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Studying the Unstudied: Utah Drawings from the Western Regional Architecture Program Collection, University of Utah, 1982-2016
Meng “Matrix” Li, Katja Lund, and Kate Hovanes recording a miner’s workshop/garage in Park City for the Vernacular Architecture Forum conference held in Salt Lake City in June 2017.
Studying the Unstudied: Utah drawings from the western regional architecture program collection, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH, 1982-2016
BY THOMAS CARTER
They say timing is everything, and certainly this is the case with my career in architectural history. I was finishing my graduate studies at Indiana University’s Folklore Institute just as the first wave of federal historic preservation funding hit during the mid-1970s. 1 A good deal of the money was directed toward identifying existing resources, since most state historic preservation office (SHPO) staff members had little or no idea what they had in the way of buildings, significant or otherwise. Surveyors were needed, and, because the demand was great, even folklorists could get hired. I got a summer job surveying the old buildings of Bloomington, Indiana, and found that both in terms of temperament and skills, the work suited me well. 2
It may seem an odd fit, folklore and architectural survey, but again there is the timing thing—the meeting of a particular need at a particular point in time. SHPO surveys were intended to be comprehensive. That is, they had to include all the buildings in any given area, not just a special few judged to be superior in design and pedigree. Architectural historians had studied this latter group—the elite or high style segment of the landscape—but had largely ignored the more commonplace vernacular buildings that constituted the bulk of what had to be surveyed. To be honest, at the time no one really knew much about vernacular architecture beyond the fact that there was a lot of it, and it wasn’t covered in any of the existing architectural histories and stylistic guidebooks. Where did these buildings come from? What would we call them? How would we judge their historical significance? Such questions might have put off those focusing on matters of taste and connoisseurship, but for folklorists it was business as usual. We were used to studying the unstudied. 3
Figure 2. Survey notes for Spring City, Sanpete County, summer 1978.
By its very nature, folk architecture lay outside the normal reach of architectural historians. It was common (architectural historians were looking for the uncommon); it followed customary rules of design (they valued innovation); and it was generally associated with the lower classes (rather than the wealthy and urbane clientele they preferred). So it was left to others, first local historians and later, as the discipline slowly took shape and professionalized, folklorists. The imperative driving much early folklore research was the need to record the last vestiges of a vanishing preindustrial rural culture, and this meant doing fieldwork: going out into various communities with notebooks, cameras, tape recorders, and tape measures to document everything from legends to ballads to buildings. Folklorists were collectors, and this commitment to gathering in situ data was still very much alive when I arrived on the scene during the early 1970s. 4
Another thing making folklorists good preservation surveyors was our comfort with formal analysis. Architectural historians mostly concerned themselves with style, which they defined as the sum of the overall appearance of a building. Folklorists, however, came at it differently, focusing on building type. This emphasis on typology resulted from the simple fact that most folk buildings lacked the design complexity found in academic architecture and so it was natural to concentrate on more elemental and enduring features like floor plans and construction technologies rather than external ornamentation. Instead of talking about the Greek or Shingle styles, for instance, we dealt with hall-parlor and side-passage houses. And it was this affinity for building types and typological classification that proved useful in the new statewide surveys since the majority of buildings, being so plain, did not fit easily into the available stylistic categories. We had to find other ways of classifying them, and falling back on features like plans provided an answer. 5
Shifting from folk architecture to the more expansive vernacular proved easy enough. Folk refers not so much to a specific kind of building as it does the process of design and construction. Folk buildings are those that follow traditional plans, where the know-how is passed on orally or through observation rather than by written sources. Vernacular as a concept is much the same, referring to ordinary nonacademic buildings but dropping the traditional requirement: vernacular buildings include both folk and popular forms, with popular including designs that come from printed materials like stylebooks, pattern books, and magazines. Both folk and vernacular forms have a strong community identity in that they are the product of shared values about how buildings should be designed, built, and used. The community may be small, consisting of a single village or town, a larger region, or even be national or international in scope, but wherever there exists a consensus in architectural appropriateness and use, you’ll find vernacular buildings. 6
The point is, however, no matter the scope or pattern of distribution, these kinds of ordinary buildings have several things in common. First, since no one has studied them little information exists in libraries and archives, making fieldwork necessary. And second, because they do not measure up to the high style canon, they are usefully approached from a formal, typological angle. Which is what I did when I started surveying for the Utah SHPO. I made up a field survey form that included formal characteristics, height, and materials, and then began stopping to quickly measure floor plans or other details on those buildings I had not seen before (fig. 2). Certain folk house types such as the single-cell, hall-parlor, and center passage had been previously identified, so fitting examples into these categories was not difficult. Others, mostly those drawn from popular sources, proved more elusive since they had escaped investigation. Ultimately, what emerged was a set of new types that now are generally accepted throughout the country. The cross-wing, sidehall, two-part commercial block, double-loaded apartment are among the main building types that have now been analyzed and named. 7
Figure 3. Section drawing of a miner’s workshop/garage on Daly Avenue, Park City. What appears from the outside to be a simple (and now derelict) garage on closer inspection turns out to have a number of intriguing features, including large walls made from reused framing timbers from the mines and a conceptually sophisticated (if makeshift) kingpost truss. Pencil-on-velum rendering by Matrix Li, January 2016.
