Style epitomized by Greene & Greene
Architects in Pasadena, California. She
INDIAN WELLSRest Station, Grand Canyon NP, never built, sketch by MEJC
M ary Elizabeth Jane Colter was the
senior of the two by less than three
years who also would outlive Julia
Morgan. Both were born and raised at
opposite ends of the American continent,
giving a plausible reason, as we will see,
for their very different views on design
expression.
Mary was born April 4th, 1869, in
Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The peripatetic
family moved around the country during
Mary and older sister Harriet’s early lives
ending up in their mother Rebecca’s
hometown of St. Paul again. Mary took
to a life-long love of pottery and
ceramics craft spurred no doubt from
her mother’s textiles and millinery work.
Interestingly, Mary ended up in San
Francisco apprenticing to local architects
until she was accepted at the California
School of Design. While Morgan would
embrace the Neo-Classicism of the City
Beautiful Movement, Colter would
eschew it for a uniquely regional
Californian aesthetic driven by the
western landscape, Neo-Orientalism,
Arts & Crafts movement, Mission Style1
and the California Craftsman Bungalow
1
Not the California Spanish Colonial Frere Sera Mission
Architectural Style, but the Mission Style of furniture
design epitomized by Gustav Stickley being melded to
the American Arts & Crafts Style that was driving a new
California Bungalow architectural style.
next time you visit Mesa Verde NP in
southwestern Colorado pay particular
believed in an uniquely American design attention to the displays of Native
aesthetic without subservience to American pottery, basketry and jewelry
European Classicism. —most of which was generously donated
Not finding a job in the offing after by Mary E. J. Colter. She was such an
graduation, she returned to St. Paul and avid collector that she would regularly
teaching in 1892 for the next 15 years— select the best pieces from the Fred
a strange parallel to George O’Keeffe. Harvey Co. purchases well before even
On vacation in San Francisco in 1902 she the great collector himself William
happened into a Fred Harvey gift shop Randolph Hearst could even see them!
with inquiries into possible employment.
This would soon prove fateful. That
summer a lengthy telegram presaged a
job offer. Though a minor retail
decorating assignment, she threw
herself into the Indian Building trading
store in Albuquerque, NM. This
impressed Fred Harvey himself.
In 1904 while Charles C. Whittlesey
was commissioned for a new El Tovar
hotel at south rim of Grand Canyon, THE WATCHTOWER
, Desert View, East GCNP Entrance.
Colter received the commission for a
new gift shop adjacent nearby.
Whittlesey would use the rustic
Adirondack “Parkecture” Style derived
from a Swiss Chalet influence for his
luxury hotel; Colter would craft a
regional indigenous homage
harmonizing her new structure into its
environment so well that park visitors
would later inquire if it was a refurbished
Anasazi ruin! Thus, her life-long
association with the Fred Harvey
Company and the Colorado Plateau
National Park System began.
CASA GRANDE
, La Questa Encantada
, San Simeon, Hearst Estate, CA.
Her magnum opus is arguably The
Julia
Watchtower at Desert View 25 miles east th
Morgan was born January 20 ,
of South Rim/Tusayan, Grand Canyon, a
1872 in San Francisco, California. She
refreshment and trading store at the
did not receive her first degree in
east entrance to the Nation Park. Driven
Architecture from State University of
and energetic her whole life, she worked
California, Berkeley, but in Engineering.
almost to her death at the ripe age of 88
Befriended by Bay Area architectural
in Santa Fe, NM, January 8th, 1958. The
celebrity Bernard Maybeck, she was
mentored and apprenticed in his office.
Upon completion of her degree at
Berkeley she traveled to Paris to the
École des Beaux-Arts. Prior to 1896 no
woman had ever been accepted to the
prestigious design institute. At first it
looked as though this infamous
distinction would remain intact upon
Morgan’s arrival in Paris. She placed
42nd in a field of 376 aspirants, but only
the top 30 would be accepted.
Indefatigable, she persevered and tried
again not only a second but a third time.
Proving the rule “Third try’s a charm”
she was an unqualified success forcing
the École to accept its first female
architectural student.
Returning to the Bay Area after
successfully completing her 2nd degree in
architecture Morgan opened an office
and her practice flourished. A successful
partnership with the YWCA provided a
steady stream of commissions. A
