Mary E. J. Colter, Architect, Decorator, and…Dress Designer
Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) was known for her architectural and interior design work for Fred Harvey, the hospitality company that operated the hotels and restaurants along the Santa Fe, Atchison, and Topeka Railway. Her thoroughness and attention to detail were often remarked upon. After remodeling the Alvarado’s cocktail lounge in 1940, Colter didn’t stop at the furnishings in her pursuit of the look she sought.
“Mary Jane Colter saw me and pulled me aside and said she wanted to make a special costume for me to wear in the Cantina,” Violet Bosetti, who worked in the Alvarado’s Cocina Cantina cocktail lounge when it first opened, told author Leslie Poling-Kempes. “A seamstress came in and made me this beautiful dress later worn by all the Harvey Girls in the Cantina.”
Hilda Velarde Salas working in the Cocina Cantina, 1945 (Courtesy of Betty Villaseñor)
The Albuquerque Journal’s society reporter described Colter’s design process. “[F]irst the bar-maids’ costumes were sketched from authentic old Spanish dresses and bolt after bolt of material selected for harmonizing and contrasting effects….Miss Colter, whom we thought was just a myth until we saw her wizardry actually whizzing into action, looked over the girls first and then designed each costume to suit her….”
Hilda Velarde Salas at the Alvarado, 1945 (Courtesy of Betty Villaseñor)
The reporter was impressed by Colter’s facility, writing, “[I]t’s fun to watch her at work…an idea becomes a reality and a thing of beauty completed….nothing stops that fluid brain at work…she’s touched 74 and is ignoring it completely….”
Laura Harvey, wife of the late company founder’s grandson Stewart Harvey, was also taken with the dress. She borrowed one to wear to a ball in Santa Fe. The Journal reported that the dress received “admiring comment” from the Santa Fe newspapers.
The dresses for the Cocina Cantina waitresses were not Colter’s first foray into fashion. In 1925, she designed the uniforms worn by the saleswomen in Chicago Union Station’s Shoppers Mart and Minute Shops, the Fred Harvey-operated concessions off the station’s main concourse. She also designed the uniform worn by the waitresses in the station’s Little Restaurant, a small restaurant catering to commuters.
About the photos: Betty Villaseñor provided these photos of her mother Hilda Velarde Salas who worked as a waitress for Fred Harvey from 1938 to 1945. She was the first Mexican-American Harvey Girl. Ms. Villaseñor was told her mother bought the fabric and made the dress to the design she was given. The two people seated at the table were in management for Fred Harvey. Hilda Velarde Salas passed away last year at age 102.
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Sources:
Leslie Poling-Kempes, The Harvey Girls: Women who Opened the West (New York: Marlowe & Company, 1989): 165.
“Society Flashes,” Albuquerque Journal, July 6, 1940: 9.
Albuquerque Journal, July 17, 1940: 7.
“Fred Harvey, Caterer, Chicago Union Station,” The Hotel Monthly, August 1925: 38-73.
Al Chase, “Union Station to have Seven Eating Places,” Chicago Tribune, June 21, 1925: 102.
Arnold Berke, Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002).