How Mary E. J. Colter got her Start

Artist, decorator, and architect Mary E. J. Colter’s decades-long association with Southwestern hospitality company Fred Harvey began in 1902. That summer, she traveled to Albuquerque during her summer break from teaching art in St. Paul, Minnesota. One of her tasks was to help arrange displays of goods made by Native Americans in Fred Harvey’s museum and salesroom that would be named the Indian Building. 

Colter likely had the opportunity to work for with Fred Harvey that summer owing to her acquaintance with Henrietta Hamilton, a collector who the Fred Harvey company hired to help set up the Indian Building. Hamilton was recognized as having accumulated one of the best basket collections in Seattle, said to include baskets from every tribe in the United States. Company founder Fred Harvey’s daughter Minnie Huckel and her husband John Huckel were also avid collectors of goods made by Native Americans. The couple fostered the creation of an Indian Department at Fred Harvey which was led by John Huckel.

When Colter arrived in Albuquerque, the museum building was still under construction but the large Alvarado hotel had recently opened. Charles Whittlesey, chief architect for the Santa Fe railway, had designed the hotel and a number of other Spanish Mission style buildings in the depot. He had also designed much of the hotel’s furniture and decorated the hotel with Navajo rugs and other “items of Indian-made manufacture,” examples Colter would follow later in her career.

Another influence on Colter’s future decorating and architecture work might have been the excursion to Santa Fe that Colter and Hamilton took that summer. The intermingling of Spanish, Mexican, and Indigenous cultures in buildings was evident in that city, as it would later be in Colter’s design and decorating work.

Once the Indian Building was completed, Colter was among the crew that installed ten train cars of goods from the Harvey collection. These were reported to include “implements of warfare and agriculture, fantastic adornments and musical instruments, blankets, baskets, stone axes, looms and prayer sticks, idols, silver ornaments, skulls of cliff dwellers, totem poles, jewels, wampum beads, odd carvings, cooking utensils and gaming implements” from a number of different peoples. Although non-Indigenous Americans seemed to place little value on the lives and ways of life of Indigenous peoples, there was a great popular interest in their things. The value of the Fred Harvey collection was reported to be $75,000 ($2.8 million today).

Postcards of Indian Building interiors by Detroit Publishing Company, c. 1900-1909 (Newberry Library)

It was likely during this time that Colter met the Huckels, both of whom were also involved with setting up the displays in the Indian Building. John F. Huckel would hire Colter for a few more freelance projects over the years until 1910, when Colter became a full-time employee for Fred Harvey. She reported to John Huckel, as she would until his death in 1936. Colter continued to work for the company for more than a decade after that. In the course of her career, she designed at least nine new buildings and renovated, added on to, and decorated too many buildings to count.

It all started with a summer job.

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Sources:

“Building a Big Museum,” Albuquerque Journal-Democrat, February 9, 1902.

“Indian Baskets, Rare Works of Art by Aborigines of Washington and Alaska,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 22, 1900.

“Minor City Topics,” Santa Fe New Mexican.

“The New Alvarado Hotel Opened,” Albuquerque Journal-Democrat, May 11, 1902.

“That Museum,” Albuquerque Citizen, March 1, 1902.

“Erecting a Studio, Albuquerque Citizen, March 19, 1901.

“Harvey Museum,” Albuquerque Journal Democrat, August 2, 1902.

M. E. J. Colter, untitled typescript autobiography, Heard Museum Digital Library, c. 1948-1958.