Mary E.J. Colter’s First Career
Today Mary E.J. Colter (1869 – 1958) is best known for her architectural and interior design work throughout the Southwest, but design was her second career. She first taught in manual training schools at the high school level from 1891 until about 1907. High school was a higher level of education than most people attained during this period. When Colter began teaching, less than 4 percent of 17-year-olds graduated from high school. By the end of her teaching career, this proportion had risen but was still under 10 percent.
Manual training education entered American public schools in the late nineteenth century. Manual arts courses could include drawing (freehand and mechanical), cabinet making, wood carving, pattern making, forge work, and wood engraving. One goal was to train skilled designers and crafts people to meet the growing demands of industrialization. But manual education was considered beneficial to all students. It was seen as producing spiritual benefits for students owing to the uplifting power of art. It also trained students to be future consumers of high-quality goods.
Because of her post-secondary education at the California School for Design—combined with the Arts and Crafts movement’s effect of democratizing art and making it acceptable employment for women—Colter was able to find work teaching. She first taught drawing and architecture at the new Stout Manual Training School in Menomonie, Wisconsin, in 1891. In November 1892, she moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, and began teaching at the Manual Arts High School there. Her starting salary was $50 per month.
Colter taught freehand drawing at that St. Paul high school for 15 years. Since the manual arts school taught the same academic courses offered in a traditional high school, Colter also sometimes taught Literature. In 1894, the school was renamed Mechanic Arts High School (MAHS).
Eight semesters of freehand drawing were required of the MAHS students. In their last two years, the students progressed from drawing to designing and producing objects. Colter and her students received frequent mention in the local press for their exhibitions and awards, some of them from World’s Fairs.
While Colter left teaching high school students behind in 1907, she continued to teach others through her design work. See, for example, Mary E. J. Colter’s ‘Geologic Fireplace.’
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Sources:
Linda Reeder, “Architect Mary Colter and the Arts and Crafts Movement.” Journal of the Southwest 61, 3 (Autumn 2019): 609–635.
Steven Mintz, “Statistics: Education in America, 1860-1950,” the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Wendy Kaplan, “Spreading the Crafts: The Role of the Schools,” in “The Art that is Life”: The Arts & Crafts Movement in America, 1875-1920, ed. Wendy Kaplan (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1987).
Arnold Berke, Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002.
“Genius in Youth: Opportunities in the New Course at the Mechanic Arts High School,” The Saint Paul Daily Globe, June 16, 1895: 14.
George Weitbrecht, “The Mechanic Arts High School,” in Fortieth Annual Report of the Board of School Inspectors of the City of St. Paul, Minn. for the School Year Ending June 30, 1898 (St. Paul: Pioneer Press Co., 1898): 55-57.
George Weitbrecht, “Mechanic Arts High School,” Forty-Fifth and Forty-Sixth Annual Report of Board of School Inspectors of the City of St. Paul, Minnesota (St. Paul: The Pioneer Press Mfg. Depts., 1904), 84-85.