By Ruth Newell
First published on the San Diego Reader Blog, June 7, 2011
In 1901, at a time when
there were only four female owned and operated architectural firms in the
country, 32 year old Mary Colter succeeded in securing a long term position
with railroad hotel mogul, Fred Harvey, and the Santa Fe Railroad. Fifteen
years after she had earned a degree in architecture from the California School
of Design, she was hired to design the interior of the Alvarado Hotel in
Albuquerque, New Mexico. However, Harvey was a man of independent thought and
vision. Not only did he hire one of the few female architects licensed at the
time, but he quickly came to appreciate the full scope of her potential and set
her loose on the plains of Victorian America.
Over the course of thirty
years, the un-corseted Colter completed 21 landmark hotels and lodges providing
luxury accommodations for the upper middle class and wealthy across the
country, five of which are preserved as a National Historic Landmark and
operated by the Grand Canyon National Park. Although the architectural designer
for the Hopi House, Hermit's Rest, Lookout Studio, Desert View Watchtower, and
the Bright Angel Lodge that was to later define the rustic architecture for
future National Park lodges, Colter served as the interior designer for the El
Tovar Hotel that was designed by architect Charles Whittlesey with whom she had
previously worked on the Alvarado.
The elegant 78 room El Tovar
situated at the end of a railroad line is a massive stone, log and shingle
structure teetering a mere 25 feet from the canyon’s precipice. Victorian
influences can be seen amidst the rustic sophistication of this grand
wilderness lodge. For instance, the exposed dark log walls and beams, mounted
elk heads, and southwestern art and rugs found throughout the lobby, gift shop,
gourmet dining room and lounge located on the main level are juxtaposed with
crisp white linen, fine china, turrets and a wide wrap around veranda equipped
with peeled log railings and rows of welcoming Adirondack chairs overlooking
the canyon. Originally planned as luxury accommodations, with room prices as
high as $425 a night, it remains one the country’s premier hotels.
In an economic climate where
Colter’s male counterparts earned up to ten times more for their efforts, her
career was undoubtedly a smashing success, comparatively speaking. Because
Harvey was above all an innovative tourism entrepreneur, having also tapped
into the postcard publishing business with which to market his 84 hospitality
facilities or “Harvey Houses” as they were called, Colter’s career as a female
architect operating in a male dominated industry was both unparalleled and
profitable. Many of her female contemporaries, including those who apprenticed
with the infamous and equality minded Frank Lloyd Wright, were not so
fortunate.
She worked with a supportive
team of men to blaze—quite literally—the trail for what would become the
country’s first chain of hotels and restaurants. Unlike her urbanite sisters
with a social conscience who designed affordable housing for the working class,
many of whom were women, the cigarette addicted Colter often worked in very
extreme remote environments for years on end, merging legends with the
landscape and structure with aesthetic practicality. As indicative in the El
Navajo Hotel in Gallup and her prized project, La Posada in Winslow, Colter was
unhindered creatively, an artist blending modern design concepts with those of
the Pueblo, Spanish Colonial, and Mission Revival architectural styles. Her
Casa del Desierto in Barstow has recently been restored.
The uncharacteristic
professional freedom and respect given Colter by her employer and team, as well
as the financial success she experienced for much of her career, might only be
paralleled by that which Julia Morgan, the first woman to be admitted into and
receive a degree from the prestigious Parisian School of Fine Arts, experienced
in the long-time employ of philandering William Randolph Hearst.
After the destruction
brought forth by the earthquake and subsequent fires of 1916, the newly
graduated and very fortune Morgan acquired lucrative commissions for numerous
rebuild projects in the San Francisco vicinity, notably the Fairmont Hotel.
Throughout her 45 year career, Morgan completed more than 700 design projects
that included the Hearst Hacienda at the Valley of the Oaks and the 167 room
Castle at San Simeon that consumed 28 years of dedicated craftsmanship in an
isolated, undeveloped location where she supervised hundreds of male, often
foreign, contractors.
In a country where the
median income of the female workforce is 80 percent that of the male’s, it is
encouraging that women today represent more than half the employees in the
higher paying management and professional sector. Equity in the design
industry, however, still seems to be lagging behind other sectors. Labor
statistics indicate female architects comprise less than 20 percent of all
licensed practitioners, principals and firm proprietors. As with many of those
who pushed the doors of opportunity open more than a hundred years ago, women
in architecture today appear to still be breaking through barriers.
