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Shattering the Vase: The Razing of the Old Salt Lake Theatre
Shattering the Vase: The Razing of the Old Salt Lake Theatre
BY RONALD W. WALKER AND ALEXANDER M. STARR
Long long be my heart with much memories filled. Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled. You may break, you may shatter the vase, if you will. But the scent of roses will hang round it still.
Sir Thomas More
ON APRIL 15, 1928, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE RAN A STORY which, according to its own account, gave its readers "great surprise" and "shock." The Mormon church, the newspaper disclosed, planned to sell the venerable Salt Lake Theatre to the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company. Though the Tribune reported the sale before terms had been finalized, the story was accurate. Almost two weeks before, President Heber J. Grant had consented to dispose of the building with an adjoining piece of property for $200,000. In turn, the telephone company announced the construction of a new office building similar to its Denver headquarters. If a modern skyscraper was not sufficient inducement for the removal of the fading theatre building, the company softened the blow by suggesting the playhouse would continue for several seasons. Construction of the new building, a company spokesman suggested, probably lay several years in the future.
These events began something unusual. They began a preservationist controversy in Mormon country decades before the movement gained its later twentieth-century force. They also showed a different side to Mormonism. Outsiders often saw the church as monolithic and its members as lock-step compliant. But during the theatre uproar Mormons argued with Mormons, and some hotly questioned the decisions of President Grant, their revered "prophet, seer, and revelator."
The reason for these emotions lay with the theatre itself. From the beginning it had been a community expression, something like a cathedral of a medieval town. Brigham Young himself announced the project in February 1861 and pursued its completion as "designer and general dictator of the whole affair." At the time. Salt Lake City was a frontier outpost of 12,000 people. The telegraph had recently established communications with the wider world, but no transcontinental railroad existed to freight supplies or help with construction. Yet, before building a much-needed enlarged meeting hall or before completing the Salt Lake Temple — the building always envisioned as the city's centerpiece — the settlers erected the theatre, which when completed was easily the largest and most imposing structure in the territory.
It was a huge undertaking. The site, once adjoining a stream bed of one of City Creek's meandering branches, required careful excavation and expert placing of footings. For the latter, workmen secured and placed large sandstone slabs from Red Butte Canyon. To support the parquet and stage, teamsters shipped giant red pine beams from Big Cottonwood Canyon, twenty-five miles to the south. At ground level the walls derived their strength from four-foot-thick stonework encased on each side by foot-wide adobe bricking, which laborers in turn covered with plaster. In order to secure the necessary 385,000 bricks, additional workmen took clay from the benches above the city and mixed it with straw and gravel at the future site of the Denver and Rio Grande Depot. The resulting indentations were so large that for several years they afforded winter skating.
The brick makers, carpenters, lumbermen, masons, plasterers, stonecutters, teamsters, and common laborers were assisted by other men and women who often displayed frontier ingenuity. Faced with the scarcity of nails the Mormons scavenged iron from the burned and wrecked government wagons still lying on the Wyoming desert, casualties of the late Utah War. The roof showed equal enterprise. Eighty-five-foot spans, each composed of seven two-by-fourteen stringers, were tied together by handcrafted wooden pegs. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of these were required, which according to tradition were whittled by women in their evening hours after the completion of household chores. Former sailors, accustomed to the height of ships' masts, helped complete the upper levels of the building, working at the personal request of Brigham Young. Indeed, "nearly every family residing in Great Salt Lake City at the time," thought one historian, "was represented on the roster of workmen."
Some of the community's best talent was employed. Hiram B. Clawson represented Brigham Young and supervised day-to-day activity. William H. Folsom was the supervising architect, while the recently emigrated E. L. T. Harrison, a warm admirer of Drury Lane's elegant filigree, designed the galleries, ceiling, front boxes, and proscenium. George M. Ottinger, assisted by Henry Maiben and William Morris, painted scenery.
After less than a year and an estimated expenditure of $100,000 the theatre was sufficiently finished for a formal dedication. President Daniel H. Wells's prayer blessed at length each part of the structure (his wife Louisa, exhausted by his petition, wondered if he shouldn't have "left out some of the lath and plaster"). It also bore a Delphic quality: "O Lord, preserve forever this house pure and holy for the habitation of Thy people. . . . Suffer no evil or wicked influences to predominate or prevail within these walls; . . . rather than this, . . . let it utterly perish and crumble to atoms; let it be as though it had not been, an utter waste, each and every part returned to its natural element."
