Utah In Focus

UTAH IN FOCUS

Home to an ever-changing company of working-class men, the Lincoln House on 68 East 1st South was one of Salt Lake City’s longest running hostelries. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, it offered modest rooms for travelling businessmen and transient laborers. By the 1940s, it gained a reputation as the last refuge of the down-on-your-luck man. Archie Chamberlain—pictured behind the cigar counter—met his share of colorful customers as the Lincoln House’s longtime front desk clerk. It is also where he also met his future wife, Mary Nordstrom, who briefly worked there as a chambermaid.

After their marriage, Archie and Mary rented a place in the Avenues before moving to their new home on Navajo Street on the city’s west side, where Archie could commute to work on the Poplar Grove streetcar line. At home, Mary raised chickens, sold eggs, and read palms. In 1917, thirty-eight-year-old Archie collapsed and died while chopping wood in the yard, leaving behind Mary and two children, Matilda and Archie.

Archie’s curtailed life leaves us with many gaps to fill. We know that as a young boy, he lived with his mother near the shores of Bosham, a fishing village on England’s south coast. Around age nine, he was adopted into his Aunt Ellen’s family, and with them immigrated to Utah in 1888. With what must have been a fresh and frightening new start, Archie worked odd jobs for several years before landing at the Lincoln House at age 22. There he worked until his death.

Courtesy of UHQ editorial fellow Cathy Gilmore, Archie’s great granddaughter.