Painting the Painted Desert Inn

Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) had been working as an artist, decorator, and architect for hospitality company Fred Harvey for forty-six years when she was tasked with modifying the interior of the Painted Desert Inn, located in what is now Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park, in 1947. As she had at the Grand Canyon’s Desert View Watchtower some two hundred miles to the west of the inn, Colter engaged renowned Hopi artist Fred Kabotie to provide wall paintings.

Kabotie’s paintings at the inn included representations of the Hopi Buffalo dance and the legend related to the ceremony of collecting salt. Kabotie chose to depict the salt legend because the inn stood on lands that Hopi people traditionally travelled through as part of this ceremony.

Painted Desert Inn in the 1940s (photo: public domain)

The dining room, 2014 (photo by Mark Byzewski, CC BY 2.0)

The inn was built before its site was included in the national monument or park. After filing a homestead claim, Herbert David Lore hired Native American laborers to build the inn, restaurant, and trading post with stone—including petrified wood—and lumber. It was completed in 1924.

The lunchroom, 2010 (photo by carlfbagge, CC BY 2.0)

In 1936, the National Park Service purchased most of Lore’s property including the inn and expanded what was then a national monument. Anticipating visitation would soon reach 200,000, the agency was determined to improve services. To that end, Park Service architect Lyle E. Bennett designed a renovation and addition to the original inn building in a Pueblo Revival style. He also designed the furniture, selected patterns that were inspired by Navajo rugs to score and paint on the concrete floors, chose the paint scheme for the plastered walls, and selected designs from Ancestral Puebloan pottery to have painted on the skylight panels.

For budgetary reasons, the work was completed by laborers in the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).  CCC superintendent Harold W. Cole later recalled, “Mr. Bennett spent many hours at the site experimenting with color combinations and materials for paints and stains…. The whole interior seemed to glow with soft, blended coloring. The time I had personally spent with Mr. Bennett was a revelation to me of what can be accomplished with color combinations.”

In 1940, after three years of construction, the National Park Service awarded the concessioner contract for operating the Painted Desert Inn to Standard Concessions, Inc. Problems with the power and heating systems ensued, as well as cracks and leaks owing to the structure of the original building. The inn closed for nearly four years during World War II. When it reopened, the concessioner painted parts of the dining room as well as the lunch room and kitchen, obscuring the paint scheme that Cole had found so entrancing.

In 1947, Fred Harvey took over the concession and asked Mary E. J. Colter to renovate it. The first phase of work was completed by January 1948. In addition to repairs and minor modifications, work included repainting the building’s interior. Colter developed a paint scheme with input from her employers, the superintendent of the national monument, and the national monument’s painter. It is unclear what if any influence Bennett’s original paint selections had on the choice of colors, although it is known that Colter had visited the inn at least once before Fred Harvey took over its management.

Colter returned in May 1948 to supervise the addition of a large picture window to the dining room and three plate glass windows to the “curio” room. At that time she also commissioned Fred Kabotie to paint three wall paintings in the dining room and two in the lunch room. Colter and Kabotie had also worked together in 1932 at the Desert View Watchtower, but this would be their last collaboration. Colter retired from Fred Harvey in 1948 at age 79. She died in Santa Fe, New Mexico, ten years later. Kabotie continued his successful art career until his death in 1986.

After narrowly escaping a demolition threat in the 1950s owing to damage from soil instability under the original part of the building, the Painted Desert Inn closed in 1963. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987. In 1976, it re-opened as an interpretive center. After several more rehabilitations, a 2006 renovation restored the building to its 1949 appearance.  It now operates as a museum. About 800,000 people visit Petrified Forest National Park each year.

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Sources:

National Park Service, Historic American Building Survey, “Painted Desert Inn,” HABS No. AZ-161, 1987.

National Park Service, “Arizona: Painted Desert Inn,” March 16, 2018.

National Park Service, “Fast Facts: Petrified Forest National Park,” February 5, 2023.