By modern standards the Salt Lake Theatre was not large. Its outward dimensions were 80 by 144 feet, rising 40 feet from the water table to the square of the building. Its capacity was estimated at 1,500. But at the time some wondered if Brigham had not overbuilt.
Certainly it appeared disproportionate to its sparse, pioneer. Great Basin landscape. Alfred Lambourne, later a distinguished Utah artist, remembered first seeing the "white oblong building" as he walked down the eastern slope as a newly arrived immigrant. "How calmly imposing it used to appear, how grandly massive it showed in the twilight, or when the moonlight was falling upon its white walls! "
In later years it would be ill served by accumulated clutter: a distracting marquee, obstructing telephone lines, and an iron grate stairway attached to its eastern wall. Initially, however, its exterior lines were chaste. Two simple Doric columns commanded the entrance which had an inviting space of thirty-two by twenty feet. The remainder of the facade was distinguished by simple lines and the chalky white plaster that seemed magical at nightfall. In contrast, the interior, particularly after a 1873 renovation, strove for elegance. It was fashioned in the style of a European opera house with a comfortable parquet and four ascending circles. Two boxes overlooked the sloping and unusually spacious stage. Further to the rear, the theatre had ample dressing, rehearsal, and storage rooms that at least one sophisticated traveler thought few American or European playhouses could equal.
As always, beauty lay with the beholder. One visitor found its appointments commonplace, the audience sparse and dreary, and the theatre's lamps inadequate. Others, however, enthusiastically spoke of its "beauty and size." William Hepworth Dixon, the gifted British intellectual and journalist, thought it a "model playhouse." Its gold and white interior conveyed "perfect light" and "scrupulous cleanliness of every part." In 1865 Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax claimed he "never saw any thing better in a Theatre." Too, Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican and like Colfax generally no admirer of the Saints, could scarcely restrain his praise:
Yet even at the playhouse's most happy moment there were problems on the horizon. The Saints wanted a legitimate and Christian theatre, not simply a place of pageant or where religious themes could be dramatized, but a playhouse of uplifting, serious, legitimate theatre, presented with the highest moral standards. "While striving to 'hold the mirror up to nature,' " asserted one of President Young's stage managers, "we have sought to draw a pall over that which was not calculated to benefit and elevate fallen humanity. " The tension and perhaps contradiction of that task—mirroring humanity while avoiding its unpleasant aspect—would haunt the theatre to its final moment.
By all accounts Brigham's theatre was "proper." The prophet argued that any of its thespians "should be prepared, if necessary, to preach a funeral sermon, or pray if he is called upon to do so; and I never want to see a woman perform . . . that is not filled with truth and virtue. " When Lucille Western created "the wildest sensations" by pasting a thin slice of raw beef to her face in an 1869 production
Bishop John Sheepshanks, visiting from his Norwich, England, rectory, verified the probity of the Mormon stage. At first he refused President Young's invitation to attend a production. "No, I dare say not, and with good reason," Young told his Anglican counterpart. "But if you come to our theatre you need not leave your religion at the door." Sheepshanks came, and he noted one of Young's methods of control: "The President, . . . did not like much noise and if the applause became loud and vigorous, his well-known face would be seen protruding from the curtain of his box and looking round, and lo! at once all was hushed." Sheepshanks left Salt Lake City impressed, wishing that "we could have recreation of the same sort in England."
The Mormons had never intended to use the building for theatrical programs only. The dress circle had been designed to allow the placing of a movable floor over the parquet seats, which permitted everything from children's parties to extravagant grand balls. "Forty Cotillions were on the floor at once," Elder Wilford Woodruff breathlessly noted after the theatre opened.
