House of mirrors (Mary Colter and La Posada Hotel, Winslow AZ)

Arriving

When you walk into a place that is really loved, it's often evident from the very first moment. La Posada at Winslow is such a place.

Desert View Watchtower,
designed M J Colter 1932

This fascinating hotel was first the masterwork of genius architect Mary Colter, whose work is well worth seeking out if you're in the southwest. In fact, go here if you can. (I initially encountered it at Hopi House, a 1905 purpose-built arts and graft gallery at Grand Canyon south rim.)

Colter had a broad knowledge of and passion for indigenous southwestern culture and architecture, and she used this to design spaces with an extraordinary sense of place and story. In many ways she is the Anglo architect of the American southwest. Get a taste of her work from this Pinterest board.  

Sculpture over ballroom fireplace

Colter's structures fit into the landscape like they've been there centuries (a very deliberate effect), and components were in some cases even artificially aged or distressed to achieve the effect. This mistress of wabi-sabi took an enormous amount of trouble over the smallest details - having imagined a backstory for the property in question, she let this inform her design and selection not only of architectural elements but also decor.  

Now La Posada is not just hers, but also reflects the taste, passion, and labours of its current owner, with an art museum and an abundance of artworks of all kinds throughout. A massive upstairs salon, once a row of hotel rooms, houses many works of Tina Mion. The ballroom is home to a huge painting/installation that combines artefacts of the hotel's past with a massive canvas.

Lobby of La Posada. Flickr, Daniel Lutzick

There are many signs of the hotel's earlier incarnation and restoration - photographs, documentaries, artefacts. This new angle supplements Colter's original imaginary story of a monied and landed Spanish family come upon hard times, one of the founding myths of La Posada (along with the Indian Country tourist West of Fred Harvey's railroad service empire).

And to me, this is the biggest change, even more than the new wall openings, furnishings, curation, or re-purposing of spaces, from what we can see of the first version in its carcass, forensic traces, and limited remnants.

The old photographs seem to show much more white space (the greyscale might easily fool me though). Some walls were left bare or nearly so. Furniture was comparatively sparse and hard. But now I see a kind of reflectiveness, a multi-layered self-consciousness of what has gone before both here and elsewhere, what was imagined before, what was changed, what was preserved, and how to fund all of this.

On the one hand it is hugely resonant and visually rich and really interesting, inspiring, humbling - even intimidating. (Also, nice squashy chairs. And you can buy bits of it to take home. Cool!)

On reflection, it also reminds me just a tiny bit (the merest sliver) of the climactic scene in Witches Abroad - to find yourself in a hall of mirrors ... you have to look down.

looking down and also up. East Wing stairs at La Posada