Customer Reviews

Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest

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Mary Colter was a woman ahead of her time --- an architect and interior designer when few women attempted it. She interwove rustic techniques, local materials and American Indian themes into buildings and designs well before that was accepted by others in her professions. Her rustic buildings at Grand Canyon National Park still survive to the delight of many visitors. Colter was at times a prefectionist, hard to get along with, a workaholic and extremely demanding of herself and her co-workers. Yet the author shows us her life and work with sympathy as well as depth. This book is well illustrated with color and black and white photos. Well researched. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It answered all my questions!

Having recently visited the Grand Canyon and been in the Hopi House and the Tower at Desert View I have become an admirer of the work of Mary Colter. This book is a suitable tribute to her and contains many fascinating pictures. Her work to preserve Native Indian customs, designs and artefracts is amazing.

I enjoyed this book very much, as I love the Southwest. Mary Colter was a gifted architect, who designed many beautiful places, with some of them being at the Grand Canyon. She was also the chief architect and decorator for the Fred Harvey Company from 1902 to 1948. She created buildings that blended into natural landscapes. There are many beautiful pictures in this book, along with the stories. Mary was a true pioneer. What a remarkable woman.

This is a book that fed my interest in Mary Coulter and inspired an old fashion drive to the Grand Canyon National Park to see the buildings that she designed. Both the book and the reality were/are wonderful.

This book is fascinating on many levels, not just because it's about Mary Colter. She was truly a great woman, and when seeing the buildings she created and while reading this book our appreciation of her continues to grow. But a reader of this book will get, not only information about her, but photos and information about the buildings she designed and important features of the world at that time. She drew her inspiration for her building styles from the local inhabitants and the history of the areas they were to be built in, and was pleased to pay homage to them in her works. She truly loved the styles she worked with and knew how to create atmosphere and ambiance in her works that complimented the areas in which they were built and enhanced their purpose, creating emotionally and physically enjoyable and very practical architecture. I still feel amazed that she was able to provide us with such appropriate, well engineered, long standing Indian and frontier inspired buildings for the Grand Canyon National Parks in particular, and many other enjoyable buildings that are still enhancing our world. I think it would be an especially important book for a young woman or for any architect. I think it's also very inspiring to anyone interested in learning more about the past and the effect individuals have had on the world we live in today.

I love the book. I only wish it had arrived BEFORE we left home for the Southwest.

I believe I have already reviewed this transaction. The delivery of the book was very fast, book was in stated condition and I couldn't have asked for better service.