The Education of Mary E. J. Colter

In 1890, when Mary E. J. Colter (1869 -1958) was young, just 54 percent of the school-aged population attended school at all and only 3.5 percent graduated from high school, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The path to becoming an architect was also very different. University architecture programs existed and some admitted women; by 1891, twelve women had graduated with architecture degrees from US universities, scholar Mary N. Woods found. However, it was far more common for aspiring architects to get their training in an office than a university during this era. Of the 3,250 students entering architectural programs in the US from 1867 to 1898, only 650 of them earned their architectural degrees, Woods writes. With the US Census listing well over 10,000 architects working in 1900, it is apparent that most 19th-century architects received their training in offices rather than universities.

Golden Gate from Berkeley Heights (Detroit Photographic Co., c. 1898 – 1905)

Colter was one of these who learned to practice architecture without earning an architecture degree. After graduating from St. Paul (Minnesota) High School in 1888, Colter moved to Oakland to attend the California School for Design (now known as the San Francisco Art Institute) across the bay where she studied drawing and decoration. While there, she worked for a San Francisco architecture firm. This experience appears to be her only formal training in architecture.

While a student, Colter met drawing instructor Arthur F. Mathews who would become a friend and mentor. Mathews started his career as an architectural drafter in 1875 and by 1880 had won several architectural competitions. He then turned to lithography, graphic design, and illustration. In 1885 Mathews enrolled in Académie Julian in Paris; the next year he won its Grand Gold Medal for distinction in painting, drawing, and composition. Following several successful exhibitions of his artwork, Mathews was invited to teach at the California School for Design in 1889. He was appointed the school’s director in 1890.

Although Mathews is not known to have painted many portraits, he painted one of Colter (shown in this brief video). In its corner he wrote, “To my very dear friend M. E. J. Colter, Arthur F. Mathews.” It is likely from their friendship as well as their student-teacher relationship that Mathews had an influence in shaping Colter’s career. He supported women in the arts, writing that serious female art students “must be allowed and encouraged to devote her whole energies to that end and nothing else.” Like Mathews, Colter pursued a range of creative pursuits. Hers would include metal work, cabinet work, book decoration, interior decorating, furniture design, and architecture.

Upon leaving art school in 1891, Colter pursued a career teaching art, first briefly in Wisconsin and then in St. Paul for more than fifteen years. Owing to the popularity of the Arts and Crafts movement, there were many socially acceptable opportunities for women to work in the arts in the late nineteenth century. In 1890, the US Census occupation category “Artists and teachers of art” was 48 percent female. In contrast only twenty-two of the more than eight thousand architects in the U.S. were female—just 0.3 percent.

After leaving teaching, developing a department store decoration department, and working as an independent decorator, Colter joined Southwestern hospitality company Fred Harvey full-time in 1910. Although she was hired as an artist, over the course of her more than three decades working for the company, Colter’s primary role shifted from artist to architect and decorator.

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Sources

Mary N. Woods, From Craft to Profession: The Practice of Architecture in Nineteenth-century America. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

M.E.J. Colter, untitled typescript autobiography. Phoenix: Heard Museum Digital Library, c. 1948-1958.

Linda Reeder, “Architect Mary Colter and the Arts and Crafts Movement.” Journal of the Southwest 61, 3 (Autumn 2019): 609–635.

Virginia L. Grattan, Mary Colter: Builder Upon the Red Earth (Grand Canyon, Arizona: Grand Canyon Natural History Association, 1992 edition).

Harvey L. Jones, Mathews: Masterpieces of the California Decorative Style (Layton, Utah: Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., 1985).

Harvey L. Jones with Kenneth R. Trapp, The Art of Arthur & Lucia Mathews (Petaluma, California: Pomegranate Communications, Inc., 2006).

Arnold Berke, Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002).