Mary Colter’s Employee Dorms

In 1938, more than 334,000 people visited Grand Canyon National Park. Although this is a fraction of today’s visitors annually, it represented a 760 percent increase from just twenty years earlier. As more people traveled to Grand Canyon National Park, the need for accommodations for both guests and employees grew.

Hospitality company Fred Harvey was the park’s concessionaire and operated hotels, campgrounds, restaurants, and tours on the south rim of the park. Its Bright Angel Lodge and Cabins first opened in 1935 to help meet the demand for more lodging. Fred Harvey turned to the same architect for the design of two new employee dormitories: Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958).

Colter had worked as an artist, decorator, and architect for Fred Harvey full-time since 1910, and after designing or supervising (or both) a number of projects at the Grand Canyon, she was well-acquainted with the sites in the Grand Canyon Village area.

Fred Harvey men’s dorm, August 1936. (GRCA 00626)

The 53-room men’s dormitory opened in 1936. It was built with rough stone, pressed concrete masonry units, and clapboard siding. “[T]he dormitory is a modest, background building that might not seem especially Colter-like,” Arnold Berke writes in his monograph on Colter, “—until one notices adornments like… the strict geometrically patterned walls of cinder blocks [that] rise from courses of rough, irregular, and sometimes quite large, stones—a transition so typical of Colter.”  The 75-room women’s dorm opened the following year, clad in stone with wood siding on the upper story.

Women’s dorm under construction, October 1937. (GRCA 00839)

The women’s dorm ran afoul of safety regulations in 1946 but through no fault of Colter’s. When a routine building inspection revealed a screen nailed “solid” at a window that was supposed to provide access to a fire escape, the inspecting ranger issued a memo of concern. When he returned for a follow-up inspection, the ranger found not one but two window screens nailed shut.  The matron in charge of the dormitory told the ranger that she had a work crew fasten the screens to keep the girls in and the boys out. She was advised to find another solution.

At some point, the men’s dormitory was named Victor Hall to honor Victor Patrosso, Fred Harvey’s general manager at Grand Canyon. The women’s dormitory was named Colter Hall after its architect.

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Sources:

Michael F. Anderson, Polishing the Jewel: An Administrative History of Grand Canyon National Park. (Grand Canyon, Arizona: Grand Canyon Association, 2000): 90.

Arnold Berke, Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002): 220 -  224.

Chappell, Gordon. Grand Canyon Village Historic District. National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form, US National Park Service Western Region Office, 1975: Item 8, Page 10.

“Town Caters to Travelers,” Arizona Independent Republic, November 22, 1936: 134.

“Grand Canyon Travel Gains Cited by Victor Patrosso,” Arizona Independent Republic, November 07, 1937: 148.

W. B. Storey letter to S. T. Bledsoe, December 12, 1932, MS 789, RR 475, File 31, Folder 2, Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway Company records, Kansas Historical Society, Topeka.

A. L. Brown letters to the Superintendent, October 9 and 14, 1946, RG 79, C34, Box 66, Fred Harvey 1941-1946, National Archives, Riverside, California.