Fred Harvey and the Harvey Girls

Fred Harvey

Born in England 1835, Fred Harvey immigrated to the United States in 1850 at the age of 15. His first job was washing dishes in New York City. Soon after he moved to New Orleans and again gained employment in a restaurant, learning the ins and outs of the restaurant business. In 1853 he moved to St. Louis and six years later, he and a business partner opened a restaurant at the start of the Civil War. Unfortunately, his partner joined the war and not too long after, Harvey was broke for lack of customers. Harvey gained employment working on a riverboat and as a mail clerk for the railroad. It was during this time that he noticed trains did not provide dining cars, especially on long journeys, and the few eateries along the train route were deplorable. He concocted an idea to build a chain of restaurants along the AT&SF train route, but his idea was denied by his supervisor. A spur-of-the-moment meeting the AT&SF owner and gourmet, Charles Morse changed that. Morse liked Harvey’s idea and the first Harvey House restaurant opened in Topeka, Kansas in 1876.

Dining Room, Topeka, KS

Harvey leased a lunch counter at the Santa Fe Topeka depot. His focal points for running the counter were cleanliness, good food and reasonable prices. He was an immediate success, catching the attention of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe line. They turned their food service over to Harvey and The Harvey Houses became the first chain of restaurants in the United States, with Harvey using the depot in Topeka as a training base. Harvey bought a hotel in Florence in 1877 and created an upscale establishment, featuring juicy steaks and crisp hash browns. Tables were set with imported linens, silver and china. He required male patrons to wear a jacket and always kept a supply of alpaca coats on hand for those who didn’t have one, ensuring no one was turned away. Eventually, Harvey extended his restaurants all the way to California.

Harvey Girls

Originally, Harvey hired males to work in his establishments. He soon found that many of them were as wild as the west and came up with another idea to hire women. He recruited women in newspaper ads, requiring them to have an 8^th grade education, be of good manners and moral, and have a cleanly appearance. He paid them a good wage, with free room and board, and upon hiring a girl, he offered her the establishment of her choice along the train route. The girls were outfitted in black shirtwaist dresses, black bows and starched white aprons. In exchange for this, the girls had to agree to six months of employment, that they wouldn’t marry, and that they would obey company rules. With little opportunity for women in this era, the position as a Harvey Girl rose to popularity instantly. 

   

Harvey House Santa Fe (La Fonda)

Harvey’s success didn’t stop with his chain of restaurants. In the southwest, he hired architect Mary Colter to design hotels in Santa Fe (La Fonda) and Gallop New Mexico and in Winslow, Arizona, and at the south rim and at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. At the peak of the Harvey Houses, there were 84 restaurants in operation. Harvey continued to improve his businesses before he passed away in 1901. His sons and grandsons took over and kept the company profitable as long as possible. The inventions of cars and airplanes made that difficult, as most folks no longer traveled by train. The company was bought out by Hawaiian based Amfac in 1968. Amfac has hotels worldwide and adopted Harvey’s strategy for business and his standards. 

PS: If you ever get the chance, spend the night at La Fonda. I have and it's beautiful.

Inside La Fonda

Mary Jane Colter, Architect of the Southwest

One can only imagine how difficult it must have been to be a woman in the nineteenth century trying to have a career.  Mary Jane Colter, born in Pennsylvania and brought up in Minnesota, certainly succeeded by both strokes of luck and strokes of genius.

When Colter’s father passed away in 1886, she apparently took it upon herself to learn a trade in order to help with family finances.  She attended California School of Design—apparently in an all women’s class. Graduating in 1890, she apprenticed with a Californian firm and learned the then-popular, revived California Mission style. Sadly, her talents were put to other use for several more years, teaching at the Mechanic Arts High School and University Extension School in St. Paul. Then, by a stroke of good fortune, she came to the attention of Minnie Harvey Huckel, daughter of Fred Harvey who was building hotels and restaurants along the line of the Santa Fe Railroad.  While my colleague, Julie Lence, will be telling you all about Fred Harvey and the ‘Harvey Girls’ in a blog in a couple of weeks, I will concentrate on Colter’s works for the firm.

