Mary E. J. Colter’s Library
Teacher, artist, architect, and decorator Mary E. J. Colter (1869 – 1958) had a lifelong interest in Native American culture. This interest was reflected in her visits to the lands of Southwestern indigenous peoples; her collections of their baskets, pottery, and jewelry; lectures she gave; and her design work for the Fred Harvey hospitality company. It was also reflected in her personal library.
At the time of her death in January 1958, Colter had retained a library of about 130 volumes, most about the ethnology, archaeology, and history of the southwest, and some about architecture. These books, published from 1893 to 1957, must have been among her most prized since she held on to them through several moves.
Colter was living in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1893 (the earliest year of publication) where she taught art and design for many years. By 1908 she was working in Seattle, Washington. Once Colter became employed by Fred Harvey in 1910, Colter kept an apartment in Kansas City where the company was headquartered.
Although Colter spent much of her time traveling among different Fred Harvey projects on the Santa Fe Railway line, she kept an apartment in Kansas City for most of the next three decades. In 1938, when Fred Harvey’s headquarters were relocated to Chicago, Colter did not follow. Instead, she continued to travel and used her second home—previously her late sister’s residence—in Altadena, California, as her western base. In 1940, Colter moved out of Kansas City so her Altadena house became her only home.
In April 1947 at age 78, Colter sold her Altadena home. Preparing for retirement and a move to Santa Fe, New Mexico, Colter wrote to her friend Don Watson, Mesa Verde National Park’s naturalist, to see if the museum there wanted her collection of “Indian things.” She wrote, “My pottery is mainly Pueblo and I feel belongs in Pueblo Country.” In addition to Colter’s connection to Mesa Verde through her friendship with Watson, Colter had also taken inspiration from some of the park’s ancestral Pueblo architecture when designing the Desert View Watchtower.
The museum accepted Colter’s collections of pots and baskets. In 1956, Colter donated her collection of Native American jewelry to the same museum. Colter insisted that everything she donated be “displayed to emphasize the culture…of the Indians of the Southwest,” rather than linked to her acquisition of the items. Colter’s 130 or more books on Southwestern peoples, history, and archaeology, along with some of her design-related books, later joined these at Mesa Verde National Park.
Colter had previously donated about 200 other books to the Grand Canyon Community Library, including the works of Shakespeare and O’Henry and illustrated volumes about Chinese art and European gardens. When the historic building that housed the library was destroyed by fire in March 1994, all the books (save those checked out by patrons) were lost. A collection of Colter’s papers were among the historic documents that were also destroyed, the local newspaper reported.
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Sources:
Old book bindings at the Merton College library. Tom Murphy VII, 2005, via Wikimedia. (GNU Free Documentation License)
Katherine Droun, “Historic Park Building Burns,” Arizona Daily Sun, March 19, 1994: 1.
Michael F. Anderson, Polishing the Jewel: An Administrative History of Grand Canyon National Park (Grand Canyon: Grand Canyon Association: 2000), 63.
Mary E. J. Colter letter to Don Watson, April 12, 1947, MS656_Box1_F1, Virginia Grattan Collection, Special Collections, University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson.
Berke, Arnold. Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002.
Virginia L. Grattan, Mary Colter: Builder Upon the Red Earth. Grand Canyon, Arizona: Grand Canyon Natural History Association, 1992.