False Architect: The Mary Colter Hoax

Every year, the National Park Service tells millions of visitors to Grand Canyon National Park that Mary Colter (1869-1958) designed landmark structures there. Two movies, two plays, two biographies, and countless magazine and newspaper articles have lauded her architectural legend. If only it were true. Three years of diligent research, thousands of archival pages, countless contemporaneous primary sources, and original architectural drawings prove the Colter legend was in reality her own self-myth, one supported for far too long by mere conjecture and wishful thinking. The first in-depth biography of Fred Harvey interior decorator Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, False Architect exposes architectural history's greatest fraud. Supported by over 200 pages of citations and a 100+ page bibliography, False Architect reveals step-by-step how Colter falsely claimed to have been an architect. It also documents the authentic architects who actually created Colter-claimed landmarks like Grand Canyon's Hermit's Rest, Lookout Studio, Phantom Ranch, Desert View Watchtower, Bright Angel Lodge and Hopi House. Other buildings misattributed to Colter include La Posada Hotel in Winslow, AZ, a large addition to La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, NM, and the long-demolished El Navajo Hotel in Gallup, NM. If you buy this book, and find it less than factual and compelling, I will refund your money. What do you have to lose? $10,000 REWARD FOR PROOF MARY COLTER DESIGNED LANDMARKS! Reward Terms. Proof requires independent contemporaneous primary sources that cannot be traced back to Colter as their originator for these six Grand Canyon projects: Hopi House, Hermit's Rest, Lookout Studio, Phantom Ranch, Desert View Watchtower, and Bright Angel Lodge. Reward payable to first person who can produce this evidence by April 4, 2019, the 150th anniversary of Colter's birth. Praise for the research in False Architect: "A tour de force...impressive scholarship," R. Brooks Jeffery, Professor of Architecture and noted authority on Heritage Conservation, University of Arizona. Read more