This is a 1 1/2 story Victorian home in original condition. It has a truncated hip roof with a small front dormer window, and front, east and west side gabled bays. The gables have patterned wood shingle siding, and the front one has a Palladian window. First story front windows have rough faced stone sills and lintels and two have transoms, The front and west side porches have fine Eastlakian woodwork, including scroll-sawn brackets, turned columns and spindle screens under the cornices.

This house was built in 1898 for Ebenezer Farnes. Farnes was born February 4, 1843 in Dagenham, Essex, England. In 1862, a convert to the LDS Church, he emigrated to the United States and came directly to Salt Lake City. With his brothers, he contracted to supply charcoal to the church blacksmith shop, earning thereby his parents passage to the U.S. In 1864 he was called to manage cattle in the settlement north of St. George. He was then employed in the tithing office meat market and was proprietor of his own shop, the Deseret Meat Market, at the time he built this house. His first wife, Mary Catherine Bullock died in 1879, his second wife, Elizabeth Josephine Fjeldsted, died shortly before him. Farnes sold the house shortly after completion to Joseph Askie Silver.

Located at 140 Girard Avenue in the Capitol Hill Historic District in Salt Lake City, Utah

His daughter married Joseph A Silver. He was the first person to own an automobile in Salt Lake and invented the 3 wheeled bicycle.

In 2024 Layne Hermansen, who’s family has owned the Ebenezer Farnes/Joseph Silver Home for the past 50 years sent me these photos:

Layne said:
We know the name of the company who custom made these in the 1800s. The man on the right looks like Ebenezer Farnes. With wife opposite, who died. The middle child, their daughter who married Joseph A Silver. Nothing of the above is verifiable. The fireplace is always a conversation piece. Anyone who sees it brisket walks towards it.