Talk:Mary Colter

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Controversy

Many of Colter's claims of her role as an architect are disputed. https://www.route66news.com/2018/05/23/mary-colter-fabricate-architect-role/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.131.206.135 (talk) 06:53, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Controversy

I added this to the end of her "Career" section:

According to the Arizona Historical Society, some people think Colter was a fraud.

This was reverted by admin @Acroterion: with the reason, "Rv, "some people" is a bit vague, please cite scholarship rather than a lecture on YouTube)".

Their reversion ignores that I also cited the Society's web page, and I am citing the Society directly and attributing the statement to them. They literally host lectures on the topic. That some consider Colter a fraud is something that anyone who discusses her needs to be aware of. This is, in fact, a thing.

I am of the opinion that a Wikipedia article should serve as a good briefing on the topic. If someone were to now, go to this article in order to bring them up to speed on her and her work and how it is perceived, they would be left completely unprepared and completely unknowing that some people consider her a fraud. They would be left blindsided and humiliated in any question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to intelligently discusses her needs to be aware that this issue is being discussed, or else they will sorely uneducated about the topic; a genuine and avoidable disservice to our readers. Le Marteau (talk) 02:00, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

References

You will need more than a single source to assert that Colter was a "fraud", especially using that specific term. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and there's considerable scholarship concerning Colter - this is something new and requires broader referencing than a single lecture and less sensational wording. There are lots of things that are "a thing" that somebody asserts - see WP:FRINGE, you will need to make a case for inclusion on the basis of due weight in academic research. By the way, my title of admin is immaterial here - I am acting as an ordinary editor who expects better referencing for a controversial claim before it's included. See the note concerning Fred Shaw above - it seems to be in circulation, but it needs better substantiation in scholarship.Acroterion (talk) 02:14, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

I am NOT asserting she was a fraud. I am simply citing as simple fact about which the Historical Society hosts lectures... that her work is disputed. Anyone who wants to talk about her needs to know that her work is disputed, and the Society confirms that it is disputed. "Academic research" is not needed to cite the fact that her work is disputed. It is not an "Extraordinary claim"... it is a simple and bare fact which you can go to their website and verify. Le Marteau (talk) 02:24, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Of course academic research is required, the article must be based on that, not on poorly attributed rumor, no matter where the lecture was held. And you used the word "fraud" quite plainly, padding it with "some people." None of that is how we approach disputed, novel or fringe assertions. As for "going to the AHS website," all it does is state that there was an event, and you have a virtual presentation by somebody. Thje AHS doesn't appear to be the one making the assertion. Acroterion (talk) 02:29, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

I did not "pad" a goddamned thing! The Society's website says, Some people believe that celebrated architect and designer Mary Jane Colter (1869-1958) was a fraud. I think I'm due for an apology, but I'll not hold my breath. It is clear you do not want our readers to know there is a controversy, and that's fine. I'm saying it does our readers a disservice to not say so, and leaves our readers ignorant. Le Marteau (talk) 02:41, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

And you seem to be unable to comprehend that I am citing basic fact, which makes me believe further interaction with you will be fruitless. She IS controversial. I am NOT making a case that she IS a fraud... I am simply saying that our article needs to say that some people take issue with the legitimacy of her claims, which is a bare fact. Le Marteau (talk) 02:47, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

People believe all sorts of things, but Wikipedia is not obligated to repeat their assertions simply because somebody made them. You appear to think that I am unalterably opposed to mention. That is not the case, but I expect it to be appropriately researched and cited, and in due measure with respect to general scholarship. This is not an emergency, and I will look into the issue further. In the meantime, we aren't obligated to breathlessly repeat the word "fraud" without the consensus and sourcing expected for every Wikipedia article. Stop assuming bad faith. Acroterion (talk) 02:57, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

I am not assuming bad faith. I have no doubt you are acting in what you think is the best interests of the encyclopedia. I am questioning your competence. Le Marteau (talk) 03:13, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

