Mary Colter, World War I, and Women’s Suffrage
Mary E. J. Colter (1869-1958) was well-known as a decorator as well as an architect during her nearly four-decade career with the Fred Harvey hospitality company. In addition to designing the interiors of multiple hotels, dining rooms, and lunch rooms, Colter also decorated several restaurants and retail spaces in the Union Stations in Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Kansas City.
Kansas City’s Union Station, designed by Chicago architect Jarvis Hunt with interiors by Colter, opened in October 1914, a few months after World War I started in Europe. Fred Harvey operated all the retail and dining spaces in the building and established its corporate headquarters on the second floor of the station.
Red Cross booth designed by Mary E. J. Colter in Kansas City Union Station, c. 1917. Photo courtesy of the National WWI Museum and Memorial.
On April 6, 1917, two days after Colter’s 48th birthday, the US declared war on Germany. A wave of patriotism swept the nation. Millions of men registered for service on the first day of the draft and five million were mobilized for service during the war. Eight million women volunteered for the Red Cross alone, while others volunteered elsewhere, served in the military, or filled jobs vacated by men serving in the war.
Colter’s contribution to the war effort included designing a booth in the east end of the station lobby for the Junior League to sell Liberty Bonds, and a poster publicizing the sale of bonds. At the west end of the station, Colter designed the Red Cross booth pictured here.
As the war neared its end in 1918, President Wilson finally set aside his reluctance to embrace women’s suffrage, asking Congress, “We have made partners of the women in this war…Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege?” After months of Congressional debate and a state ratification battle, twenty million women won the right to vote on August 18, 1920. Colter was not among them; she had been voting since at least 1914. Women in California won the right to vote in 1911 and Colter was registered at the address of her home in Altadena. See the map below for other states with suffrage prior to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.
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Sources:
“A Bond Booth at Union Station,” The Kansas City Star, October 16, 1917: 7.
“A Dream Come True,” The Santa Fe Magazine, November 1914: 39-44.
California State Library, Sacramento, California; Great Register of Voters, 1900 – 1968.
“Evening Choral Club…”, The Kansas City Star, September 22, 1918: 42.
“Later and Permanent Booth in Arch Near West End of Union Station,” photo with caption from the National WWI Museum and Memorial, Kansas City, Missouri.
National Park Service, “Women in World War I,” last updated December 16, 2020.