As work progressed, it also became obvious that certain types were associated with different chronological periods. During the neoclassical period, for example, rectangular plan houses like the hall-parlor and I-house were popular. When Victorian asymmetry prevailed, the cross-wing, side-passage, and pyramidal types—all more irregular and sculptural—surfaced. Then when modernism arrived, the foursquare and bungalow house types dominated. By the mid-twentieth century, the “mid-century” ranch house reigned. These connections allowed for a remarrying of style with type, which gave surveyors a more comprehensive system for describing what they were seeing in the field. The “style-type” approach we devised for the Utah survey may have been the first such classification system in the country, and eventually it was codified in a guidebook that my colleague Peter Goss and I produced for the Utah SHPO, which remains in use today. 8
I began teaching at the University of Utah’s School of Architecture in the mid-1980s, where, working with Peter Goss and deans Robert Bliss and Carl Inoway, we put together both a preservation curriculum, which leaned heavily toward the survey and interpretative part of the preservation process, and a research program, the Western Regional Architecture Program (WRAP), designed to delve further into the larger western vernacular landscape. A National Endowment for the Humanities grant in 1990 funded our first efforts, and led to the creation of an annual (well, mostly annual) summer field school that I ran in the years between 1993 and 2010. We had previously undertaken two field projects, both funded by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The first, in 1985, looked at the intersection of occupation and religion in the Mormon ranching community of Grouse Creek, 9 and the other, in 1991, on Italian-American architecture in Utah and Nevada. 10 I used the basic research model employed in these surveys for the university’s field school: we would formulate a research question, usually based on what the study of the built environment could tell us about, say, early Mormon polygamy, life in a railroad town, the ranching industry, or land use patterns on Indian reservations, and then test it in the field with empirical evidence, which chiefly consisted of measured drawings of representative buildings and sites, supplemented by photography, archival research, and oral history interviews. 11
WRAP field schools were conducted throughout the West, but because of proximity and the richness of resources, Utah remained our primary target. Summer projects were carried out in the Sanpete Valley in 1993 and Brigham City in 2008, but I also used the fieldwork approach in my own vernacular and western architecture classes. We devoted semester-long studies to the architecture of pre-railroad Salt Lake City, early Mormon polygamy, housing at Fort Douglas, the railyard at Ogden, and the skiing landscape at Alta, in Little Cottonwood Canyon. I will admit that I was most interested in the earlier buildings, those dating to the nineteenth century, because these are the ones I knew best. I will say, however, that many students also looked at more modern buildings (one did fieldwork on strip mall churches and another post-war cul-de-sac architecture), but it was the early western landscape that received most of our attention.
So why draw (see fig. 1)? It takes a great deal of time and effort to gain access to privately owned buildings, and then there is the actual recording process—measuring, making drawings from the measurements, and then preparing final inked sheets—which is labor intensive and often means traveling from your office, classroom, and comfort zone. Answering this question is not difficult, however: when it comes to studying the unstudied, fieldwork (which again, primarily means doing measured drawings) is really the best way to understand a building, a set of buildings, or an entire historic landscape. It is through drawing that you begin to see how a building or place was conceived, how intentions were translated into reality, what kinds of spaces were valued, what kind of technologies were available, and what kinds of remodeling and rebuilding took place (fig. 3).
The drawings in this article are representative examples of my Utah fieldwork, from my time as a SHPO surveyor to the WRAP period at the University of Utah. 12 Each entry shows how a building, systematically recorded and studied, can yield information not only about the history of architecture in Utah but also about past people and the material worlds they inhabited. 13 At its best, Why did the builder do this? And not that? Why this kind of plan? What other possibilities were there? How did people use the spaces? Why this choice of materials and not others? The drawings that follow, then, focus on how buildings, properly studied, can be read like other kinds of historical documents for social and cultural meanings. The drawings are, we must remember, only a means to an end. Hopefully they are interesting and pleasing to look at, but it is their role in “doing history” that must remain paramount in our minds. It is rewarding to look back at over three decades of fieldwork and see how much we accomplished. There is still, however, more to do. I hope these short visual vignettes will inspire others to continue preserving a record of the state’s early architecture.
