Home > Carnegie Center > Arizona Women's Hall of Fame > Inductees > Colter, Mary Elizabeth Jane
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter
1869 - 1956
Used by permission from the National Park Service
Millions of people visit the Grand Canyon each year, many of them passing
through a building designed by Mary Jane Colter. Colter’s buildings
there, including Bright Angel Lodge, Phantom Ranch, Hermit’s Rest,
Lookout Studio and Desert View, seem to blend into their surroundings,
and this was Colter’s intention. “Colter’s philosophy
was that a building should grow out of its setting, embodying the history
and flavor of the location,” wrote Virginia Grattan, Colter’s
biographer. “It should belong to its environment as though indigenous
to that spot.”
Colter began her artistic journey April 4, 1869 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
As a child, she wanted to be an artist, and later she enrolled in the California
School of Design in San Francisco. She worked there as an apprentice architect
to help fund her studies, gaining exposure to new architectural theories
based on the idea that buildings should be sympathetic to their environment
rather than copies of European styles.
After completing her education at the California School of Design, Colter
began a 15-year teaching career at Mechanic Arts High School in St. Paul,
Minnesota. Teaching jobs were plentiful for women during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. However, Colter remained interested in design
and found a summer job with the Fred Harvey Company in 1902, decorating
the interior of the “Indian Building” that was adjacent to
Harvey’s new Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque. In 1902, the Harvey Company
commissioned Colter to design the Hopi House at the Grand Canyon. Colter
wanted to create a building that would fit the natural setting and reflect
the history of the region. Because Hopis had lived in the Grand Canyon
area for hundreds of years, Colter patterned the building after Hopi dwellings
in Oraibi, Arizona.
After completing the Hopi House, Colter returned to her teaching job and
then took another position in Seattle as a department store decorator.
In 1910, the Fred Harvey Company offered her a permanent position as architect
and interior designer of Harvey facilities. She moved to Kansas City and
worked at the company’s headquarters.
During Colter’s forty-six years with the Harvey Company, she was
responsible for 21 projects, including La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, La Posada
in Winslow and the Union Stations in Kansas City, St. Louis and Los Angeles.
Her style of architecture became known as National Park Service Rustic.
Many National Park Service structures built between the 1920s and 1940s
used native stone and rough-hewn wood. Characteristic of this style is
the History Room of Bright Angel Lodge where Colter had a “geological
fireplace” built. It features rocks hauled from the canyon floor
and arranged in the same order as the strata of the canyon’s walls.
Mary Jane Colter died on January 8, 1956 in Santa Fe, New Mexico at the
age of 88.
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