Mary Colter | |
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| Born | Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter (1869-04-04)April 4, 1869 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | January 8, 1958(1958-01-08) (aged 88) Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | California School of Design |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Parent(s) | William Colter, Rebecca Crozier Colter |
| Buildings | Hopi House, The Lookout, Hermit's Rest, Phantom Ranch, the Desert View Watchtower, Bright Angel Lodge, El Navajo, and the La Fonda |
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter (April 4, 1869 – January 8, 1958) was an Americanarchitect and designer. She was one of the very few female American architects in her day. She was the designer of many landmark buildings and spaces for theFred Harvey Company and theSanta Fe Railroad, notably inGrand Canyon National Park. Her work had enormous influence as she helped to create a style, blendingSpanish Colonial Revival andMission Revival architecture withNative American motifs andRustic elements, that became popular throughout theSouthwest. Colter was a perfectionist, who spent a lifetime advocating and defending her aesthetic vision in a largely male-dominated field.[1]
Mary Colter was born inPittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Irish immigrants William and Rebecca Crozier Colter. Her family moved toColorado andTexas before settling down inSt. Paul, Minnesota, the town she considered to be her home, when Mary was eleven.[2][3]
In 1880, the town of St. Paul was boasting a population of 40,000 people and a large minority population of Sioux Indians. As a child, a family friend, John Graham, presented the Colter family with Sioux drawings, made by prisoners at Fort Keogh.[3] This is the point where her fascination with the Native American cultures began.[citation needed] When the Indian community was ravaged by a smallpox outbreak, Colter's mother tried to burn all of the Native American things they had for fear that it would get her family sick. Mary, however, hid those drawings from her mother and so prevented them from being burned. Mary also kept these same Sioux drawings for much of her life, bequeathing them to theCuster Battlefield National Monument in 1956.[3]
Colter graduated high school in 1883 at the age of 14.[4][3] After her father died in 1886, Colter attended theCalifornia School of Design (now the San Francisco Art Institute) until 1890, where she studied art and design.[3][5] She promised that, when she graduated, she would return to St. Paul to financially support her mother and older sister, who was chronically ill.[6] While in San Francisco, she apprenticed in an architect's office to gain experience and support herself.[3] She was taught by teachers includingArthur Frank Mathews, who painted the earliest known portrait of Colter.[3]
After teaching at theStout Manual Training School inMenomonie, Wisconsin for a year,[6] Colter moved back to St. Paul and taught art, drafting, and architecture for some years.[7][unreliable source?] Colter taught at theMechanic Arts High School for fifteen years and lectured at the University Extension School.[8] At this time, she was involved in the Arts and Crafts movement.[6] She was also a clubwoman, and gave several lectures and classes related to art.[2][6]
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By one account,[9] in 1902, Minnie Harvey Huckel helped Colter obtain a summer job with her family'sFred Harvey Company (operator of the famous railstop Harvey House restaurants), decorating the Indian Building at theAlvarado Hotel inAlbuquerque (since demolished).[10][11] The Indian Buildings, one of Minnie's ideas executed by her husband, were meant to entertain passengers as trains made stops to replenish water and fuel. Colter was given the challenge of arranging salesrooms so tourists could imagine displaying goods in their homes.[6] She also worked withCharles Whittlesey on theEl Tovar Hotel and began designing a curio shop. Upon returning to St. Paul to teach in the fall, Colter continued her work on the curio shop, which became theHopi House.[6]
For the next seven years, Colter continued working for Harvey from St. Paul. She continued teaching and her involvement in art and clubs in the city. In 1908, Colter moved with her mother and sister to Seattle to take a position developing the Decoration Department for the Frederick and Nelson department store in Seattle. Colter left the position in 1909, when her mother became ill and died. The Colter sisters returned to St. Paul to bury their mother in the family plot.[6]
Colter began working full-time for the company in 1910, moving from interior designer to architect in a position based in Kansas City.[11][8] For the next 38 years, Colter served as chief architect and decorator for the Fred Harvey Company.[11] 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.
