Mary Colter: Innovative Architect and Designer

Mary Colter
1869-1958

Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter was an architect and designer, one of the very few female architects in her day. She was also the chief architectural designer and interior decorator for the Fred Harvey Company from 1902 to 1948 and designed a number of buildings for the Santa Fe Railroad, notably in Grand Canyon National Park. 

Born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, her family moved to Colorado and Texas before settling down in St. Paul, Minnesota when she was 11 years old. She was clear about her desire to be an artist and was heavily influenced by Native American art from the large Sioux community that lived in the area. At fourteen, she graduated from high school and, after the death of her father in 1886, Colter left to study art and design at the California School of Design (now the San Francisco Art Institute) during which time she apprenticed at a local architectural firm to help fund her studies. 

In 1901, Minnie Harvey Huckel helped Colter land a summer job as an interior designer with her family's Fred Harvey Company (operator of the famous railstop Harvey House restaurants) for the Indian Building at the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque (sadly, since demolished).

Mary Colter
Alvarado Hotel
Albuquerque, New Mexico
1901

Colter began to work full-time for the company in 1910, moving from interior designer to architect and for the next 38 years, Colter served as chief architect and decorator for the Fred Harvey Company. As one of the country's few female architects – and arguably the most outstanding – Colter worked in often rugged conditions to complete 21 landmark hotels, commercial lodges, and public spaces for the Fred Harvey Company, by then being run by the founder's sons.

As the West became more accessible, Native American craftspeople were successfully selling their arts and crafts at railroad stops. Seeing an opportunity to expand their business, the Harvey company commissioned Colter to design the Hopi House, a dedicated marketplace for Native American arts and crafts next to the El Tovar Hotel on the South Rim, creating a building that would fit into the natural setting and reflect the region's history. 

Mary Colter
Hopi House
Grand Canyon, Arizona
ca 1905

The Hopi House is patterned after Hopi dwellings in Oraibi, Arizona and built by Hopi craftsmen constructed using local materials and salvaged items such as Civil War-era Western Union telegraph poles and rails. This is just one of the many buildings she designed and had constructed in the Grand Canyon which also includes the 1914 Hermit's Rest and observatory Lookout Studio, and the 1932 Desert View Watchtower, a 70-foot-tall (21 m) rock tower with a hidden steel structure, as well as the 1935 Bright Angel Lodge complex, and the 1922 Phantom Ranch buildings at the bottom of the canyon. Colter also decorated, but did not design, the park's El Tovar Hotel. She also designed the 1936 Victor Hall for men, and the 1937 Colter Hall, a dormitory for Fred Harvey's women employees. 

Mary Colter
Desert View Watchtower
Grand Canyon, Arizona
ca 1932

Colter produced commercial architecture with striking décor, floorplans with flow calculated for a good user experience and a playful sense of the dramatic.

Mary Colter
Phantom Ranch
Grand Canyon Floor, Arizona
ca 1932

Mary Colter
Phantom Ranch
Grand Canyon Floor, Arizona
ca 1932

As per Colter’s approach to design, the site dictated the materials: rocks and boulders from the area were gathered and used in the creation of the buildings. Everything else—quite literally, from doors to windows and everything in between—had to be hauled down by mule. Cleeland says nothing could be longer than the length of a mule because of the trail’s tight turns and switchbacks. She adds that upon close inspection of the Phantom Ranch buildings, one can identify where rafters and beams were spliced together.

“The remoteness of [this project] necessitated an attention to material and resource efficiency that anticipated today’s sustainable approach to materials in design and construction,” 
Construction History notes.

Colter's creative, free-form buildings at Grand Canyon took direct inspiration from the landscape and served as part of the basis of the developing artistic aesthetic for appropriate development in areas that became national parks. 

Mary Colter
La Posada Hotel
Winslow, Arizona
Route 66
ca 1930

Mary Colter
La Posada Hotel
Harvey Girls Reunion
Winslow, Arizona
Route 66
ca 1930

Mary Colter declared that the 1930 La Posada Hotel was her masterpiece. She was architect and designer for the entire resort from the buildings, acres of gardens, the furniture, china, even the uniforms worn by the maids. The Spanish Colonial Revival building in Winslow, Arizona has been called "the last great railroad hotel built in America." The hotel closed in 1957, cusing Colter to remark, "There is such a thing as living too long." After being used and as office building for the Santa Fe Railroad in the 1960, it stood empty until it was bought by Allen Affeidt and his wife Tina Mion who refurbished and reopened it on its original location on Rout 66. It is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Shortly before her retirement, Colter took on the renovation of the Painted Desert Inn located in Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park. The 1922 inn had been renovated by the Civilian Conservation Corps workers to the Mission Revival style using local materials and Native American Southwestern motifs. Mary Colter supervised bringing in a new color scheme and commissioned Hopi artist Fred Kabotie to add murals to the dining areas. She had plate glass window installed to modernize and allow views of the gorgeous scenery. The inn was slated to be demolished in 1963 however, it survived and was placed on the National Register of Historic places in 1987. Restored to the way it appeared in 1949 after Colter's redesign, it serves as a museum today.

Mary Colter
Painted Desert Inn
Petrified Forest National Park
Northwestern Arizona
Photo by Kathy Alexander
ca 1949

Mary Colter worked with Pueblo Revival architecture, Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, Mission Revival architecture, Streamline Moderne, American Craftsman, and Arts and Crafts Movement styles, often synthesizing several together evocatively. Colter's work is credited with inspiring the Pueblo Deco style.

In 1987, the Mary Jane Colter Buildings, as a group, were listed as a National Historic Landmark.

For more info about this wildly creative and remarkable artist and designer, visit: 

https://www.nps.gov/articles/marycolter.htm

Sources___________________________________________________________

Legends of America, https://www.legendsofamerica.com/mary-colter/, retrieved October 21, 2023

National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/marycolter.htm, retrieved October 21, 2023

On the Corner of History: La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona, https://passionpassport.com/on-the-corner-of-history-la-posada-hotel-in-winslow-az/, retrieved October 21, 2023

Arizona Women's Hall of Fame, https://www.azwhf.org/copy-of-vernell-myers-coleman-1, retrieved October 21, 2023

AFAR, Alex Pulaski, June 14, 2022, https://www.afar.com/magazine/grand-canyon-architect-mary-colter-buildings, retrieved October 21, 2023

Smithsonian Magazine, Zachary Petit, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-grand-canyons-phantom-ranch-turns-100-this-year-180980602/, retrieved October 21, 2023