pioneering expert in steel reinforced
concrete construction, this, more than
her highly trained classicism, would set
her apart in 1906. After the Great
Earthquake it was her buildings that
survived both the quake and then the
ensuing fires. Her passion for the
classics would mesh in a most timely
fashion with Maybeck and the City
Beautiful design movement culminating
in the Panama-Pacific International
Exposition of 1915—a Phoenician rebirth
of San Francisco from the ashes of the
Great Quake. The Palace of Fine Arts by
Maybeck and Morgan is the only
remnant of the Exposition still standing
today.2
2
Well, this isn’t exactly so. There are still a handful of
Exposition buildings that were repurposed for the
Presidio. But it’s the largest intact single building still
All of this would bring the prolific
architect to the attention of such a
powerful patron of whom the stuff of
dreams are made—the dreams of any
aspiring talented builder—which would
consume the majority of her creative
output for the remainder of her career:
William Randolph Hearst and his
superlative commission, La Questa
Encantada, The Enchanted Hill in San
Simeon, California.
Beginning in 1919 one the most
opulent and synergistic collaborations
would continue for 27 years until the
Great Depression would finally hurt
Heart’s interests so severely that most
work on his empire of Castles would end
by 1937.3 Perhaps it was inevitable they
would find each other: a voracious
collector of antiquities with the means to
indulge his tastes profligately and a
studiously gifted artisan with the
experience and creativity to put that
peripatetic mass of art into sublime
repose. Hearst always viewed San
Simeon as his unrivaled favorite and
wanted it to be a museum to the public
when its usefulness to him ended.
Hearst died in San Francisco August
4th, 1951 but due to a failing heart
condition had to leave his beloved San
Simeon 4½ years earlier, never to
return. Morgan closed her practice in
the same year due to her failing
memory. Seeing the country’s embrace
of an American Design Style typified by
Frank Lloyd Wright and the International
School of the Modernist Style, she
thought her practice an anachronistic
standing much as it did in 1915. It now houses the
Exploratorium.
3
But wait a minute, that’s only 22 years. Well, the
remaining 5 years would see a paltry dwindling of
commissions from the truncated Hearst Corporation
until no more were forthcoming.
failure and in her pragmatic assessment
saw no need to preserve her own legacy,
so she burned up her entire corpus,
saving only her favorite Hearst artwork
and drawings for her own pleasure until
her solitary death in San Francisco
February 2nd, 1957. Thanks to her loyal
clientele THEY cherished their copies of
her corpus and therefore her legacy has
been preserved and we are benefited
from it.
I f you’re interested in reading more
about Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter or
Julia Morgan find below the resources
used for this presentation. Perversely,
though Morgan burned her files and
original drawings, far more reference
book materials exist because her
clientele saved all THEIR copies! Colter’s
work is not now prized highly enough for
extensive archival materials, yet the one
book detailing her biography and career
has seen numerous reprintings. Enjoy.
~
Mary Colter: Builder Upon the Red
Earth
By Virginia L. Gratthan
Originally published by Northland Press
©1980
Republished by the Grand Canyon Association
©1992
h ttp ://w w w .n p r.o rg /p ro g ra m s /s p e c ia ls /a rc h ite c tu re
o lte r.h tm l
http://www.nps.gov/archive/grca/photos/colter/inde
x.htm
~
Julia Morgan: Architect of Dreams
By Ginger Wadsworth
Lerner Publications Company
©1990
Julia Morgan Architect
By Sara Holmes Boutelle
 Abbeville Press Publishers Born in Pittsburg, PA Aprilth,41869
Died in Santa Fe, NM January th
, 81958
©1988 at 88 years of age.
Revised and Updated Edition
©1995
Heart Castle: The Biography of a
Country House Two Pioneering
Women of the
By Victoria Kastner
Forward by George Plimpton
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publisher
©2000
Hearst Castle: An Interpretive History
Early 20th Century
of W.R. Hearst’s San Simeon Estate
By Nancy E. Loe
Published by Aramark
©1994
Hearst Castle: The Official Pictorial
Guide
By Nancy E. Loe
Published by Companion Press
©1991/2001
http://lib.calpoly.edu/specialcollections/findingaids/
m s010/
http://www.hearstcastle.org/history/julia_morg
an.asp

Brochure by Kevin Dobson Mequet © 2009

Born in San Francisco, CA Januaryth,201872

nd
Died in San Francisco, CA February , 21957
at 85 years of age