude that this is what happens when an unsophisticated fellow has more money than he knows what to do with.

Hearst was more of an art accumulator than a collector. Rooms feel crammed with artifacts, like a cluttered museum, and there's no sense of order to the design — a jumble of periods and styles and places of origin.

A similar disorder prevailed in the construction of the mansion itself. "Workmen didn't like working here," said guide Jacquie Calvert on a recent tour of the place, "because they would build something and he'd have it torn down the next day."

In his biography "The Chief," author David Nasaw chronicles one such incident in which Hearst walked into a completed guesthouse and said he didn't like the position of the fireplace.

It was ripped out, the wall closed up, and a new fireplace constructed in another location. Six months later, Hearst surveyed it again and said, "No, that was a mistake. We shouldn't have moved it from where it was. Take it out and put it back where it was."

All of this only heightens a visitor's fascination with the castle. Europe has its estates and châteaux to enchant tourists, but beyond Elvis' Graceland (an apt comparison, actually), America is a bit shy on grand palaces of excess.

Hearst Castle, which opened to the public as a state park in 1958, now averages nearly 700,000 visitors per year. They plunk down $24 per person for any one of four daytime tours (an evening tour costs more), then ride buses up the hillside to marvel at what Hearst called Casa Grande.

It's a real-estate agent's dream listing: 80,200 square feet of living space, including the basement and three guesthouses; 56 bedrooms, including servants' quarters; 61 bathrooms. Also 41 fireplaces, two swimming pools (outdoor and indoor), a movie theater, two tennis courts. All of this perched at 1,600 feet, with an unobstructed view of miles of unspoiled coastline.

When the castle became a state park, seven years after Hearst died, tours provided glimpses into a few of the public rooms, but "ever since it was opened, people have been clamoring to see more of it," said spokesman Dan Eller. "We've had to keep expanding opportunities."

The most popular Experience Tour still provides an overview, and will accommodate up to 55 people, but for something a little different — and a little more intimate — repeat visitors should consider one of the specialty tours.

After taking the Experience Tour in the morning, we signed up for the Garden Tour in the afternoon, and joined about a dozen others for a stroll across the grounds with Calvert, a knowledgeable guide who dispensed information with enthusiasm and humor.

Like the building and its interior design, the gardens also bespoke the idiosyncrasies of the man.

Hearst didn't start building his castle until he was in his late 50s, and he was too impatient to wait for trees or shrubs to grow to maturity, we were told, so he had most everything planted full-grown.

He wanted guests to see colorful plantings at all times of the year, so three greenhouses were kept busy and the flower beds were torn up and replanted with annuals and bulbs four times a year.

Fruit on the trees, he felt, provided artistic splashes of color, so he forbade it being picked.

Tree roses were among the more than 1,000 rose bushes on the property, so that guests could enjoy the blooms and their scent without bending over.

The native coast live oaks on the hillside were sacrosanct, with all building done around them. Accordingly, as we walked the 360-degree esplanade around the castle, we noticed that it wasn't of uniform width, but narrowed in places to accommodate the great trees.

The Garden Tour pays a visit to the Casa Del Mar guesthouse, which was Hearst's quarters while the main house was being built. In his oversize bathtub, he had a seawater bath every day at 2 p.m., Calvert said.

On any tour of the castle, a visitor can readily be numbed by the opulence of the furnishings and the confounding hodgepodge of art.

We found ourselves marveling instead at the little things — beautifully painted squares of tile, the ocean breeze that wafted in through a bedroom window or the astonishing scope of that view.