Mary Jane colter reading blueprints, 1921

Colter was originally hired for a summer job in 1902 decorating the Indian Building at the  Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque. The building was the hotel’s gift shop basically, and Colter created a series of rooms of both Hispanic and Native American design. She would go on to work for the Fred Harvey Company for thirty-eight years, doing both architecture and decor. It was Harvey’s exclusive contract with the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad to provide hotels and restaurants between Chicago and Los Angeles that would afford Colter those years of work.

Colter spent time working as a display manager for a department store in Seattle before being hired permanently by Harvey in 1910. It was then she branched out into being both architect and decorator.  Her first works continued at Grand Canyon.  The area had been declared a National Monument in 1908 by President Teddy Roosevelt and while it was not until 1919 that it was established as a national park, tourism was definitely on the rise. When the ATSF Railroad brought in trains from Williams to Grand Canyon in 1901, making what had been a bone-jarring trip over rutted roads obsolete, the Grand Canyon’s fate as a tourist destination was sealed.

Colter’s style mixed Spanish Mission with Spanish Pueblo and Native American—Hopi Kivas, prehistoric ruins, sky villages, early pioneer buildings, surrounding geology, even woven baskets were subsumed into Colter’s designs. She had an eye for taking the surrounding geography into consideration and blending her construction with it. During the years she worked for Harvey she was decorator and  interior designer as well as architect. Her 1904 second project for Harvey was Hopi House, at Grand

Hopi House

Canyon’s South Rim. Another artisan sales building, it stands in contrast to El Tovar next door, which was done by another architect in the western chalet style. Hopi House is stone and was based on pueblos. It has the look of having been there before the idea of a national park ever took hold.

At Grand Canyon, Colter also created Hermit’s Rest and Lookout Studio and, after World War I, Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon. Colter’s imagination often took form from stories surrounding the buildings.  For instance, Hermit’s Rest was named for Louis Boucher who used to guide tourists into the canyon in the 1890s and for whom Hermit Canyon was named.  Phantom Ranch was not only named for Phantom Creek but, in her mind, for the many ‘ghosts’ that roamed the area.

Lookout Studio

Other famous commissions of Colter’s included Desert View Watch Tower (1932) on the south rim of Grand Canyon, made to look as if it had been there for ages but with a steel inner frame constructed by railway bridge builders; Bright Angel Lodge (1935) in stone and timber, looking like an early pioneer homestead; El Navajo Hotel in Gallup, NM (1918 & 1923, demolished 1957) had a nod toward modern architecture; and dining rooms for Union Stations, the most famous being L.A. with its vaulted ceilings and Navajo design tiled floor (1939). But perhaps the most famous of  Colter’s works were the interior design of La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, and the complete design of

La Posada

La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona (1929).  Her vision for that was of  the hacienda of a wealthy Spanish Colonial landowner, and she designed everything from the china to the gardens.  While much of Colter’s interior design is gone—furniture, uniforms, lighting and so on—it has been restored and is now on the National Register of Historic Places along with ten other of her buildings, five of which are designated National Historic Landmarks. Her last work before her retirement to Santa Fe in 1948 was the 1947 renovation of Painted Desert Inn in the Petrified Forest National Park, AZ.

A chain-smoking, tough-minded woman, Mary Colter knew how to behave in a man’s world, insisting on the details  she wanted, overseeing minutiae that were of importance to her.  She lived to the age of eighty-eight, seeing some of her works demolished, others remodeled beyond recognition, yet today her legacy lives in buildings that capture the essence of the Southwest, functional yet timeless.  Her work will live on in the Mary Jane Colter National Historic Landmark District of Grand Canyon National Park.

