The last stop for a groundbreaking designer
Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter scared people. Brusque, demanding, and with an incredibly clear vision of what she wanted, she was also a rarity, a trained female architect and designer in the late 19th century, a time when women worked behind the scenes of industry, if at all.
Colter was about 40 years old when the Fred Harvey Company hired her full-time in 1910. Fed up with disgusting train food, Fred Harvey created America’s first chain of restaurants, called Harvey House, where fresh comfort food was sold at railroad stations and aboard trains from coast to coast.
Info
Address Union Station, 800 N Alameda Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012, www.metro.net/about/art | Public Transport Any Metro train to Union Station | Getting there Paid on-site lot and metered street parking | Hours Harvey House is a stop on the free “Metro Art Moves” Union Station Art & Architecture tour, second Sunday of each month, 10:30am–12:30pm| Tip For a deeper dive into Native-American culture, scoot over to the Autry Museum of the American West (4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles, CA 90027), which is filled with historical art and artifacts.
The last Harvey House built is in Los Angeles at the stunning Union Station, with a capacious and ravishing interior designed by Colter. Opened in 1939, it’s a manifestation of her 38 years as Harvey’s chief architect and decorator. Colter had her hand in every detail of the eatery: the Art Deco-style fixtures that masked the train speaker system, the streamline moderne lanterns and lights, the studs on the leather tulle banquet, the delicate bronze-colored circles on the mirrors in the bar evoking champagne bubbles, and the tile floor that mimics the pattern of a Navajo rug. The result is both lighthearted and serious.
Beyond his business ambitions, Harvey had a mission to bring respect to Native-American art and culture in an era when Native Americans were still referred to as savages. Colter was a perfect fit to execute his vision. She created close ties with the Hopi and Navajo tribes, and attended archeological digs, informing her designs. While other big cities were building in the neoclassical style, Colter was committed to vernacular architecture. The 19th-century patrons of Harvey House were thus exposed to the Native-American aesthetic as authentically American, beautiful, and meaningful, and Southwestern style was born – conceived by a private hospitality company with a woman at its helm.
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