Mary Colter: Builder Upon the Red Earth

Description

Author: Grattan, Virginia L.

Publisher: Grand Canyon Association

Pub Date: 2007  (Reprint edition)

Binding: Paperback

Condition: Fair to Good.  Binding tight.  No marks, tears, bends or folds.  Slight bowing to front cover corners and recto edge.  Very light edge and corner wear.

Notes: Reprint edition.  Originally published by Northland Press in 1980, reprinted by the Grand Canyon Association in 1992.  Mary Colter was an architect, in an age when women architects were few and far between.  She designed most of the building architecture in the Grand Canyon, and was the principal architect and designer for the Fred Harvey Company from 1902 to 1948.  If we have any idea what buildings are supposed to look like in their “natural” environment, or what we think of as “Southwestern Architecture”, those ideas come from Mary Colter.  “Colter’s philosophy was that a building should grow out of its setting, embodying the history and flavor of the location.  It should belong to its environment as though indigenous to that spot.”  (Page 59).  She was the architect of El Tovar, Phantom Ranch, Hermit’s Rest, and Bright Angel Lodge in the Grand Canyon National Park, Union Stations in Chicago, Kansas City, and St. Louis, the La Fonda in Santa Fe, and La Posada in Winslow, Arizona.  Lots of period photos.