In This Issue

With this issue of the Utah Historical Quarterly we celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the Denver and Rio Grande Depot— home of the Utah State Historical Society for the last thirty years. As we commemorate the centennial of our beloved D&RG Depot in the first two articles in this issue, we also acknowledge the heritage of all of Utah’s historic buildings with articles on three other buildings: the Provo Union Depot, Kearns-St. Ann’s Orphanage in Salt Lake City, and the Wasatch Stake Tabernacle in Heber City.

Three of the four buildings continue to be integral and valued assets to their respective communities although not for the same use as when constructed. One, sadly, was quietly demolished in 1986 without recognition of its potential to help meet the transportation needs of the twenty-first century.

When the first trains departed from the new Denver and Rio Grande Depot in mid- August 1910, they helped usher in a new phase in Utah’s development and demonstrated Salt Lake City’s emergence as a progressive, modern American city. Indeed, the construction of one new train station was cause for pride in any community—but Salt Lake City could now boast two magnificent stations with the completion the previous year of the Union Pacific Station at the west end of South Temple Street three blocks north and one block east of the D&RG Station. Our first article recalls the individuals involved in making the depot a reality, the challenges they faced, the competition between the Denver and Rio Grande and Union Pacific railroads, and how the building has served the community during the last one hundred years. Our second article, a companion to the first, is a photographic essay using images from the Utah State Historical Society collection. The twenty photographs illustrate the construction, use, and magnificence of the Denver and Rio Grande Depot.

Less than five months after the first trains left the newly completed Salt Lake City Denver and Rio Grande Depot, forty-five miles to the south in Utah Valley, the first trains left the newly completed Provo Union Station on January 2, 1911. Our third article in this issue examines the intense and bitter battle between Provo east and west side residents over the location of the new station.

While the construction of new railroad stations in Salt Lake City and Provo demonstrated Utah’s emergence as an urban society, another building, the Kearns-St. Ann’s Orphanage completed in 1900 at Twenty-first South and Fifth East in Salt Lake City, reminds us that one consequence of urbanization was the need for community institutions to care for children. Our fourth article demonstrates how this was accomplished in Salt Lake City by the Sisters of the Holy Cross at the Kearns-St. Ann’s Orphanage from 1891 until 1953.Two years later, in 1955, St. Ann’s School opened in the former orphanage building. During the 1990s the building underwent a ten-year renovation and continues to function today as a school for preschool through the eighth grade.

In 1966 the United States Congress passed the landmark National Historic Preservation Act, expanding the National Register of Historic Places and providing a federal/state partnership for the nation’s historic preservation program and the establishment of state historic preservation offices in each of the fifty states. One event that helped pave the way for the establishment of Utah’s Historic Preservation Office, the Utah Heritage Foundation, and an invigorated historic preservation awareness in Utah was the 1964-1965 fight to prevent the demolition of the historic Wasatch Stake Tabernacle constructed in 1889. That struggle and the story of the building’s subsequent preservation and adaptation is the concluding article in our 2010 Summer issue.

As future historians access the accomplishments and shortcomings of the last decades of the twentieth century, surely one of the positive aspects that should be recognized and praised is the emergence of a preservation ethic. That commitment has helped halt the destruction of many of the state’s historic buildings and homes while giving them new life through restoration and adaptive renovation. As a consequence, many Utah historic buildings which might have been destroyed have been preserved and utilized for new purposes by which they will continue to serve, educate, and inspire present and future generations.

IN THIS ISSUE: Construction workers on the northwest corner of the Salt Lake City Denver and Rio Grande Depot. UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.