Mary E. J. Colter and Charles F. Whittlesey, Architects
Throughout her four decades as a decorator and architect for the Fred Harvey hospitality company, Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) collaborated with many different people. One of the first architects she worked with was the Santa Fe Railway’s chief architect.
Charles F. Whittlesey (1867 – 1941) was just two years older than Colter but had significantly more architecture experience when they met in 1902. Although both received their training in an architect’s office, Colter began her first career as a teacher in St. Paul. Whittlesey got a position as a clerk and later apprentice in a Chicago architecture firm. He began working for Addison & Fiedler, Architects around 1882 when he was just fifteen. In 1889 he started his own firm, and around 1890 he became the chief architect for the Santa Fe Railway.
The Alvarado hotel, designed by Whittlesey, had just opened in the Santa Fe depot in the summer of 1902. Fred Harvey managed the hotel for the Santa Fe. The company brought Colter to Albuquerque during her summer break, where she and a friend were to help arrange displays of goods made by Native Americans in Fred Harvey’s depot museum and salesroom. But when Colter arrived, the museum building was still under construction.
El Tovar Hotel, 1907 (GCRA 12088A).
Colter made herself useful by working with Whittlesey on the plans for an upcoming railway building: the 100-room hotel at the Grand Canyon that would be named El Tovar. Whittlesey had a studio near the Albuquerque depot, one of many depot buildings he designed in the Spanish Mission style with exterior covered in stucco. The hotel at the Grand Canyon took on a decidedly different character, clad in wood and stone in deference to its surroundings.
At the end of the summer, after helping to display the wares in the Albuquerque depot’s “Indian Building,” Colter returned to her teaching job in Minnesota. She continued her association with Fred Harvey, describing herself as working on freelance assignments “by remote control” until she was hired by the company full-time in 1910.
By late September 1902, the plans Whittlesey had submitted for the Grand Canyon hotel were approved for construction. Whittlesey continued working for the Santa Fe Railway but also designed projects for private clients, including a mansion for Flagstaff lumber barons Timothy and Michael Riordon, completed in 1904. The El Tovar hotel opened in January 1905.
Whittlesey and his family lived in Chicago where the Santa Fe Railway was headquartered until about 1907, when they moved to Los Angeles; in 1910 they had a house in San Francisco. Owing to his expertise building with reinforced concrete, Whittlesey’s services may have been in demand in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and ensuing fires. A month before the earthquake, Whittlesey published the first of a four-part series on reinforced concrete construction in Western Architect. He listed the advantages of reinforced concrete to include fire resistance, economy, rapid construction, and durability—all useful qualities to San Francisco’s rebuilding effort. Whittlesey’s interest in concrete dated to at least 1902, when he was reported to have taken out a patent for creating “artificial building stone” by combining sand and gravel with compressed air.
For several decades, Whittlesey and Colter both continued along the architecture path they had shared that summer of 1902. It is possible that their paths crossed later in life, although no record has been found. Colter purchased a house north of Pasadena in 1916 and moved there permanently in 1940. Whittlesey died in Pasadena in 1941. His death notice reported that he “claimed to be one of the first American architects to use reinforced concrete for design—employing exposed concrete surfaces with ornamentation cast in place.”
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Sources:
Mary E.J. Colter, "Untitled typescript autobiography." Heard Museum Digital Library. c. 1948-1958.
PCAD, “Charles F. Whittlesey (Architect)” n.d.
“Erecting a Studio,” Albuquerque Citizen, March 19, 1901: 3.
“Is a Success,” Albuquerque Citizen, June 23, 1902: 1.
“Grand Canyon Hotel,” Albuquerque Citizen, October 1, 1902.
Charles F. Whittlesey, “Reinforced Concrete Construction,” Western Architect, March 1906: 39-40.
“Charles Whittlesey Dies,” The Rock Island Argus [Illinois], January 2, 1941: 5.