La Posada

Here you see La Posada, constructed in 1929 in Winslow Arizona — the last of the Fred Harvey Hotels still in operation. The Fred Harvey Company’s restaurants and hotels shaped the architectural landscape and culture of the American Southwest — packaging the American Indian, Spanish Mission Revival, and US cowboy culture for middle-class tourism. And it turns out that women played an enormous role in this.

Fred Harvey got the idea of starting a high-end restaurant chain along the railway stops of the western United States, beginning in 1876. To showcase his operations, he employed women — over time, the operation included over 100,000 — to serve the clientele. These became known as “the Harvey Girls” (see third photo), and the demands on their person were specific and strict — they had to be single, white, educated at least through the eighth grade, and between 18-30 years old.

The Harvey Girls worked six days a week in twelve-hour shifts, but earned a good living as well as room and board. Many eagerly took these jobs, since they provided an unusual chance to travel, leave home, and see more of the world.

The Fred Harvey Company also broke ground by employing a woman named Mary Colter as its architect from 1902 to 1948. You can see her in the second photo. Colter built many iconic structures in her day, emphasizing a style that we now associate with the Southwest. She creatively borrowed ideas from the landscape, and even now a number of her structures (four in the Grand Canyon alone) have been declared National Historic Landmarks.

La Posada, “the resting place,” cost a fortune when it was built (around $2 million dollars at the time). Colter liked to design her buildings with a narrative backstory in mind that she invented. For this hotel, she imagined that a rich Spanish landowner had created a family estate that extended back in time for 120 years.

Colter’s other buildings are also super interesting, and continue the legacy of Southwestern tourism today.