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Becoming More Conscientious of Utah's Sites of Conscience
A young family stands outside of a tar paper shack in Topaz, Utah, circa 1942–1945
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Becoming More Conscientious of Utah’s Sites of Conscience
BY KIRK HUFFAKER
Living in Sugar House for more than a decade now, I’ve enjoyed many runs in Sugar House Park. When I’m out there alone with my thoughts, I often come back to the question, “what makes this a place?” If you are seeking answers at the park, you have to really look to get them, because they’re hidden. A plaque on a monument is hidden in a grove of evergreen trees, and while it’s nice and shady under there, the recognition that Sugar House Park was once home to the first Utah State Penitentiary is completely obscured. Maybe there was purpose behind the monument’s site selection and landscape plan, one that was part let’s put a plaque up to remember and part let’s hide it in a grove of trees because we don’t want to celebrate the prison.
Today, penitentiaries are among the significant historic sites associated with the international movement known as sites of conscience. 1 This movement aims to connect past to present by fostering thoughtful civic discussion about the thorny social topics associated with historic places. There are many examples of how untold and challenging stories can be spotlighted at places of newly understood or recognized significance. While the stories may be difficult to approach in interpretation, promoting healing and reconciliation go far beyond the events or architecture alone. Successful examples of sites that are effectively interpreting the many layers of difficult pasts, telling painful narratives in sensitive and informed ways, include Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia and the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City. As they are places that have deep meaning and connection, sites of conscience are among the spots that represent the future of historic preservation in the United States and Utah.
The mess hall in the Utah State Penitentiary in Sugar House, photographed in June 1936.
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In mid-2016, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that the Draper Historic Preservation Commission was interested in recognizing the history of the Utah State Correctional Facility that has been in its city since 1951. Preservation Utah posted that article to its social media pages. While we received two supportive comments, we also received one saying that the prison was a scar that needed removal—a place no one needed to remember.
Since then, discussing the Draper correctional facility has become a hot topic at Preservation Utah, sparking conversation whenever it is brought up. It’s an opportunity to talk about how preservation need not include the entire site and how it could be an asset to future development. Envision Utah has been hired to begin planning the area for redevelopment. The typical discussions of density, mixtures of residential and commercial development, and a range of housing options and costs (including educational and recreational aspects) are taking place—yet no one is talking about historic preservation associated with the current land use. Without preservation, we might miss an opportunity to consider the relationship between the place and the experiences of generations of people who had been incarcerated there.
Let’s remember, saving places is not a popularity contest. My colleague at the Los Angeles Conservancy, Adrian Fine, made that point when talking about his organization’s efforts to preserve the Parker Center, which served as offices for the Los Angeles Police Department from 1955 to 2009. Besides being an ultramodern design from a prestigious firm (Welton Becket and Associates), the Parker Center’s significance comes from the many challenging historical events that, in part, occurred there, including Vietnam War protests, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and October 2000 demonstrations with the “October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality.” 2 Given that the Parker Center is a site of rich and sometimes controversial history, the Los Angeles Conservancy is utilizing the opportunity to discuss those topics with the public while advocating to save the building. The task will be more difficult as Parker Center was denied landmark status by the city’s landmarks commission in February 2017. 3
In contrast, the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City is visited by thousands of school children who have no direct concept of the impacts of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. While it is a daunting task, the presentation of the 9/11 narrative is aimed at helping visitors understand how the attacks shaped the world they live in and the lives of those who experienced them. Lessons are grouped around themes, including community and conflict, heroes and service, historical impact, and memory and memorialization. Anna Bennett, a fifth grade teacher in New York City public schools, explained that “It is my job to teach [students] about these events and how they fit into the bigger picture of our country’s climate and decision-making. I also desperately want them to know, feel and believe that their voices matter and that they, too, can make the world a better place, even when things seem grim and scary.” 4 Teaching with historic sites of conscience can give this opportunity to Utah’s children.
