Mary E. J. Colter and Artist Fred Geary
In her career as an artist, architect, and decorator for the Fred Harvey hospitality company, Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) collaborated with many creative people. These included furniture makers, architects, muralists and other artists. One of these artists was Fred Geary (1894 – 1946) who joined the Fred Harvey company around 1917.
El Navajo post card, 1930. (Fred and Jo Mazzulla Collection, Amon Carter Museum of American Art)
Geary grew up in Carrollton, Missouri and attended the Kansas City Art Institute and later the Art Students League New York. His work for Fred Harvey was varied and included art and design work for menus, tourist brochures, playing cards, and postcards. His painting of El Navajo Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico, a building Colter played a role in designing, was used as the basis of Fred Harvey’s post card of the hotel.
In the early 1930s, Geary decorated the upper level walls and ceilings on Colter’s Desert View Watchtower at the Grand Canyon with paintings of designs created by Ancestral Puebloan people. In her manual for Watchtower tour guides, Colter wrote that Geary “copied with precision and appreciation the drawings found in ancient kivas and habitations and on the walls of natural cliffs.” Colter was committed to educating the Watchtower’s visitors about the people who had lived in the region for centuries. Geary’s artwork contributed to this mission.
Geary’s hand was also evident in Colter’s 1940 renovation of the Alvarado Hotel’s cocktail lounge, where the windows he painted were much commented on. “Be sure to visit the room in the late afternoon if only to see the light from the brilliantly painted windows reflected on the brick floor and lower walls,” a reporter advised. “Windows are glazed in designs of turquoise, magenta, deep purple, orange and green….The wavy ice-like effect is achieved by a colorless glaze scraped with an ordinary comb, according to Fred Geary, the artist, who says it’s the messiest work in the world. The effect, however, is worth a little stickiness.”
Geary’s “Church at Ranchos de Taos” (SHSMO)
While Geary made his living as a commercial artist, he also created art in his own time, mostly woodblock prints and wood engravings. When Geary died at 52, he left behind many works portraying buildings and everyday scenes. While some of Geary’s work is in private collections and museums, about 60 prints can be seen in the State Historical Society of Missouri’s digital library.
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Sources:
Joan Stack, “Missouri Artist: Cutting Both Ways.” Missouri Life, Jan./Feb. 2022.
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, Manual for Drivers and Guides: Descriptive of The Indian Watchtower at Desert View and its Relation, Architecturally, to the Prehistoric Ruins of the Southwest (Grand Canyon National Park: Fred Harvey, 1933)
“Alvarado’s Cocktail Lounge Opens to Display Spanish Atmosphere,” The Albuquerque Tribune, July 10, 1940: 10.