Before Young's death the theatre began to change. Apparently reacting to its increasingly secular tone, the church leader and his associates attended less regularly, and he refused to renew his usual order for forty season tickets. There were other signs. While formal balls might honor the Mormon Battalion and the pioneers, quite in keeping with the building's original exclusiveness, there were also state or military cotillions for the territory's officials and benefit dances for city firemen, the Deseret Hospital, and Jewish charity. The rising, non-Mormon and pluralistic spirit also colored some of its productions. Complained the Salt Lake Herald: "A lower style of entertainment, melodrama, juggling, and tumbling, [now] serve to fill the house. "
Reflecting the maturing of Utah, the theatre came to host such non-pioneer and non-theocratic things as lectures by George Francis Train, Oscar Wilde, and the phrenologist Dr. Orson Fowler; a seminar in shorthand technique; and even an exhibition of Japanese musclemen. It also became a site for rambunctious political activity quite in contrast to the sedate and united style of the pioneers' Peoples' party. "Forensic giants . . . have been heard in nomination of candidates, in denunciation of parties, in merry quip and sarcastic sally," it would later be said of the Democratic and Republican conventions held at the theatre.
The theatre's dramatic productions showed signs of cultural accommodation. At first, religiously oriented "home" or local stock companies dominated its stage, with occasional imported "stars" and stage technicians assisting. But the completion of the transcontinental railway placed Utah on the national circuit and reversed things. "Actors from the East were accepted as readily as plays from the East," observed a historian of Utah's early culture. "The East, in turn, had frequently received its plays from Europe. If there had been any chance of building a distinct type of actor and play in Utah, the actors on the way to California proved too much for the managers of the Salt Lake Theatre to resist."
There was scarcely a "star" of the American stage who did not make a Salt Lake Theatre appearance. Many names still bring recognition: Maude Adams; P. T. Barnum; the Barrymore family— Ethel, John, and Lionel; Sarah Bernhardt; Edwin Booth; Billie Burke; "Buffalo Bill" Cody; Fannie Davenport; John Drew; Eddie Foy; Charles and Daniel Frohman; Al Jolson; Liflian Russell; DeWitt Talmage; and scores of others. Judged from the perspective of entertaining and sometimes exacting theater, such performers brought the theatre its "golden age" of drama.
But the Mormon leaders were less interested in drama than in religious teaching, and they understandably responded coolly to the theatre's new tone. During his last years when Brigham attended less frequently, other church leaders followed suit. The play Adam and Eve, one General Authority typically judged, was "hardly a suitable piece [to] put upon the Salt Lake stage." Even the city's youth found themselves at times embarrassed. "I remember the awful shock it was to my feelings and all young Mormonism, when the first undressed show appeared on the Salt Lake stage," recalled a young theatergoer many years later. Timid by modern standards, the ascending hemlines and costume brevity shocked Victorian sensibility.
The secularizing trend continued in the twentieth century as the theatre became increasingly tied to the national theatrical circuit and consequently to New York booking agencies that virtually controlled attractions. The arrangement left little room for local standards and local control — but growing uneasiness by church leaders.
One of those most concerned was Elder Heber J. Grant. Growing up a block and a half from the theatre, he regarded the building almost like "the home where he was born." Rachel, his widowed mother, had worked there as a seamstress, while once during childhood he had filled a supernumerary role in Uncle Tom's Cabin. His zest for the place bordered on compulsion. While a teenager, in order to avoid paying twenty-five cents for a third circle ticket, money the family could ill afford, he had hauled a heavy five-gallon water can from a Social Hall alley well to refresh the "Gods of the Gallery." During the 1890s, as one of the city's rising businessmen, he had purchased a controlling interest of the theatre's stock and became its proprietor. His action probably saved the building, which had never been very profitable, from an early closing.
On becoming Mormonism's senior apostle and later its president, Grant found himself increasingly concerned about the theatre. On one hand, there was his continuing love for the old building and his belief that he should patronize the arts. These feelings, however, were balanced by religious and practical factors. "The general tendency ... is to make a heroine of a fallen woman," he complained of many of the theatre's programs. In his view there was a lack of "clean sweet plays with a good moral," but even when these were produced, he conceded they seldom drew. Still an inveterate theatregoer, Grant was driven from the theatre by many plays after the first act, with his guests in tow. "It is a great humiliation to me the class of shows that we have to submit to on account of our being under contract to . . . the booking agents in New York," he despaired.