If the source just says "some people" then we can ignore it as unimportant. All I'm seeing is an online event using clickbait tactics to create interest. Nothing solid. Binksternet (talk) 03:20, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Here is the Grand Canyon Historical Society's magazine https://grandcanyonhistory.org/uploads/3/4/4/2/34422134/gchs_ol_pio_30-2.pdf which has an article by Fred Shaw where he claims, Incontrovertible evidence disproves the decades-old fallacy that Colter designed Hopi House, and the time has come to set the record traight. Ethics dictate that the National Park Service and Xanterra cease attributing Hopi House to her, and properly credit its genuine creators.". So now we have not only the Arizona Historical society, but the Grand Canyon Historical Society's people discussing the issue and publishing it their magazine. That two historical societys are hosting seminars and publishing it their magazen should be enough to support one sentence saying people question her career history. The word "fraud" is probably too harsh, but the article deserves a sentence saying that some people have issues with her history, because that is simply a basic fact. Le Marteau (talk) 08:09, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for striking through your personal attack above. As I said, I'll look into this, and as Binksternet says, we don't just repeat clickbait. Hopi House's provenance has always been a little unclear at the best of times, so I'll look into this and see if there's a way to look at this that's in compliance with WP:GEVAL. Acroterion (talk) 14:05, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

The legacy of Colter is one of designing many of the most notable Fred Harvey buildings, and of creating for the Grand Canyon a natural architecture philosophy, blending the buildings artfully into their surroundings. Her Desert View Watchtower is enough to cement her reputation. Wikipedia is not going to call her a fraud when nobody challenges these achievements. What we should do with the new challenges to her involvement in Hopi House is specify what exactly she is accused of, and who made the accusation. To that end, we have Fred Shaw's research. Shaw is a banker in the Chicago area, and an architecture buff involved in historical preservation. Shaw has been looking at digital scans of archival documents unavailable to earlier Colter biographers. Shaw says Colter decorated the interior of Hopi House with her sister over her Christmas break in December 1904, but that the building was designed first by Santa Fe's in-house architect William H. Mohr who conceived the plan and made drawings, followed by Charles Whittlesey who fleshed out Mohr's plan and is the architect of record. Construction was supervised by Hopi expert ethnologist Reverend Heinrich Richert Voth of Kansas. Shaw shows that the first plans by Mohr are dated June 1901, and construction was underway by October 1904. Much of it was completed by mid-December when the Colter sisters arrived to decorate the interior, encountering the building for the first time. Aside from proving Hopi House was designed by others, Shaw finds that Colter exaggerated her schooling in various ways, saying she graduated high school at age 14 when she was listed at her school's commencement at age 19. She said she took four years of art school in San Francisco when the school's program was only three years long. She said she studied interior design at the school, but its records show the first such class to have started decades later. She said she apprenticed with a San Francisco architect but never names him. Otherwise, Shaw doesn't challenge the Desert View Tower (as far as I can tell). Shaw does say that Colter exaggerated her involvement with various architectural projects by posing for photos in front of them, and by signing her initials post hoc to architectural drawings. Shaw makes his case strongly, but he does not balance his attack with verifiable achievements by Colter. His book is intentionally revisionist, seeking to change the historical record. Here on Wikipedia we should balance his view with that of other scholars, emphasizing Colter's honest achievements along with noting her self-promotion and exaggeration. Binksternet (talk) 15:57, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

As I noted at the beginning of this thread, this appeared to go back to Fred Shaw. Shaw makes a pretty good argument, but tends toward a sensationalist approach, insofar as sensationalism is possible in the somnolent area of architectural history. I'm going to poke around some more, but I could argue that some concise and un-shrill mention could be included, attributed to Shaw. I don't see Shaw's assertions as warranting more than brief mention, and I note that whatever Shaw has asserted, those assertions haven't been picked up by the NPS [1] [2]. Until reliable scholarly sources other than Shaw have evaluated and commented upon or accepted Shaw's research, due weight requires that any mention be brief and narrowly attributed.

Attribution of anything in architecture to a single person has always been problematic. No project of any size is designed by one person, but those individuals are often poorly documented. There are always multiple people involved, often dozens, and architectural scholarship is typically weak about who did what. Acroterion (talk) 16:32, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your considered opinion. I appreciate it. My only goal is to preserve the reputation of the encyclopedia, and using incendiary terms such as "fraud" would centainly diminish the work and the article. I want to see Wikipedia be the only place someone needs to go to get up to speed on a person or an issue... how her work is perceived and discussed is important and this article as it reads would leave a person woefully uneducated about how she is being discussed by people with an interest in the history of architecture and the area. Thanks again. Le Marteau (talk) 16:54, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