Abraham Coon Family House, 1580 West Clark Street, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County
Abraham Coon Family House, 1580 West Clark Street, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County
These drawings of the Abraham Coon family house show the difference between field (top) and finished (bottom) sheets. Field sheets are pencil on graph paper and include measurements and descriptive notations. The finished sheets may be hand-drawn, putting ink on mylar (film), or digitally produced, using one of a number of CAD programs. The house is early, dating to around 1850, and was documented in May 2004 by students in my summer field school class. Josh Hansen did the notation and final digital sheet. A cross-section drawing like this is used to illustrate the basic construction features of an early adobe building. Note that the front section, built first, has common rafters nailed to a wooden board (plate) that rests on top of the adobe wall, while the rafters in the (slightly) later rear addition are carried by large horizontal purlins (circles). These were the two main systems for roofing masonry houses during the settlement period. 14
Edward Frost Family House, Grouse Creek Road, Grouse Creek, Box Elder County
Edward Frost Family House, Grouse Creek Road, Grouse Creek, Box Elder County
This small log house, part of a ranch complex in the community of Grouse Creek in the northwestern corner of the state, was recorded by Carol Edison, Debbie Randall, and myself as part of the summer-long study we conducted there in 1985. James Gosney, an “ink man extraordinaire,” turned the field sheet into this finished drawing. Although late—the house was probably built sometime in the late 1880s for second-generation Utahn Edward Frost and his family—it helped us understand the “pre-shingle” roofing methods used by the first white settlers in the Salt Lake Valley. Note how the log purlins are covered with rough sawn boards (aspen or juniper poles are often used as well), which are then covered with strips of river willow, and finally the whole thing packed with clay. The key to the system—and the main thing we learned from drawing the Frost house—is the board along the eaves that acts as a kind of dam or bulwark, holding the sod roof in place. 15
Samuel Baker Family House, 150 West 200 North, Mendon, Cache County
Samuel Baker Family House, 150 West 200 North, Mendon, Cache County
During my first years working for the Utah SHPO, I focused on settlement-period buildings like this one in Cache Valley. Easily the most common house found throughout the state (and region) during this time was the hall-parlor, a type consisting at its most basic level of two rooms, one slightly largely than the other that served as an all-purpose kitchen and living room, with the smaller one serving as a bedroom (probably for the parents). When they could afford it, a family would add a third room to the rear for the kitchen, which freed up the main room as general living space. The Mendon house of the Samuel Baker family is indicative of this pattern: it was built around 1870 as a two-room hall-parlor house, and then later, probably in the 1880s, the elaborate porch and rear kitchen wing were added. The Bakers were early converts to the LDS church from upstate New York. I did the fieldwork in May 1982, and Jim Gosney inked the sheet in August 2016 for this article. 16
Ethan Pettit Family House, 2060 North 2200 West, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County
Ethan Pettit Family House, 2060 North 2200 West, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County
We documented the Pettit house in the fall of 2006 as part of my vernacular architecture seminar. Although from outward appearances it seems a fairly standard two-story hall-parlor house from the late 1860s or early 1870s, it had a number of curious features. For one thing, its siting was odd, since it is located outside the city limits, and all good Latter-day Saints were supposed to live in the city. Also its bricks are too large. They are the size of adobes but have been fired, probably on-site since they lack the hard outer glaze of regular brick. And finally, the house has a stair-passage hall inserted into the smaller of the two rooms. Houses of this size generally have the stairs tucked into a corner of the main room, to preserve space. Here, however, they take up about a quarter of the whole house, although there is a nicely sculpted handrail at the top of the stairs, which is shown in the drawing. The Pettits might have located out on the Jordan River because Ethan worked as a market hunter, “gunning” ducks and geese for sale in various Salt Lake City outlets. Nicolas Brady and Dallas Nelson did the main fieldwork, with Dallas digitizing the final sheet. 17
Beckstrom Family Barn, Spring City, Sanpete County
Beckstrom Family Barn, Spring City, Sanpete County
This drawing represents another typological study, although here we were looking at barns rather than houses. Early Mormon house lots invariably contained a barn to shelter the family’s valuable animals, which included both saddle horses and work teams, and perhaps a cow or two. In the years between about 1880 and 1920 the most common Utah barn is what geographer Richard Francaviglia named the Intermountain Barn because of its widespread occurrence throughout the region. The type is identified by the presence of a large rectangular haymow and shed-roof side stables to either one or both sides. The haymow is usually open above the ground level, which is enclosed with horizontal logs or, as in this example, vertical wooden planking. Animals in the side stables needed protection from the weather, so these