Another subject within this emerging field is that of slavery, which is being used to bring people together to talk about race relations in ways that are relatable today. A pioneer in utilizing historic places to do this is Joseph McGill Jr. of the Slave Dwelling Project. McGill’s organization, a nonprofit, identifies and assists in the preservation of slave cabins; McGill himself has stayed overnight in a host of these spaces. His approach to bringing people together in slave cabins creates an affirming and positive environment for discussion through a rare opportunity to have a personal, physical interaction with a relic from the past. 5
Slave cabins are the oft-forgotten places behind the grand mansions. However, the slave’s story has become the important piece for complete interpretation of these historic sites. Reversing past efforts that tried to erase this story from our history is a major goal for sites of conscience. While we all may experience sadness, anger, or grief over these historic events, it doesn’t have to be a dark shame. Through places and efforts such as the Slave Dwelling Project, experiencing historic spaces can be uplifting. We can’t change our history and we shouldn’t desire to, but we can be more conscientious of it and address it head-on.
Preserving a site of conscience is no different than preserving any other place that has historic significance. The key step in both instances is determining the locale’s character-defining features. In the case of a historic 1920s warehouse, those features might be stark concrete walls, multi-paned steel windows, fourteen-foot ceiling height, and an open floor plan. But what happens when your site is a building that is barely standing, a place where all the buildings have been removed, or a property that never had structures but is instead part of a greater natural and cultural landscape? The history itself then becomes a character-defining feature. This is a more difficult treatment for historic properties because it forces preservationists out of their routine of considering architecture first. In essence, a locale and any buildings present on it can connect people to the history, people, and events that played a role in its significance.
An early photograph of the Lion House, which was built in 1855 and used as a residence until 1877.
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While the concepts of sites of conscience as a whole are contemporary, the discussion of them is not new in Utah. The practice of polygamy has long been connected to questions of social impact, cultural acceptability, and equality of opportunity. Looking back a few decades, the conversation about efforts to save the Lion House in Salt Lake City from demolition falls squarely in the realm of today’s sites of conscience movement because of its historical relationship with polygamy in the LDS church.
The Lion House was built in the early 1850s as a home for some of Brigham Young’s plural wives and many children, and its very design suggested an unusual family structure. 6 The association of the Lion House with polygamy remained in the mid-twentieth century, and some questioned the building’s usefulness as times changed. Florence Jacobsen, who became president of the LDS church’s Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association in 1961, is credited with saving the Lion House. Upon her starting her new responsibilities, she learned that the home was to be demolished for a parking access ramp to the new LDS Church Office Building. Jacobsen responded by leading a charge to save the Lion House.
Jacobsen proposed to LDS church president David O. McKay that the Lion House be renovated and made self-sustaining as a banquet hall and restaurant. According to some sources, Henry Moyle, first counselor to McKay, told her that “the house was going down” and that “all it does is remind people of polygamy.” Jacobsen countered Moyle, telling him that she was unashamed of the polygamist past. 7 Her determination and vision for what restoration could bring ultimately saved the Lion House.
Today the Lion House, together with the Beehive House, is among the most visited historic sites in the state. As such, they provide an opportunity for furthering public conversation about an aspect of the LDS past that remains difficult for some but that is important to the study of Utah history.
Other sites of conscience in Utah include the German prisoner of war camp at Salina, the Topaz Interment Camp west of Delta, and the sites associated with the uranium boom near Moab. During efforts to save the Enola Gay Hangar at Historic Wendover Airfield, we were told that we shouldn’t be involved in preserving the site because of its association with the atomic bomb. Now, after several years of shepherding by Tooele County and the Historic Wendover Airfield organization, the Enola Gay Hangar is protected through a preservation easement, and it was one of the few sites in the state that received Save America’s Treasures grant funding from the National Park Service.