Photos:

Mary Jane Colter reading blueprints, 1931, National Park Service

Hopi House, Wikipedia

Lookout Studio, NPS, Public Domain

La Posada, public domain

Mary Jane Colter

By Kristy McCaffrey

Mary Jane Colter

A visit to the Grand Canyon is remarkable for many reasons, not the least of which are the various buildings designed by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter. In 1902, she became an architect, designer, and decorator for the Fred Harvey Company. At the time, American architecture followed the fashions of Europe, but Mary preferred to let her conceptions grow from the land, paying homage to the Native Americans who inhabited the area. Her designs include Hermit’s Rest, Lookout Studio, Bright Angel Lodge, Hopi House and the Watchtower—all located on the South Rim of Grand Canyon—along with Phantom Ranch, situated at the bottom of the canyon.

Mary Jane Colter was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and while her family lived briefly in Texas and Colorado, the Colter’s finally settled in St. Paul, Minnesota when Mary was eleven, and she always considered this her home. She desired to pursue art as a career but couldn’t due to family opposition. It wasn’t until the death of her father that she moved toward following her dream.

Hopi House

Mary attended the California School of Design in San Francisco, studying art and design. Few universities taught architecture, so she apprenticed with a practicing architect. This was unusual for a woman, but Mary was determined. In 1890, as a new graduate, her biggest concern was finding a job to support her mother and sister. She returned to St. Paul as a teacher. In 1892, at the age of 23, she began a 15-year teaching career at the Mechanic Arts High School, an all-boys institution. Mary taught freehand and mechanical drawing, and after eight years her salary rose to 90 dollars a month. Ambitious, she also lectured at the University Extension on world history and architecture, and participated in the Century Club lectures in Minnesota and Iowa. In addition, she reviewed books as the literary editor of the St. Paul Globe. On her own, she studied archaeology. To her delight, she would eventually receive a job offer from the Fred Harvey Company.

Hermit's Rest

The Fred Harvey Company operated gift shops, newsstands, restaurants, and hotels of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway beginning in 1876. Mary’s first assignment was to decorate the Indian Building which was adjacent to a new hotel built in Albuquerque. Once that job was complete, however, the company had no more work for her and she returned to St. Paul to teach.

Lookout Studio

In 1904, when the Santa Fe Railway determined to extend a line to the south rim of the Grand Canyon, the Fred Harvey Company decided to build a hotel at the edge. Plans were commissioned for El Tovar, and Mary was hired to design an Indian building across from the hotel, which resembled a Swiss chalet. Her building, Hopi House, was based on Hopi dwellings located in Oraibi, Arizona. Once again, with this project complete, Mary returned to St. Paul and to teaching, needing the steady income it provided. Soon thereafter she took a job in Seattle to develop a decoration department for the Frederick and Nelson Department Store, and her mother and sister accompanied her. Tragically, her mother died within a year after becoming ill from pernicious anemia.

The Watchtower

In 1910, at the age of 41, Mary was finally offered a permanent job with the Fred Harvey Company. She would design and decorate the new Fred Harvey hotels, restaurants, and union station facilities, a coveted position, especially for a woman. She wasn’t without her detractors, as a railroad man once complained of her “poorly illuminated buildings.” Mary often used soft lighting to create a restful atmosphere.

Bright Angel Lodge

Those who knew Mary Colter describe her in many ways. To her critics, she was a small woman with piercing violet eyes and hair that was never combed. She chain-smoked, was outspoken, and even cruel at times. To her friends, she was tall and stately, a wonderful woman, fun to talk with, and a happy person interested in life around her. Once her designs of Phantom Ranch were constructed—individual cabins, a large dining hall, and a recreational hall at the bottom of Grand Canyon—she took the mule trip down to view her new buildings. At 53, she remained in good health.

Phantom Ranch

For 30 years, she worked as an architect (few women did) and completed 21 projects for the Fred Harvey Company. She considered the La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona her masterwork. It still stands today.

La Posada Hotel

In 1948, Colter retired to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and passed away in 1958 at the age of 88.

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