Randersknecht Barn, 150 North 200 East, Providence, Cache Valley
Randersknecht Barn, 150 North 200 East, Providence, Cache Valley
One of the things a drawing can do is show how a building was used, which is particularly important in barns, where a simple plan and elevation, like that pictured above for the Beckstrom barn, illustrate form but not function. Diagraming how a building works, then, is an important part of the fieldwork process, as is shown in this diagram of the Randersknecht barn in Providence. This large gambrel-roof building dates to the 1930s and is typical of what we call “improvement era” barns that were constructed, often with help from specialists
from agricultural colleges like Utah State University, to help farmers and dairymen improve the efficiency, hygiene, and profitability of their operations. In the drawing you can trace the movement of hay via a Jackson Fork from the wagon to the bi-level lofts and then to either horses or cows waiting below, the whole thing meant to streamline the feeding process. Jack Brady and Evan McCullough did the fieldwork for a project funded by a contract from the Mountain West Center, Utah State University. The final drawing is by Jack Brady. 19
Parowan Meetinghouse, Parowan, Iron County
Parowan Meetinghouse, Parowan, Iron County
Given the dominant role religion played in the Mormon settlement of Utah, the lack of systematic research on LDS meetinghouses (either early or late) remains a mystery. This situation may be changing, but until the work of a new generation of Mormon historians begins to surface, the available literature in this area will remain extremely thin. One exception is a fine master’s thesis on the LDS meetinghouse in Parowan by Alan Barnett. Barnett’s study looks at the building’s history (it was the town’s second meetinghouse, replacing in the
1860s an earlier 1851 edifice), design (its double door arrangement was slightly anachronistic since the practice of separating sexes during worship was beginning to lose favor during the 1860s), construction (its expansive roof, shown here, was supported by a unique combination of both queen and king post trusses—the king sitting on the queen in this case), and meaning (how the Mormon social order was defined and maintained by the building’s form and use). The fieldwork and final inked drawings are by Alan Barnett. 20
Centerfield Meetinghouse, U.S. Highway 89, Centerfield, Sanpete County
Centerfield Meetinghouse, U.S. Highway 89, Centerfield, Sanpete County
Drawings can also demonstrate how a particular building (or landscape) evolved through time, like in this life history diagram of the LDS meetinghouse in Centerfield. As Shaun Harrison and Steven Fredley were drawing it back in 1998, they discovered that it had gone through a number of significant changes. Originally there had been a log chapel (upper left in the drawing), built in 1882. The ward membership, however, quickly outgrew this building and in 1886 replaced it with a larger one of stone (top right). This new meetinghouse followed an aisled-hall design popular in all Mormon towns during the settlement period. Later, however, a new style of meetinghouse emerged that was more clearly identifiable as a religious building (it had either a steeple or a tower) and was large enough to accommodate classrooms and recreation spaces as well as a sanctuary. So in 1897 the Centerfield building (lower left) was enlarged and given a fancy Victorian-era bell tower. This iteration had curtains that were drawn to close off sections of the main hall so they could be used as Sunday school classrooms. Finally, in the 1950s (lower right) the building was modernized: the tower was stripped away, a stylized doorway with a pediment was added, and the original rear section was turned into classrooms. James Gosney inked the field sheets in August 2016. 21
Southern Pacific Railroad Trestle No. 1, Golden Spike National Historic Site, Promontory, Box Elder County
Southern Pacific Railroad Trestle No. 1, Golden Spike National Historic Site, Promontory, Box Elder County
We worked several summers doing mitigation documentation for the National Park Service. One contract involved recording an abandoned trestle on the transcontinental railroad grade outside of Corrine. The trestle dated to 1889 and was a replacement for an 1869 stone culvert that had filled in with silt. Jack Brady, with the help of James Gosney and Craig Paulsen, did the fieldwork in the summer of 2004. His drawing reveals the intricacy of the single-span timber frame structure, which was based on a standard-plan design provided by Southern Pacific (by the 1880s the SP had taken over the Central Pacific operation) engineers. The main elements of the trestle are visible in the elevation (top) and deck plan (bottom) drawings, although decades of repairs make the reading (and the fieldwork) difficult. By the 1930s the trestle was itself replaced by a new one, and the whole line abandoned in 1941. 22
Shotgun House, 138 Woodside Avenue, Park City, Summit County
Shotgun House, 138 Woodside Avenue, Park City, Summit County