Proper standards were not his only concern. The theatre never was much of a moneymaker. Before returning the building to church ownership at the turn of the century, he estimated his ten-year proprietorship had cost him between $30,000 and $40,000, the difference between the playhouse's small profits and the cost of carrying his loan on the property. The twentieth century made conditions even more precarious. Vaudeville, motion pictures, and the automobile were taking customers from the aisles. Church officials temporarily leased the building, but the new operators did no better, even during the generally prosperous World War I years.
Finally by 1921 it looked as if President Grant would have to close the theatre. While meeting expenses and taxes, it had not issued a dividend for years. Receipts turned sharply downward in April, the beginning of a recession that affected the Intermountain states throughout the 1920s. Struggling to pay its own bills, the church could in afford the theatre's rising overhead and capital expenses. National troupes were experiencing even higher transportation and labor costs. The aging theatre, in turn, required new seats, carpeting, roofing, the repair of the exterior, and an expensive ventilating system demanded by the city. By August 1921, faced with expenses estimated to exceed $26,000, President Grant wondered whether the playhouse should not at last be closed, especially if the city refused to waive its demands.
Rumors of a possible closure had circulated for many years. As often, there had been eloquent pleas in its behalf. "Does the place stand for nothing — does it represent no ideals?" lectured leading man Henry Mifler at an emotional 1922 curtain call. He continued, "This Theatre don't belong to you; it belongs to the nation, and it's your duty to preserve it. Remodel it, make it comfortable as you will; we do honor to it, not for the stone, adobes or mortar put into it, but because it represents ideals." His speech, "applauded to the echo," ended with an emotional rendering of "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot" by audience and actor alike.
Ethel Barrymore was another of the national actors testifying to the theatre's national constituency. She found the playhouse "beautiful, a very 'theater' theater," quaint with its English, sloping stage, which was one of two or three left in America. "I was afraid I was going to play in a new . . . [theater]," she told her charmed audience at the close of the second act of W. Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife. "I want to play here until I am 100 years old." There was reason for such sentiment. Confirming Daniel Wells's long-forgotten benediction, the building had "cemented" itself together into a comfortable ambience. Its close-built, horseshoe tiers provided unusual acoustics and a wonderful intimacy. But most of all, for people loving old things it had become a favored relic of another era. Only two, perhaps three, theaters in the nation were older, and none rivaled its rich pioneer traditions and history.
President Grant was not immune to such feeling, and ten months after almost closing the theatre, he remained uncertain. "There are no plans at present before the owners of the theatre as to its future," reported George D. Pyper, the theatre's long-time manager, "but I expect that by the end of the season something definite will be decided upon." While no announcement was issued, Variety, the New Yorkbased show business tabloid, reported a hopeful sign. "President Heber J. Grant of the Mormon Church has purchased additional stock in the historic old Salt Lake theatre," it informed its national audience. "It seems that the president . . . means business now when he says the theatre will stand, and buys stock to preserve it."
In contrast to his impetuosity in the early 1890s, when within a hurried forty-eight hour span he bought and saved the theatre with personal loans, President Grant's acts were now piecemeal and indecisive. He quietly approved minor renovation, including the deficit financed, $7,000 installation of red, plush chairs for the parquet. But his small personal stock purchases had nothing to do with a desire to solidify the church's already absolute control. "We are doing this," he explained to his diary, "because we want to maintain the theater as a kind of monument and feel that widows and poor people ought not to be asked to hold this stock, especially as we could.'"
There was another reason for his stock buying. He wished each of his grandchildren, when marrying, to have a token $100 theatre share. Having quietly decided to retain the building as a "monument," he wished his family to share the ideal. He instructed that the stock should remain in his family's hands unless the church itself decided to give up its control. As a further reflection of his mood he privately told the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, who strongly importuned that the theatre be retained, that he was no longer thinking of closing the building."
