By KATHY McKIMME
Antique Week Correspondent

It’s impossible to separate Fred Harvey, America’s first restaurant and hotel chain operator, from the Santa Fe Railway. They were yin and yang since their association began with a handshake in 1876.

The Santa Fe’s vision was to beat its competition in laying rail through the Southwest, roughly along the path of the Old Santa Fe Trail.
Fred Harvey wanted to prove that the best in restaurant food and service was possible far outside the major metropolises. In the first half of their 90-some year stint together, they lured tourists to the Southwest from all over the world.

Harvey arrived in New York from England in 1853 as a teenager. With later moves to St. Louis and Leavenworth, Kan., he honed his skills with restaurants and railroads. When he made his first deal with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe to take over its Topeka lunchroom, he was already a successful sales agent for other railroads and operated three eating houses with a partner. The AT&SF’s expansion led him to an exclusive arrangement with them, and his own expansion resulted in moving his headquarters to a more strategically located Kansas City, Mo.

The company’s name was the same as the man’s, just Fred Harvey. So when the man died in 1901, leaving son Ford Harvey at the helm, the founder and the mystique lived on with the public. Growth exploded under Ford.

In Appetite for America, How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the West, Bantam Books, 2010, author Stephen Fried says that at its peak Fred Harvey operated 65 restaurants and lunch counters, 60 dining cars and a dozen hotels. In almost every case, the company operated facilities built and owned by the railroad. Fred Harvey also built a publishing company and operated a variety of shops (toys, pharmacy, tobacco, bookstores) in major union stations – the first indoor shopping malls. 
Fred Harvey and the Santa Fe had many ups and downs in their relationship, and suffered through panics, the Depression, and two wars. Many of the Harvey Houses closed in the 1930s, and more were shuttered after World War II. Automobile travel on Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles was now the norm. In a last gasp move to highways from railways, Fred Harvey opened five Oasis eateries built over the Illinois Tollway in 1959, which were taken over by Howard Johnson in the 1970s.

In 1954, it acquired the Grand Canyon hotels from a broke Santa Fe Railway, and in 1968 what was left of the company was acquired by Amfac, now Xanterra Parks & Resorts.

Harvey Girls

With his English accent, Van Dyke beard, and gracious manners, Fred Harvey set the tone for the kind of polished eating establishment he ran.
Of course the food would be good, but the service would be impeccable too, with a staff of young, well-trained waitresses in clean crisp uniforms, called Harvey Girls. Ads were placed in Eastern newspapers for women of good character from 18 to 30 who would sign up for six-month (or one-year, accounts vary) stints without marrying and would follow strict rules. Some 100,000 Harvey Girls served from 1883 to 1943, many of them eventually marrying and helping settle and populate the Southwest.

When the train whistle blew, Harvey House workers sprung into action and the Harvey Girls were at their places to welcome travelers. Speed was essential, since passengers typically had only 30 minutes at a stop.

Several books have been written about the Harvey Girls, including The Harvey Girls: Women Who Opened the West, by Lesley Poling-Kempes, Da Capo Press, 1989, for which the author traveled extensively to interview former Harvey Girls.

A few were reluctant to have their names used, even after all these years, because friends and family were not aware of their backgrounds as waitresses.
Poling-Kempes writes: “Harvey Girls were among the most upwardly mobile women in the American West, crossing social boundaries in their daily routines, playing the roles of mother and sister to travelers rich and poor, famous and infamous.”

Their nationwide recognition, although glamorized, came after their run was over when Judy Garland starred in The Harvey Girls in 1946, based on a best-selling book. The film won an Academy Award for Best Original Song, “On The Atchison, Topeka and The Santa Fe.”

Promoting Indian art

In 1902, Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, an architect, interior designer and high school teacher from Minnesota, was hired by Fred Harvey to transform a small building between the Santa Fe train station and the new Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque, into the Indian Building. The Harvey family wanted to make it into a museum displaying top-quality Indian art and artifacts assembled by Herman Schweizer, a longtime Harvey employee. It was also a sales room.

Schweizer had become an expert, collecting only the best examples for himself and the company, helping preserve Indian art. He inspired other collectors, including William Randolph Hearst, whose Navajo textile collection was donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History in the 1940s. Thousands of pieces from the Fred Harvey collection were donated to the Heard Museum in Phoenix.

Colter set up work areas in the Indian Building so visitors could see hired Indian artisans at work, making the setting look authentic, even to adding dirt on the concrete floor.   Like the Harvey girls, they sprang into action when the train whistle wailed. A large loom was set up for Navajo weaver Elle of Ganado, who made a special blanket welcoming President Theodore Roosevelt on his trip through the Southwest in 1903. Navajo weavers were encouraged to begin using heavier wool to transform their traditional blanket weavings into rugs.  Pottery, jewelry and baskets were also available.

Schweizer had been buying Indian-made items at trading posts for Harvey establishments for years in the Gallup, N.M., area, as well as commissioning Indian jewelry to sell throughout the Harvey system.  The Navajo first learned to work with silver around the time of the Civil War, making jewelry from silver coins.

The resulting jewelry was heavy with little design and was wearable wealth for the Indian. Many sources credit (or disparage) the Harvey company with popularizing the use of sheet silver to make lighter-weight jewelry expressly for tourists, as well as the use of precut and polished turquoise.

Diners at Harvey Houses could pick up an Indian bracelet along with a newspaper or a cigar at the checkout.

Colter was later hired on full time at Fred Harvey and is responsible for several important designs, including the Hopi House built in 1905 across from the El Tovar Hotel at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim where Hopi Indians lived and made their crafts.

Fred Harvey collectibles

Postcards are the most available of the Fred Harvey collectibles today, and many of the same images were used in its own books, in advertisements and on playing cards.  There were postcards from each of the locations, sometimes many different ones, some of buildings, Indians, inside the restaurants and shops, and countless images of the beautiful Southwest scenery.