Mary Colter

Who was Mary Colter?

Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter was an American architect and designer.

Mary Colter was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a child, Colter traveled with her family through frontier Minnesota, Colorado and Texas in the years after the American Civil War. After her father died in 1886, Colter attended the California School of Design in San Francisco. In 1901, the Fred Harvey Company offered her the job of decorating the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque. Colter began working full-time for the company in 1910, moving from interior designer to architect.

For the next thirty years, working as one of few female architects and in rugged conditions, Colter completed 21 projects for Fred Harvey. She created a series of landmark hotels and commercial lodges through the southwest, including the La Posada, the 1922 Phantom Ranch buildings at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and five structures on the south rim of the Grand Canyon: the Hopi House, Hermit's Rest, the observatory Lookout Studio, the 70-foot Desert View Watchtower with its hidden steel structure, and the Bright Angel Lodge; Colter decorated, but did not design, the El Tovar Hotel.