This of course was not the final word. Less than two years after deciding to keep the theatre, the on-again, off-again Grant once more reviewed his options. For all his support of the arts he was by no means a preservationist. Earlier he had allowed the razing of the Gardo House, Brigham Young's overbuilt Victorian mansion, and even the more historically significant Social Hall. Now with both the national theater trade and the local economy badly slumping, he wrung his hands over the theatre's balance sheet.'^^ By January 1928 dividends were no longer in question. The playhouse could not meet expenses and taxes. Six of the eleven season's productions had lost money. "It is a serious question whether we should not tear down the theater at the earliest possible date," Grant confided. "We cannot afford to go on having a loss of $100,000 capital and losing money in addition. "50
Unwilling to embroil the financially straitened church further. President Grant pursued two options. First, he tried to get Salt Lake City to take a twenty-year lease on the building. Unless revenues exceeded expenses no payment would be expected. The commissioners quietly rejected the proposal, leaving no record of their private and potentially sensitive decision. Grant's second idea was similar. Meeting with fellow General Authorities, he recommended the organization of a civic-minded foundation to control the theatre and absorb its losses: "I suggested that I was willing to contribute several thousand dollars and thought perhaps it would be a wise thing to start with the brethren." His motion, however, received stony silence. Not one General Authority offered to follow suit.
Earlier, actors like Henry Miller had offered to stage a $50,000 fundraising "dramatic festival" to save the theatre, but Miller was now dead and in President Grant's mind there seemed no further options. Finances were a problem, but the theatre had been carried through difficult times before. The larger problem, one suspects, lay with its moral tone, the difficulty of mixing religion and legitimate drama. Of late. Grant's protests over the theatre's programs had grown ever more strident. He left one performance apoplectic. "It is a disgrace to the Church to be controlling any house where such shows as the one we witnessed tonight are put on the boards," he complained. "I have about made up my mind that the thing to do ... is turn it into a picture show [movie theater] or sell it."
The former proposal could not have been serious. While managers had allowed some cinema, the opera house configuration of the interior made the experiment unsuccessful. It was the second option that Grant pursued. First, he confidentially conveyed his decision to some of Brigham Young's descendants. Most agreed to sustain their church leader.55 But Fanny Carrington Woodruff, president of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, was absolutely intractable. Her fury increased on learning that the church had disposed of the building. Without mentioning President Grant by name, an emotional DUP meeting soon after the announcement of the sale leveled '' sharp criticism" at "those who had engineered the deal" and issued a forceful statement:
"Controlling stockholder" referred to President Grant. But the DUP was not content with protesting words and veiled references. The organization announced its intention to repurchase the property from the telephone company and called on the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, the Utah Historical Society, and the Rotarians and Kiwanians to join its campaign. If the Salt Lake Theatre as theater were no longer feasible, at least the building could be maintained as a publicly endowed museum.
This petition brought a stunning announcement from the telephone company. Fearful of an entangling public controversy and perhaps for the first time now fully aware of the theatre's desperate finances, the new owners suddenly reversed their earlier assurances of continued productions and, citing the building's allegedly "unsafe condition," announced an almost immediate razing.
In reaction the DUP floated another idea. If the theatre could not be retained at its present location, perhaps it could be moved to another piece of property and given to Salt Lake City for civic and artistic purposes. Mayor John F. Bowman claimed to favor the proposal, though his fellow commissioners, whose votes were crucial, remained noticeably quiet. By early September, Woodruff and the DUP pushed the plan by engaging E. K. Pearson, a San Francisco moving contractor, to determine the project's feasibility. After an on-site inspection Pearson pronounced himself "amazed" by the structure's strength. As a result, he volunteered, if given the job, to guarantee under bond the successful removal of the building. Moving costs might run $50,000, with another $75,000 required for needed repairs and for the purchase of land.
With the immediate survival of the theatre at stake Utahns took sides and offered opinions. On one side were the self-proclaimed forces of "progress." "We want to be progressive and progressive in the right way," proclaimed one writer to the Salt Lake Tribune Forum: "Where . . . [the theatre stands is a good business corner, and the company that has bought it runs one of our most progressive, modern conveniences. We have a good many relics to make us remember the pioneers. What of our city? What more do we need?"
The "progressives" disparaged the old theatre building as an "eyesore," a "dirty old structure," and "a barn," and claimed little sympathy for the past. "I am one of those imperturbable individuals who would grind up Plymouth rock for gravel," declared one. "Let's get rid of the old Salt Lake theatre and every other ugly old structure which stands in the way of development just as soon as we can." Another thought Salt Lake City too beautiful to be allowed to sink under the weight of ruins and museums. Instead of placing scant resources in a fading building, the city needed an amphitheater for "bigger and better movies," rocks and asphalt for its streets, or perhaps a stadium where citizens could enjoy "the sunshine, open air and that wonderful game [of baseball] [now] nearly a century old."