Architectural historians interested in reading buildings for social and cultural meaning often direct their attention to architectural communities—the totality of buildings in a given place and time. Both the extraordinary and the ordinary elements in the landscape are better understood in relation to the larger whole that is the community under investigation. This inclusive approach led to the recording of this small miner’s house in Park City, which I drew in the summer of 1982 while working for the Utah SHPO. It stands on the other end of the spectrum from the large mansions that silver (and later copper) bought for the mine owners along Salt Lake City’s Brigham Street, and reminds us that class remains an important factor in shaping our historic landscape. The house is typical of miners’ housing during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The drawing details its two-inch board walls that are simply nailed together without an internal frame, and while drawing it I could not help but wonder what it was like to live in it during a harsh Park City winter. Again, James Gosney inked my field sheets for this article. 23
Office and Bunkhouse, Alliance Mine, Park City, Summit County
Office and Bunkhouse, Alliance Mine, Park City, Summit County
The industrial landscape is a community all its own, as we have seen with the miner’s house above. We must remember that the hills above Park City were once dotted with mine portals, head frames, and mills, as well as offices and bunkhouses like this one at the Alliance Mine. It is a simple balloon frame building that probably dates to the early 1900s. The original section, on the west (left) side of the drawing, is thought to have been a bunkhouse for Alliance miners and mill workers. An office was added on the east, and judging from the similarity in construction, it probably came only shortly later. The new
section has a vestibule that opens into an adjacent room that might have been a payroll office. The fieldwork and CAD drawings are from 2006 and are the work of Jon Oderda and Matt Swindel, who discovered this building while mountain biking on the Park City trails. They found they could mix work and pleasure. Not a bad idea. 24
Exchange Building, Ogden Union Stockyards, Ogden, Weber County
Exchange Building, Ogden Union Stockyards, Ogden, Weber County
Sometimes drawings can just be for fun, and this is largely the case with these renderings of the Exchange Building in Ogden. When we first saw it—we were studying the industrial west side of Ogden as a class project during the spring of 1998—we just had to draw it. After all, it is not every day that you get to see animal head capitals on a set of columns! In the first decades of the twentieth century, Ogden had become the largest livestock market west of Denver, handling hundreds of carloads of cattle, sheep, hogs, and horses each day. At the center of the stockyards was this administrative building, finished in 1931 and designed by a prominent Ogden architectural firm. Perhaps the architects thought it a nice touch, adding the cattle, sheep, hog, and horse heads to the columns to recognize the contribution (and sacrifice) the animals made to the prosperity of the city. The fieldwork is by Ben Rogers and Bryan Parker, the final inked drawings by Bryan Parker. 25
Wilson Sheep Camp, Ogden, Weber County
Wilson Sheep Camp, Ogden, Weber County
Watson Shelter, Alta, Salt Lake CountyIf you drive around rural Utah enough, you are bound to see wagons like this parked by the side of the road, usually surrounded by a band of sheep, a sheepherder, and a sheep dog. The inspiration for the design probably came from European gypsy camp wagons, which have a similar shape and plan. It is unclear how the transfer from the old to the new world occurred, but the design’s suitability to the western sheep industry is undeniable: the high clearance and compact accommodation made such wagons ideal for housing herders in remote mountain and desert locations. A stove is located just inside the door, either to the right or left, with benches and cabinets along each side of a narrow “living room” that leads to a bed placed full-length across the back. The first camps were placed on wagon beds and often called “bow tops” because they had canvas stretched over a bent wooden frame. By the 1920s a number of companies like the Ahlanders of Provo (who made the famous “Home on Range” camps) had sheet metal tops. Companies like the Wilsons of Midway introduced more modern and versatile sheep camp wagons, which can cruise at highway speeds as well as negotiate the high backcountry, in the 1970s. The Wilson camp shown in this 2004 drawing by Catherine Tucker is typical of the newer models. 26
Watson Shelter, Alta, Salt Lake County
Watson Shelter, Alta, Salt Lake County