The uranium mining boom in Moab was one of many products of the Cold War era. As the second-most prolific site of uranium mining in the country, Moab became nationally known. After Charlie Steen discovered a remarkably rich deposit of high-grade uranium in 1952, the landscape of Moab itself rapidly changed from the pioneer town it had been. Within a decade of Steen’s uranium discovery, ten new subdivisions were platted (including over 1,000 new structures), and ten new landmark institutional and civic buildings were constructed. Unfortunately, the city has not been interested in recognizing, documenting, and preserving these places as part of the story of Moab. The community pool building in Swanny City Park and the Helen M. Knight Elementary School have already been lost. As tourism continues to grow as the primary economic force for the city, greater development pressure will be placed on the neighborhoods and locales that emerged from the uranium boom could soon disappear, including some prominent sites funded by Steen himself.
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the internment of Japanese Americans, German Americans, and Italian Americans to camps across the country. After several hasty months of preparation, the Topaz War Relocation Center west of Delta, Utah, was opened on September 11, 1942. Also known as the Central Utah Relocation Center, the thirty-one-acre site served as home to over 9,000 people of Japanese descent. While much documentation exists of the three years that the center was in operation, the irreversible human effects of the internment remain. No structures remain on the Topaz site, though infrastructure and archaeological remnants of imprisoned life evoke questions, stories, and emotions. According to Anne Mooney and John Sparano, architects of the Topaz Museum in Delta, their design provides spaces in the museum’s architecture for contemplation and healing. One of those spaces is an elongated threshold and entry sequence. A bench located across from a traditional Shou Sugi Ban (charred wood) wall provides a subtle but traditional Japanese material expression that allows a proper environment for reflection. However, the biggest decision—the museum’s location—is perhaps also the biggest step in bringing the issue to the forefront. As Mooney states, “the decision to put the museum on Main Street was about giving the issue visibility.” 8 Thus, the decision avoided situating it in the same obscure location that was forced upon Japanese Americans in the first place.
The Uranium Reduction Company, opened by Charlie Steen, was the first large, independent uranium mill in the United States.
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The front of Camp Salina, as it appears today.
Tami Olsen
East of Salina, a marker for the former Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp states how many young men between 1933 and 1942 contributed to building the infrastructure of central Utah as part of Company 479. However, the marker leaves off the significant second part of this place’s story. The entrance of the United States into World War II called an end to the CCC and thus an end to the Salina CCC camp. Many of its structures were moved to be used at the Topaz Japanese Internment Camp. Three original buildings remained and, with the addition of a tent village, the site was repurposed as a camp for dozens of German prisoners of war. Their daily life included work on local farms in the Sevier and Sanpete areas, where many local young men were then serving in the military. The tragedy of the Salina Massacre occurred on July 8, 1945, when a guard fired a machine gun into POW tents from the watch tower. Eight of the prisoners were killed, with many others wounded, making this event one of the great atrocities committed in the United States during the war. 9 Fortunately, the community has spearheaded a campaign to preserve and interpret one of the buildings, thus telling the full story of the site. 10
Many positive steps forward continue to be taken with pioneer-era sites, including those of the Mountain Meadows and Bear River massacres, with new and ongoing efforts to acknowledge the events with descendant groups and other organizations. On the other hand, the physical traces of Salt Lake City’s historic ethnic neighborhoods—while not strictly sites of conscience—have already been largely erased from the city. Nothing stands to recognize Little Syria and Little Italy. Only a plaque acknowledges China Town. Only religious structures stand to represent once-prominent Japanese and Jewish communities. Without protection, the final commercial section of historic Greektown will also meet this end, leaving the Greek Cathedral to represent an entire community.
Two men stand in front of a Chinese merchandise store by the dirt roads and buildings of Plum Alley. Salt Lake City, August 24, 1907.
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Despite these notable places on the landscape and in our consciousness, Utah is one of very few states to not have any sites listed by the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. Consider the alternative to acknowledgment and better understanding through the coalition and through the efforts of local groups: would society be better off if such sites were gone, instead of interpreted and formally recognized? Given how these places play a vital role in the understanding of current national and international policy and foreign relations, the answer to this question is a definitive no.
