Stratton House/Orem City Hall
(870 W. Center Street)

Stratton House/Orem City Hall

The James and Nina Stratton house/former Orem City Hall built ca. 1924 with large additions added in 1997 and again in 2007. In 1938, the Orem Town Board purchased the 37½-acre farm and home of the Strattons for use as the first Orem Town Hall for $14,000. Thus, the new Town Hall was established as the center of town, and the numbering of the streets and houses was planned to start at that point. The building housed City offices, the Post Office, and City library until 1969 when the city, having outgrown its quarters, built a new City Center building on the same site. The building was sold for $100.00 and moved approximately two miles west to its present site on August 10, 1970, where it was eventually converted into an office building.

Built by James Stratton, a prominent fruit grower, the house was one of the largest in the city at the time. It has many of the characteristics of the Prairie-School style popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright during the first two decades of this century. The Stratton house clearly symbolizes the prosperity that the fruit industry brought to Orem City during the first half of the twentieth century. This is the only civic structure remaining from the historic period and is reflective the way in which Orem developed as a city. When the 2007 addition was completed the original historic brick was covered.