Fred Harvey developed the West along the Santa Fe's main route through strategic use of restaurant efficiency, clean-cut and pretty young women, high-end tourism, and quality souvenirs. Anthropologists on his staff located the most appealing Native American art and artifacts like pottery, jewelry, and leatherwork. His merchandisers designed goods based on those artifacts. And in strategic locations, Colter produced commercial architecture with striking decor, based on some concern for authenticity, floorplans calculated for good user experience and commercial function, and a playful sense of the dramatic inside and out.
The Santa Fe railroad bought theLa Fonda hotel on the plaza of the old city ofSanta Fe, New Mexico, in 1925 and leased it to the Harvey Company to operate. For a major expansion, Colter was assigned to do the interior design and decorating.[12] She hired artists and artisans from the nearbypueblos to make the furniture. Native American styles were employed in hand-crafted chandeliers, copper and tin lighting fixtures, tiles and textiles, and other ornamentation. La Fonda became the most successful of the Harvey House hotels. Its striking blend ofPueblo people and Spanish artistic influences, today known locally as theSanta Fe Style, became very popular across the region.[13]
Colter created a series of remarkable works in theGrand Canyon National Park, mostly on the South Rim: the 1905Hopi House,[14] the 1914Hermit's Rest and observatoryLookout Studio, and the 1932Desert View Watchtower, a 70-foot-tall (21 m) rock tower with a hidden steel structure, as well as the 1935Bright Angel Lodge complex, and the 1922Phantom Ranch buildings at the bottom of the canyon.[15] Colter also decorated, but did not design, the park'sEl Tovar Hotel. In 1987, theMary Jane Colter Buildings, as a group, were listed as aNational Historic Landmark. (She also designed the 1936 Victor Hall for men, and the 1937 Colter Hall, a dormitory for Fred Harvey's women employees.)
Colter worked withPueblo Revival architecture,Spanish Colonial Revival architecture,Mission Revival architecture,Streamline Moderne,American Craftsman, andArts and Crafts Movement styles, often synthesizing several together evocatively. Colter's work is credited with inspiring thePueblo Deco style.[16]
The Harvey Company got the concession in 1922 to operate a camp at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Considering the Phantom Ranch's location, Colter's use of on-site fieldstone and rough-hewn wood was deemed the only practical thing for the permanent buildings that replaced tents.[17] In the following years this innovative work became a de facto model for subsequentNational Park Service andCivilian Conservation Corps structures, influencing the look and feel of an entire genre of parkitecture, often calledNational Park Service Rustic. Her structures at the Grand Canyon set the precedent for using on-site materials and bold, large-scale design elements.
For her Bright Angel Lodge on theSouth Rim, she used a 6-foot (1.8 m) scale model to ensure that the lodge and cabins fit into the landscape. The lodge features a remarkable "geological fireplace" in the History Room, with rocks arranged ceiling to floor in the same order as the geologic strata along theBright Angel Trail down the canyon wall.