From doing a deep dive into the community and their writings, one thing that seems in common is the Shaw book. It seems to form the basis of the lectures of various historical societies. What if we just said, "In 2018 a self-published e-book called False Architect: The Mary Colter Hoax alleged Coulter blah blah blah and became the subject of discussion in historical communities" or something along those lines. Of course, what the "blah blah blah" should read is key, but I think that would be a good way to frame the isuse. And I'm not sure we even need to give actual examples of Shaw's allegations. Just letting our readers know that there is controversy, it is being discussed, and let the reader decide if they want to go down that rabbit hole. Le Marteau (talk) 17:57, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

I would do more than that. Certainly we should tell the reader that Fred Shaw blah blah, but I would also remove Hopi House from the infobox, and remove the exterior photo of Hopi House. I would tell the reader that she decorated the interior of Hopi House, and that she has been mistakenly credited with more than that. Hopi House is Shaw's big revelation, everything else being small potatoes. He could have published his findings in a respectful manner, not so inflammatory. I guess his strategy was to make waves and gain notice. Binksternet (talk) 06:28, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, it looks like I'm going to have to buy the Shaw book, because this has all the makings of a long one. Amazon has a very generous preview of about a hundred pages, establishing to me the quality of his work, and leads me to understand why historical societies treat it with respect, even though the guy is out of his realm. Thank you for your footwork. Le Marteau (talk) 07:46, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

And I'm not sure Hopi House was Shaw's only big revelation. He's basically saying she was not an architect at all, on any job. Changing the infobox on Hopi House will, of course, be a rather tall order given the longstanding consensus in biographies that it was her work, but something needs to be mentioned of the controversy at the least. Le Marteau (talk) 09:01, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Controversy revisited

Now we have Stanley Turkel, another historian who addresses the Colter controversy and is on the lecture circuit. Turkel, like the Arizona Historical Society, gives talks to people interested in history, and gives talks about Colter. And like the talks hosted by the Arizona Historical Society, the controversy stoked by Fred Shaw is on the agenda.

https://www.historichotels.org/us/hotels-resorts/phantom-ranch/history.php

Turkel is a hotel consultant and has a love of the hotel industry. He's written several seemingly good (AFAICT all self-published) books on hotel history, and is a name in the hotel and hotel history community.

I like how he handles the issue in his book "Great American Hotel Architects: Volume 1". He goes into many examples Colter's work, describing them unquestionably and admiringly as hers, and only after that gives a couple paragraphs to the Fred Shaw issue, including an excerpt of an interview of the owner of the La Posada hotel in Winslow. Interesting quote, which illustrates that this is indeed a “thing”. Turkel quotes the owner of La Posada as saying, “All of us in the Harvey world are quite upset about the book. Shaw is clearly a misogynist. The attributions of Colter’s works to Curtis and others is preposterous, and obviously discounted by the many including Harvey family with direct knowledge of Colter and the buildings. We have collectively decided it best to ignore these self-published rantings and not give Shaw a podium for his hatred."

Say one of our readers is planning to attend a Colter lecture, and wants to go prepared. If anyone were to come to our article to come up to speed on how her work is being discussed and perceived in the community, they would be left sorely and embarrassingly uninformed. I consider that encyclopedic malpractice. I have tried to add mention of the controversy previously... it was shot down. I am re-visiting it now.

For due weight, and so we don't completely botch our mission as an encyclopedia which is to inform, we need a couple sentences. This is a reputation issue for the encyclopedia... we should not require our readers to go elsewhere in order to be assured of receiving balanced, high-level coverage of controversial issues, which is the case now, here.

I propose:

Controversy

"In 2018, Fred Shaw self-published "False Architect: The Mary Colter Hoax" where he claimed Colter was not a trained architect, and fraudulently took credit for the designs of others. Addressing Shaw's claims, owner of the La Posada hotel (attributed to Colter) said in 2018, "All of us in the Harvey world are quite upset about the book. Shaw is clearly a misogynist. The attributions of Colter’s works to Curtis and others is preposterous, and obviously discounted by the many including Harvey family with direct knowledge of Colter and the buildings. We have collectively decided it best to ignore these self-published rantings and not give Shaw a podium for his hatred." Le Marteau (talk) 10:25, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