Balancing the published letters supporting President Grant's decision, the Tribune ran others that pointedly questioned his leadership. Several complained about his money-mindedness. "Without a doubt, money is [now] our god," one protested. "True, [the theatre] ... is valuable property. So is the 'Old South Church' in the heart of Boston." C. N. Lund, a local preservationist, was particularly insistent, arguing that a restored building would have cultural and educational value. "There is a strange charm in old things — old books, old pictures, old buildings that have historic interest," he importuned. "The future will cover with praise the memory of the man who will move and restore this great landmark of the drama in the west."
Some criticism of President Grant was surprisingly direct, given the norms of deferential Mormon society. A string of women, "heartbroken" by the sale, confronted him in his office. He was particularly stung by repeated reports that his motives were narrowly and selfishly pecuniary. As a result. Grant slept fitfully and acted on occasion with obvious irritation. When one church member questioned the closure during a public meeting he angrily defended himself and his prerogatives. "It is annoying to me the conversations I have to engage in about the theatre and the letters that have come from people who give litde or no thought, to the matter," he told a friend. "After my losing over thirty thousand dollars, common courtesy would suggest those who know this not to criticize my action in finally selling the theatre."
From the beginning President Grant's influence had been pivotal. As the controversy continued its ebbs and flows during the summer, there was no possibility of saving the building without his approval. But at this point Grant was immovable. In his mind the public's failure to patronize its productions laid bare the cant of the preservationists' outcry. They had had their chance and had not responded. "Gratitude [and civic patriotism] is a lively sense of favors to come," he disparagingly paraphrased Victor Hugo. When Hugh B. Brown, the president of the Granite Stake, sought permission to remove the theatre to his jurisdiction. Grant weighed his request but finally refused. More decisive to the outcome of the controversy, he refused to encourage the blue-ribbon committee studying the possibility of relocating the theatre. Citing high costs and loss of historical integrity that such a move in his judgment would bring, Grant hoped the debate would soon die out.
The incident was symptomatic. The Ogden Standard-Examiner wondered what might have happened had "Independence hall in Philadelphia . . . been torn down when pressure for commercial building space became strong?" But none of the Salt Lake City papers followed suit, and city and state leaders were either quiet or ineffectual in support. Clearly most did not wish to challenge, at least publicly, their religious leader. By October the DUP, sensing the futility of further opposition but wishing a final gesture, documented their efforts to save the theatre and retired from the contest.
With the theatre's fate now determined, Utahns began paying their final respects. Some wished a memento, and although the building was still being used, tiles from the lobby steadily began to disappear. The theatre's custodian stopped one man, crosscut saw in hand, intent on taking a piece of the logging that supported the main floor. He explained he wished to make a pair of candlesticks. There were public as well as private gestures. In commemoration of past activity and as a part of their 1928 political campaign, the Republicans staged an old-fashioned rally at the theatre with Senator Reed Smoot delivering a stump speech. A few days later the Democrats, also relishing a final moment, responded to Smoot's sallies in kind.
A broader commemoration was held in the middle of October. With long queues in front of the box office, ticket priority went to oldtimers who had played a role in the playhouse's history, including one man who claimed to have ridden his horse from Draper, twenty miles distant, to attend the first dedication. It is like taking away a pillar— a prop to the stage," Sally Fisher, an old-time favorite actress, began the final program. The theatre's long-tenured orchestra conductor, George Careless, "bent with age, but Spartan in manner," received an ovation as he managed to walk the aisle and lead the orchestra. Fittingly, the audience sang a chorus of "Hard Times." But the bulk of the evening was given over to the second act of Robin Hood, staged by old-time favorite actors, and to the production of the third act oi La Traviata with Brigham Young's granddaughter, Emma Lucy Gates, in the lead. But the emotional highlight occurred when George D. Pyper, the theatre's manager of thirty years, bid the building and its crew adieu. "There were misty eyes," the Tribune said.
President Grant, who had secured sixteen tickets for the occasion, found one aspect of the occasion disturbing. Despite the fact that, in his view, he "had done more to maintain . . . [the theatre], five or ten times over, than any other living man," neither he nor the church received the slightest mention. Nothing was said about his youthful water-carrying days nor his long-time and money-losing ownership. Pyper later explained why. Many in the audience were so upset over the church's conduct that he feared the slightest provocation might bring embarrassing disorder.