A chain-smoking perfectionist, Colter cared about backstory and attractive features. She conceived Hermit's Rest as a sort offolly, as if it had been wired together by a reclusive mountain man. The Hopi House was a market for Native American crafts, made byHopi artisans on the site, and designed in sandstone to resemble a Hopi pueblo. (Unfortunately, a recent cleaning eliminated the artificial age-effects.)[3] The Watchtower was the product of travel and research, and she cared enough to herself prepare aManual for Drivers and Guides Descriptive of the Indian Watchtower at Desert View and its Relation, Architecturally, to the Prehistoric Ruins of the Southwest.[18] The original paintings inside the tower were by Hopi artistFred Kabotie. She also insisted on her proposed name "Phantom Ranch" (over "Roosevelt Ranch") to capitalize on better mental images.[3]
Colter's pioneering masterwork may have been the 1923El Navajo inGallup, New Mexico, remarkable for its forward-looking fusion of a Native American-inspired design on the severeArt Deco building by Santa Fe Railway architectA. E. Harrison. Her breakthrough creation incorporatedNavajo sand paintings and rugs with hand-carved and hand-painted furniture. The original plans sketched about 100 bedrooms and 15 shared baths, making the structure physically obsolete before it was razed to make way for widening Route 77 in 1957, shortly before Colter's death.[19] (She saw demolitions of a few other projects before she died, causing her to despair, "It's possible to live too long.")[20]
Mary Colter herself declared the 1930La Posada Hotel to be her masterpiece. The sprawling, hacienda-styleSpanish Colonial Revival building[21] inWinslow, Arizona, has been called "the last great railroad hotel built in America". She was architect and designer for the entire resort, from the buildings to the acres of gardens, the furniture, china – even the maids' uniforms.[22] Closed in 1957, in a long decline it was first a drab 1960s office building for the Santa Fe, and then was empty when theNational Trust for Historic Preservation placed the hotel on its annual "Most Endangered" list.[23]
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Allen Affeldt heard about the endangered masterpiece, and in 1996 he and his wifeTina Mion, an artist, purchased it, and soon reopened parts of the hotel for business.[24] However, the hotel was without many of the design elements, which had been auctioned off.[6] Today, a museum of Mion's paintings is on the second floor; works byDan Lutzick line the sculpture court; a museum ofRoute 66 is going into the former depot. The compound and gardens, being restored to the original and intended grandeur, are the core elements of theLa Posada Historic District on the National Register.[24]
Late in her career, Colter designed the exuberant Harvey House restaurant at the 1939 Los AngelesUnion Station. Under a spectacular arched ceiling, a dazzling floor appears to be random zigzags and geometrics; from another angle the pattern turns out to be a block-longNavajo blanket made oflinoleum tiles. The fabulous dining room and her sleek,Streamline Moderne cocktail lounge were padlocked except for occasional movie shoots andLos Angeles Conservancy tours until 2018.[25] On 4 October 2018, the restaurant was reopened asImperial Western Beer Company.[26]
Not long before her retirement, Colter took on the 1947 renovation of thePainted Desert Inn in Arizona'sPetrified Forest National Park. During theDepression, a 1922 inn had been overhauled byCivilian Conservation Corps workers to theMission Revival style, using local materials andNative American motifs. Then Colter supervised the refreshening, provided a new color scheme, and commissionedHopi artistFred Kabotie to put murals in the dining areas. Showing that she was unafraid of the modern when the situation called for it, Colter installed plate glass windows to open up views of the splendid scenery. Closed in 1963, the inn survived a threatened demolition, and was placed on theNational Register of Historic Places in 1987. It reopened in 2006, restored to the way it looked circa 1949 after Colter's redesign.[27]
Colter was the creator ofMimbreño china and flatware for the glamorousSuper Chief Chicago–Los Angeles rail service, begun in 1936 by theSanta Fe Railroad.[28] Colter, herself by then an Indian art expert, based her designs on 1100 CEMimbres patterns excavated by her friendsHarriet andCornelius Cosgrove at theSwarts Ruin inNew Mexico from 1924 to 1927. Mimbreño china was produced by the Onondaga Pottery Co. of Syracuse, New York under its better-known trade name,Syracuse China, until 1970.[3] The luxurySuper Chief and business class dining services were discontinued after the train was turned over toAmtrak in May 1971 (today theSouthwest Chief covers the route). Later that year Mimbreño plates and pieces became available to ordinary individuals for the first time, disposed of in two large public offerings. Mimbreño railroad china remains avidly and competitively collected, with single plates selling for many hundreds of dollars. A line of authorized reproductions has been sold since 1989.
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Colter retired toSanta Fe, New Mexico, in 1948. She donated her collection ofNative American pottery andIndian relics toMesa Verde National Park.[29] She had to watch as many of her famous works were destroyed during her lifetime as automobile travel replaced train travel.[18][6]
Colter died on January 8, 1958.[18]
Four of her Grand Canyon National Park buildings are protected within the Mary Jane Colter National Historic Landmark District.[30]
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