When I first started doing fieldwork in Utah, my documentation methods were rather primitive. Most of what I know about drawing came from my friends in the Vernacular Architecture Forum, but I learned a great deal too from Salt Lake City architect Burtch Beall. Burtch had taught both design and architectural history in the University of Utah’s Graduate School of Architecture before opening his own practice. I knew that in the 1960s he had directed a comprehensive Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) project on Utah’s historic buildings, so I asked him to help me teach several of my first documentation classes. He drummed basic HABS drawing techniques into both my students and me, and I have him to thank for not only raising the artistic standards of our drawings but also providing the expertise around which I built the WRAP. This drawing of the Old Watson Shelter at Alta comes from one of the first courses Burtch and I taught together, in 1992. The fieldwork and inking are by Richard Hall. The building was constructed in 1939 by Civilian Conservation Corps workers as a warming hut for skiers at Alta. The intricate truss, sort of a braced king post, is constructed around the massive stone fireplace and remains one of my favorite examples of the builders’ craft (or craftiness) in the West. 27
Duke Frank Hogan, Mexican Water, San Juan County
Duke Frank Hogan, Mexican Water, San Juan County
The Frank homestead is located in the Mexican Water District just north of the Utah–Arizona border. Like most Navajo homesteads, it consists of numerous structures, including both modern houses and traditional hogans, like the one shown here. The circular hogan is the traditional Navajo dwelling and comes in two main varieties, both referencing in their mounded shape mountains sacred in Navajo mythology. The first is the “male” or forkedpole hogan, which is conical, and the “female” version, which is constructed of stacked logs with a more rounded, dome-like shape. The Frank family hogan is the female version, and was constructed in 1995 by Duke Frank and Jack Tsosie following a customary design: the plan is circular with the door facing east toward the rising sun (to catch the blessings of the first light); a ceremonial fire pit is placed in the center; a series of vertical earth-fast cedar posts support a roof of corbelled logs that rise toward an open smoke and ventilation hole. The corbelled structure is then packed with adobe clay to give the completed building a domed appearance. These field drawings are by Steph Crabtree and Mathew Duncan and were part of their regular classwork in January 2013. 28
Verde Bake Oven, Spring Glen, Carbon County
Verde Bake Oven, Spring Glen, Carbon County
The dome-shape design is also used for outdoor bake ovens like this one on the Antonio and Marie Verde home lot in the mining town of Spring Glen. The Verdes came from the Calabria region of southern Italy where such ovens (forni) were commonly used for baking bread. The oven sits on a base of cut stone. The bricks are laid in circular courses corbelled to create the dome, which is then covered with a sealing coat of plaster. Cedar or juniper would be burned in the oven and then the ashes raked out, leaving the bricks hot and ideal for baking bread. Like many Italian immigrants, the Verdes produced a great deal of their own food: their lot is distinguished by a large garden, a canning shed, a chicken coop, and a wine cellar (where sausage was also stored), as well as this outdoor oven. The drawing is by Susan Anderson and was part of the work we did for the American Folklife Center’s study of Italian folkways in the West. 29
Seeley Carriage House, Mount Pleasant, Sanpete County
Seeley Carriage House, Mount Pleasant, Sanpete County
Over the years one of my main research interests has been the architecture of the Scandinavian immigrants who came to Utah during the second half of the nineteenth century. Their influence (and particularly that of the Danes, who composed the majority) on early Utah building practices is considerable. One thing you do not see here, however, is the timber-frame construction found all over Denmark. This building technique consists of a box-like wooden frame in-filled with fired or clay bricks, and for various reasons—a shortage of wood and the growing fashionableness of brick—it survived the Atlantic crossing only in a few instances, like this small carriage house in Mount Pleasant. The framing here is typically Danish. The corner posts are mortised or rabbeted into the top plate and bottom sill; vertical studs are fit into shallow trenches notched into both the top and bottoms of the horizontal girts; angle braces are fitted into the outer bays, and the whole frame then in-filled with adobe. This building probably dates to the 1890s and was built by local Danish carpenters for John H. Seely, a prominent local sheep man. Cory Jensen first documented the building in the fall of 1997; additional fieldwork came later from me and Meng “Matrix” Li in the spring of 2016. James Gosney inked the field sheets for this article.
Congregation Shaarey Tzedek Synagogue, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County
Congregation Shaarey Tzedek Synagogue, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County
The equation of Utah with Mormons tends to deny the presence here of other religions. Many people are surprised to learn that there were three early Jewish congregations in Salt Lake City, and each built its own synagogue. The first was Congregation B’nai Israel, which was formed in 1881. The congregation observed an Orthodox style of worship until 1883, when it joined the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the reform movement. In 1885, those who wanted B’nai Israel to follow Orthodox practices split off to form a new congregation, Congregation Montefiore. A final divide occurred after 1915 when a group from the Montefiore congregation composed of Russian and Eastern European–born Jews formed an Orthodox congregation, Shaarey Tzedek.