Historic places—even those associated with tragic events or people—can inspire positive outcomes. While creating the record-breaking
WEB EXTRA
Visit history.utah.gov/uhqextras for an interview with Kirk Huffaker and additional photos of the sites mentioned in this article.
Broadway musical Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda took to writing songs in the New York City bedroom occupied by Aaron Burr from 1832–1833 in the Morris-Jumel Mansion. Many prominent Japanese American designers drew influence from their time at internment camps. Their work crossed the fields of design from the Twin Towers to the Corvette Stingray to highly crafted furniture and the graphics that sold Eames chairs. The same design abilities that allowed Japanese Americans to survive with dignity have made their history more relevant for all Americans through inspired artistry that has affected all America.
Brooches created by internees at the Topaz Internment Camp in Delta, Utah. Residents gathered sea shells found at the camp, bleached them, and then painted and arranged them into brooches and other designs.
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Inevitably, some places will be repurposed or redeveloped. However, if we remake a site such that it does not express its true and fully represented history, we deny that history. We also deny our conscience. Our future challenge in historic preservation is to find common ground in preserving our controversial and diverse past. Preservation’s future will undoubtedly include more places associated with the woman suffrage, equal civil rights, and LGBTQ movements.
The sites of conscience movement is much larger than the relevancy of buildings to the landscape. It has to include the relevancy of place to people and their community, then and now. The size or scope of what happened should not be the issue, but rather that the event happened at all. There needs to be a broader perspective communicated, understood, and embraced about historic places that goes far beyond the narrow interest of historic architecture. To do this, we need more involvement and diverse voices in the conversation, as well as flexibility in our current tools and the development of new tools, to accomplish what the preservation movement demands of us.
NOTES
1 See Public Historian 30, no. 1 (2008) for a special issue about sites of conscience and “opening historic sites for civic dialogue.”
2 “Parker Center/Police Facilities Center,” Los Angeles Conservancy, accessed February 21, 2017, laconservancy.org/issues/parker-centerpolice-facilities-building; “What’s Next for L.A.’s Parker Center?,” Los Angeles Times, December 29, 2016; Christina Villacorte, “End of an Era: LAPD Closes Parker Center, Iconic Headquarters,” Los Angeles Daily News, January 15, 2013.
3 For additional context about the preservation and use of the sites of socially fraught, twentieth-century history, see Rachel Donaldson, “Placing and Preserving Labor History,” Public Historian 39, no. 1 (February 2017): 61–83.
4 Julia Glum, “This is How NYC Schools Teach Kids about 9/11,” Gothamist, September 9, 2016, accessed February 21, 2017, gothamist.com/2016/09/09/nyc_ schools_911_history.php.
5 Tony Horowitz, “One Man’s Epic Quest to Visit Every Former Slave Dwelling in the United States,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 2013; “About Us,” Slave Dwelling Project, accessed February 27, 2017, slavedwellingproject.org.
6 John S. McCormick, Historic Buildings of Downtown Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1982), 52–53. See Ellen E. Dickinson, New Light on Mormonism (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1885), 162, for a contemporary take on the Lion House and Young’s polygamous family.
7 Because Jacobsen only recently passed away, not all sources on this episode are available. For some context, see Trent Toone, “Granddaughter of Two LDS Church Presidents Turns 100,” Deseret News, April 11, 2013; Lavina Fielding, “Florence Smith Jacobsen: In Love with Excellence,” Ensign, June 1977; Andrew Hamilton, “Florence Smith Jacobsen: Saving Our Material Heritage,” Keepapitchinin, April 2, 2013, accessed March 6, 2017, keepapitchinin. org/2013/04/02/guest-post-florence-smith-jacobsen-saving-our-material-heritage/.
8 Anne Mooney, interview with Kirk Huffaker, February 3, 2017, in possession of author.
9 Allan Kent Powell, “The German-speaking Immigrant Experience in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 52, no. 4 (Fall 1984): 336.
10 Alex Cabrero, “German POWs Killed in Salina Remembered,” KSL, March 11, 2015, accessed March 3, 2017, ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=33792431.