References

I think you're on the right track, but I'm not sure I would place one person's accusation of misogyny into the article in that way. I don't like to make things like that anodyne, but I would want to see a larger cross-section of opinion, bearing in mind of course that serious Colter scholarship probably amounts to about a dozen people,and we seem to be dealing with dueling self-published research. I have the BLP policy in mind too w/r/t Shaw. Thank you for doing all this investigation, and I think we can implement some form of this into the article with a little more work. Acroterion (talk) 12:12, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

I just would like to see Wikipedia gain a reputation as offering "one-stop shopping" for getting up to speed on things, without readers assuming they need to go elsewhere if a thing is in any way controversial in order to receive balanced coverage. That may be impossible in this situation, I'm not sure, but in borderline cases like this, I have to come down on the side which minimizes risk to Wikipedia's reputation. Thank you for your consideration. Le Marteau (talk) 15:43, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Of course Mary Colter did not design all those buildings, she was an interior decorator. Fred Shaw does have all the references proving this but I suspected this long before he did. I've stayed in La Posada and they have several blueprints on the walls, none with the name Colter on it. Mary Colter would have needed an architecture degree and then do an internship, and there is zero evidence that either of those are true. Architects are not just designers, they have to make sure that buildings don't fall down. Also, Colter worked for Fred Harvey. Fred Harvey did not build those buildings, the railroad did. Fred Harvey just decorated the interior and ran the businesses. The railroad owned the land and the buildings. That's why it was the railroad that tore down the Alvarado when everyone else wanted to save it. That's why the railroad converted La Posada into offices, gutting most of the interior to do so. Fred Shaw shows that all those references people use for Colter are secondary, and all point back to a "resume" that she created long after she retired and all the real architects were dead (and robbed of the credit they're due). The post above cites a reference that proves all this but what's the point of the reference if no one reads it? HughNo (talk) 23:50, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

As I said,Shaw's assertions need substantiation in scholarship. Bring a concordance of reliable sources. Colter practiced in a time when the title "architect" was barely regulated, had a design degree, and did internship. Speaking as a licensed principal architect in a 40-person firm, it's disturbing to see apparent contempt for interior designers and the unlicensed people who do much of the work for which architects are credited, and an architect's license doesn't magically confer design talent or preclude design authorship. Acroterion (talk) 00:49, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

As it says on Amazon, the book is "Supported by over 200 pages of citations and a 100+ page bibliography". The book itself is over 1,000 pages long. Do you feel that this is insufficient? Why do you consider his citations to be unreliable sources? I have read the book and it confirmed what I suspected, that an interior designer who worked for the Fred Harvey company was not also an architect who worked for the Santa Fe Railway at the same time. You also claim that she did have an internship. Can you tell us when and where, and why she did not continue working for that firm? The Fred Shaw book is able to name many of the architects that designed the buildings that Colter (much later) laid claim to (while she was also doing interior decorating, including designing ashtrays). HughNo (talk) 07:34, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

"As it says on Amazon" is not a basis for scholarship, especially when discussing a self-published-and-promoted book. Shaw may indeed have a point, but unless it has support in academic scholarship it cannot be mentioned as more than a dissent in passing as discussed above. As for an internship, she worked for an architect in San Francisco for some period of time, in an era where such arrangements were not formalized; the article says she did with a reference. Architects don't always view the design of interiors or furnishings as beneath them as you seem to assert - Wright did a lot of that. And being the architect of record does not necessarily mean that the architect is the author of a given design, only its technical execution. Bring a consensus of reliable sources and scholarship, or at least find a couple of mentions of Shaw in scholarship, rather than picking on interior "decorators." Acroterion (talk) 14:20, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

OK, so you haven't read the Shaw book and so have not checked his references and are waiting for someone else to do this for you. I understand that now. And I was never picking on interior decorators - rather I was noting that it's a demanding job that leaves no time to also design buildings, another demanding job. HughNo (talk) 17:27, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

No, I have not read the Shaw book, but I've read his lecture summaries. If you have references in reliable sources that support his assertions, it's up to you to produce them per WP:ONUS. That is how we separate fringe views from mainstream. As I've mentioned at the beginning of this thread, I think it's reasonable to state something to the effect that "according to researcher Fred Shaw, Colter was not the author of the overall designs for many of her projects, and was primarily concerned with interior design." We can't give more weight to that and stay within the sourcing and verifiability policies without something more than a self-published book and no support in reliably-sourced scholarship. Acroterion (talk) 18:05, 3 December 2024 (UTC)