In 1919–1920, this congregation built a synagogue in a largely Yiddish-speaking enclave on Salt Lake City’s southwest side. Following Orthodox principles, the synagogue had three levels (see page 84). On the main floor was the sanctuary with the Ark, a cupboard where the Torah was kept, placed on the east end and a raised Bima, a reading platform, placed in the middle. Male seating was found to both sides. Upstairs was a gallery for the women in this gender-segregated congregation, while the downstairs was reserved for classrooms. Shelly Brady did the fieldwork and produced the CAD rendering of the building in fall of 2006. 31
John Sherrif Family House, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County
John Sherrif Family House, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County
Every now and then we find a gem, and the fireplace mantle in this house in Salt Lake City’s Avenues District is just that. The front part of the house was built for the John Sherrif family after 1882 and it is a good example of the side-passage house common in American cities throughout the nineteenth century. After 1898 it was extensively remodeled—the brick walls were covered with stucco, a neoclassical front porch added, and a new rear kitchen wing constructed. It may be that this mantle dates to the remodeling, since its elaborate tile work is dramatically different from the cast iron, marbleized ones in the rest of the house. The later date seems appropriate for the scene depicted in the tiles. Featured are the busts of two figures,
presumably a mother and father, dressed in Elizabethan costume. Their faces turn inward, gazing at the domestic scene that takes place in the center panel. Here, a female figure (mother, nurse, or nanny) sits quietly knitting, while three children engage in constructive play. It is an innocent portrait of everyday life that nevertheless held meaning for Victorian-era families: home was a sanctuary, managed by the mother, whose role was to safeguard the children and prepare them for the perils of adulthood in the outside world. Historians call it the “cult of domesticity,” and it is nowhere better represented than in the Sherrif house mantle. The fieldwork is mine (I once lived in the house) and James Gosney did the final (artful) inking. 32
John Albert Scorup Family House, Bluff, San Juan County
John Albert Scorup Family House, Bluff, San Juan County
For some reason, architectural historians shy away from drawing more modern buildings like this large Victorian house in Bluff. They might think such buildings lack the local connection found in preindustrial designs, or that their inspiration comes from popular magazines and pattern books, or that their many bays and turrets make them hard to measure. Yet our experience suggests that while these buildings may represent national rather than local values, they continue to be designed and built in much the same way as older, traditional ones. They also tell us much about the nation’s expanding information network, which allowed a rural cattleman like Al Scorup to know of new architectural fashions and put them to use in the Utah backcountry. The house is a fine example of the Victorian Eclectic approach to design, incorporating a variety of decorative features into a slightly modified version of the side-hall plan house (compare to the Sherrif house above). It was completed in 1904, the work of two local craftsmen, Nick Lovice and Ed Thompson. As a student in the Design Build Bluff program, Larry Curtis did the fieldwork and initial pencil-on-vellum drawings in 2004, which were inked by James Gosney for this article (see page 85). 33
NOTES
1 The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) had been passed earlier, in 1966, but it took time to implement. The basic idea was to create historic preservation offices in each state that would be responsible for monitoring federally funded activities and their impact on historic resources. Identifying properties “significant to the nation’s history” through statewide surveys was an important first part of the preservation process.
2 William J. Murtagh, Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Songs, 2006).
3 Henry Glassie and Bettie-Jo Glassie, “The Implications of Folkloristic Thought for Historic Zoning Ordinances,” in Dick Sweterlitsch, ed., Papers on Applied Folklore (Bloomington: Folklore Forum Bibliographic and Special Studies, No. 8, 1971).
4 Overviews of folkloristics can be found in Robert Georges, Folkloristics: An Introduction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995) and Rosemary Levy Zumwalt, American Folklore Scholarship: A Dialogue of Dissent (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
5 The folkloristic model for architectural investigation was largely established by Henry Glassie in a series of articles and books from the 1960s and 1970s. See Henry Glassie, “The Types of the Southern Mountain Cabin,” in Jan Harold Brunvand, The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), 338–70; Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1969).
6 Thomas Carter and Elizabeth Collins Cromley, Invitation to Vernacular Architecture: A Guide to the Study of Ordinary Buildings and Landscapes (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005), 1–7.
7 The first issues of Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture are filled with typological studies from all parts of North America.
8 Thomas Carter and Peter Goss, Utah’s Historic Architecture, 1847–1940: A Guide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, 1988).
9 Thomas Carter and Carl Fleischhauer, The Grouse Creek Cultural Survey: Integrating Folklife and Historic Preservation Field Research, Publications of the American Folklife Center, No. 13 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1988).
10 Thomas Carter, “The Architecture of Immigration: Documenting Italian-American Vernacular Buildings in Utah and Nevada,” in Ties and Attachments: Italian-Americans in the West, ed. by David Taylor and John Williams (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1992), 94–111.
