This is a full two-story brick house which has a flat roof. The house itself is one room deep and two wide with a central hall behind a symmetrical “five over five” façade. Extensions are found to the east rear. The raised parapet along the top exhibits corbelled bracketing and radiating quoins are found around the central door. The house was plastered at some point in its career and recently this plaster has been blasted off, leaving the brick is a deteriorated carditian.

Evidence of title and directories suggests this house was built about 1873 by Engbert Qlsen. Engbert received title in a warranty deed dated 1873 and recorded in 1877. The directory of 1874 shows Axel Valdemar Olson in residence there in 1873. By 1883 Engbert had died, leaving the house to his widow Maria and to Haakon and Axel, sons or brothers. Axel was a mason and bricklayer, Haakan a laborer. They may well have done much of the construction of the house themselves. Maria operated rented furnished rooms in this very large house early in the 1900’s and probably much earlier. The 1898 Sanborn labels the house “tenements” (apartments). Little is readily to be known about the Olsons, although title remained with their descendants into the 1970’s.

Located at 318 Center Street in the Capitol Hill Historic District in Salt Lake City, Utah