There were some highly personal farewells to the structure. During the final commemorative program two hundred descendants of Hiram Clawson, the theatre's general building supervisor and later its theatrical manager, had themselves filmed trooping in and out of the building. Unfortunately, the film, which included panned shots of the interior, was later destroyed by fire. Phyllis Alley, a sixteenyear-old student at Salt Lake City's East High School, received permission to play a lonely recital in the building, using the violin her grandfather played during the theatre's opening performance sixty-six years before.
The theatre's very last moments were difficult for mildmanneredGeorge Pyper, who personified the dilemma facing many religiously loyal but theater-loving Mormons. The theatre had enwrapped and given meaning to much of his life, but as President Grant, his mentor and church leader, worked to close it, Pyper left no record of opposition, not even polite dissent. As the demolition progressed he slipped into the auditorium. The ornate mirrors encasing the proscenium already were gone. Many chairs were unbolted. Some were destined for a Twin Falls, Idaho, movie house; others, the old, red-plush seats that were almost a synonymous feature of the theatre, were earmarked for Salt Lake City's Fort Douglas Chapel. For a moment, "tired and oppressed," Pyper sank into his old seat near the box office for a moment of quiet revery. There he had for three decades watched and supervised productions. But the wrecker's hammer was insistent. He finally rose and left his playhouse for the last time.
Later he accompanied a Salt Lake Tribune reporter to observe the final scene. Nothing remained except a single wall that included his old office door. As the huge piece of masonry crashed in choking dust Pyper turned away with a matter-of-fact comment that concealed emotion, "Well, that's the last of my old theatre." In this, the theatre's last melodrama, others were less laconic. Tears welled in the eyes of the surrounding crowd. Someone using a heavy black crayon scrawled on the tall boards surrounding the demolition an angry and ill-tempered epitaph: "BUILT BY A PROPHET and TORN DOWN FOR PROFIT! "
The old structure proved an obdurate foe. "They don't build them that way now," said a marveling C. J. Ketchum who headed the wreckers. The large, red pine structural timbers appeared in "perfect" condition, while the building itself remained unusually tight, tied together in a "time-defying manner" with pegs and ubiquitous nails. Ketchum counted 120 nails in a single sixteen-foot, oneby-eight plank; some boards gave the appearance of being cut in two by the abundant nailing. Such workmanship, coupled with the building's bastion-like walls, made it as "solid as the day it was built" and in Ketchum's view capable of standing "for 66 more years." Faced with such an obstacle, wreckers required several more weeks to do their work than they had planned—the most challenging task, they claimed, of their career.
The telephone company's plans for the site continued to change. Instead of a promised park, the firm announced the area would be turned into a parking lot. Later this too was altered. A gas station fashioned in the form of a huge airplane was built. Except for the most dogged advocate of material progress, the structure could not have gratified anyone, least of all aesthetically. The telephone company's handsome Art Deco office building, presumably delayed by the depression, was not erected for another decade.
The playhouse was not forgotten. Six weeks after its razing. President Grant passed the old theatre corner and nostalgically looked at the empty lot. "One cannot regret that the old historical building could not have been preserved," he confided in a letter to his wife. Throughout the episode, his official capacity, which in his view required the protection of church finance and what he defined as public morals, took precedence over personal feeling. Nor was the passion of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers spent. In 1962, one hundred years after the founding of the Salt Lake Theatre, the organization dedicated their own national headquarters and museum, a buff-colored building fronted by two Grecian Doric columns, a replica of the old pioneer house of drama. Its theatre memorabilia included an early curtain, some original seats, and even a collection of the playhouse's costumes.
There were occasional observances at the old site. In 1940 church officials led by President Grant presided over a program of music and excerpts from the original 1862 services. A commemorative plaque was then dedicated and placed in the telephone building wall. Twenty-two years later another service followed. Marking their own 100th anniversary, a Utah-German theater group decorated the plaque with flowers. "It's a pity the old theater isn't there," one member was overheard to say, "We from Germany can never understand how you can do away with such things in America."
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