11 The WRAP field school sessions led to a series of inhouse publications. See, Tipis to Square Houses: Early Architecture on the Crow Indian Reservation (Billings: Montana Division of Parks and Recreation, 2005); Polygamy in Lorenzo Snow’s Brigham City: An Architectural Tour (Western Regional Architecture Program Publication No. 10, 2005); Of Work and Romance: A Survey of Utah Barns (Western Regional Architecture Publication No. 9, 2004); Home Off the Range: Basque Boarding Houses in the American West (Western Regional Architecture Publication No. 8, 1998); Building by the Railyard: The Historic Commercial and Industrial Architecture of Ogden, Utah (Western Regional Architecture Program Publication No. 7, 1998); Military Accommodation: Architectural Adaptation at Three Wyoming Forts (Western Regional Architecture Program Publication No. 6, 1997); Contested Space: The Above and Below Ground Landscape of Idaho’s Coeur D’Alene Mining District (Western Regional Architecture Program Publication No. 5, 1997); Overlays of History: the Historic Architecture of Fort Douglas, Utah (Western Regional Architecture Program, Publication No. 4, 1996); Enterprise and Ingenuity: The Gascon Ranch of Mora County, New Mexico (Western Regional Architecture Program, Publication No. 3, 1995); A Way of Seeing: Discovering the Art of Building in Spring City, Utah (Western Vernacular Architecture Program Publication No. 2, 1994); and Designed for Work: The San Jacinto Ranch of Elko County, Nevada (Western Vernacular Architecture Program Publication No. 1, 1993).
12 The entire WRAP collection is housed in the Special Collections section of the University of Utah’s Marriott Library. My thanks to Greg Thompson and Elizabeth Rogers for giving it a home and patiently waiting for me to sort it all out.
13 See Thomas Carter and Bernard Herman, “Introduction: Toward a New Architectural History,” in Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, IV (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 1–6.
14 For more information on adobe construction in Salt Lake City, see Laurie J. Bryant, A Modest Homestead: Life in Small Adobe Homes in Salt Lake City, 1850–1897 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016).
15 Carter and Fleischhauer, The Grouse Creek Cultural Survey.
16 See Thomas Carter, “Samuel Baker House,” National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah.
17 See Ethan Pettit Diaries, 1855–1881, Ms0180, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
18 See Thomas Carter and Roger Roper, Of Work and Romance: Discovering Utah Barns (Salt Lake City: College of Architecture and Planning, University of Utah, 1999).
19 See Lisa Duskin-Goede, Historic Barns of Northern Utah: A Self-Guided Driving Tour (Logan, UT: Bear River Heritage Area, 2004).
20 See Alan Barnett, “We Must Do Right and Be Guided by the Priesthood: A History of the Parowan Meeting House and Its Role in the Mormon Community, 1860– 1869” (master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1994).
21 See Thomas Carter, Building Zion: The Material World of Mormon Settlement (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 209–239.
22 See Robert M. Utley, Golden Spike National Historic Site (Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 1969).
23 Deborah Lyn Randall, “Park City, Utah: An Architectural History of Mining Town Housing, 1869 to 1907” (master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1985).
24 See Raye Carleson Ringholz, Diggings and Doings in Park City (Park City, UT: privately published, 1983).
25 See Jalynn Olsen, Building by the Railyard: The Historic Commercial and Industrial Architecture of Ogden, Utah (Salt Lake City: Graduate School of Architecture, University of Utah, 1998).
26 See Nancy Weidel, Sheepwagon: Home on the Range (Glendo, WY: High Plains Press, 2001).
27 See Duane Shrontz, Alta, Utah: A People’s Story (Salt Lake City: Two Door Press, 2002).
28 Stephen C. Jett and Virginia E. Spencer, Navajo Architecture: Forms, History, Distributions (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1981).
29 See Carter, “The Architecture of Immigration,” 94–111.
30 See, Thomas Carter, “Danes,” in America’s Architectural Roots: Ethnic Groups That Built America, edited by Dell Upton (Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1986), 118123.
31 See, Phil Neuberg, “Congregation Shaary Tzedek Synagogue,” Structure-Site Information Form, Utah State Historic Preservation Office, 1985.
32 See, Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: a Social History of Housing in America (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981).
33 See, Neal Lambert, “Al Scorup: Cattleman of the Canyons,” Utah Historical Quarterly 332 (Summer 1964), 301-320. See also, Thomas Carter, Traditional Design in an Industrial Age: Vernacular Domestic Architecture in Victorian Utah,” Journal of American Folklore 104 (Fall 1991): 419-442.