Case in point, at the turn
of the last century Sophie Hayden, the first woman to graduate from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a degree in architecture, was
selected at 21 by an all female jury to design the Women’s Pavilion at the 1993
World’s Colombian Exposition held in Chicago. Her three story arched and
terraced Italian Renaissance style building was described by male critics as
being “too feminine,” mirroring the delicacy and timidity of her sex. She never
designed again.
Times have changed little in
the century that has pasted. Chicago’s Jeanne Gang has recently achieved
international recognition for her high-rise named “Aqua” for no other reason
that the building is the tallest yet designed by a woman. As with Hayden,
critics site Gang’s sex as a contributing factor to the overall ‘feminine’
nature of the wave inspired façade that appears “soft” and pliable beside the
bluntly geometric neighboring towers previously designed by men. The technical
ingenuity of Gang’s utilizing the undulating balconies that comprise the façade
of her 83 story building to effectively deflect the tremendous wind load
skyscrapers, let alone those in The Windy City, must contend with largely went
unnoted.
It’s been a tough climb for
pioneering female design professionals. MIT graduate Lois Lilley Howe, who
dared to launch her own firm back in 1900 and whose career focused on
addressing the Depression era’s urban housing crisis for the Boston Housing
Association, Department of the Interior and the Lynn Slum Clearance Project,
was in 1931 the first woman to be voted into the American Institute of
Architecture (AIA) Fellowship. Almost 30 years later, Norma Sklarek, the first
African American woman to graduate from Columbia with an architecture degree,
became the third woman to become a Member of the AIA. Although she became the
first African American woman to receive licensure in the U.S. in 1954, there
are several states that have yet to license an African American female
architect. Sklarek went on to help establish Siegel, Sklarek, Diamond, which is
one of the largest women owned firms in the U.S. today. Her achievements
include large-scale commercial projects that include the Minneapolis Mall of
American--the nation’s largest shopping center, San Francisco’s Fox Plaza, LAX’s
Terminal One and Tokyo’s American Embassy.
Although women and people of
color are enrolling in designs programs at equal rates as white men, they are
not choosing to enter the industry upon graduation. Barrier busters like these
two women serve as some of the very few role models and mentors available to
upcoming female students of design. The lack of mentors within their chosen
field along with the race and gender discrimination still visibly ingrained in
this male dominated profession are factors that continue to discourage young
women from pursuing careers within the field in which they obtained degrees.
On the wake of its 150th
anniversary, the AIA is beginning to acknowledge the problem. The toolkit it
produced intended to assist firms in embracing and encouraging diversification
has, however, received criticism as being patronizing and missing the mark. It
is little wonder then that architecture programs at the top design schools are
beginning to address gender and diversity within the industry through school
policy, implementation plans and finally, course requirements.
Although the sixties gave
birth to social activism in design as a tool for community change, social
responsible designers and educators today aim to address present inequalities and
injustices not only in the communities within which they serve, but also within
their profession ranks. Courses with titles such as “Gender and Race in
Contemporary Architecture”, “Inequalities in America,” and “Gender and
Communications” are beginning to be offered, if not as required, as electives.
Texas Technical University offers 44 such classes that fulfill an undergraduate
requirement within their Architecture Program.
The
problem is such that even teachers are going out on a limb, (professionally
speaking), in order to more actively contribute to the change they wish to
realize. Kathryn Anthony, tenured professor at the University of Illinois and
author of Designing for Diversity:
Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in the Architectural Profession published
in 2002, addresses the current marginalization rampant in Architecture. Her
book proposes strategies that may serve to reform the industry.
As I’ve come to notice,
change is inevitable, the only constant in this life. So, I have little doubt
that Anthony and the others working towards transformation will effectively manage
to, “lead the Architectural profession into a new era,” as she hopes.
I imagine Colter sitting
alongside me in one of her chairs at the El Tovar, sucking hard on a
filter-less, self-rolled cigarette then using it to point across the canyon
shadowed by the setting sun, asking me through a cloud of smoke whether I
thought it was created in a day. I’d look back at her knowing that there are
several ways to move a mountain. Wind and water and dynamite aside, Elbert
Hubbard, her contemporary, might have added, “Know what you want to do, hold
the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will
see you that much nearer the goal.”
I’d have nodded stoically in
agreement to them both, knowing that this is often the case.
No comments:
Post a Comment