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Grantsville Branch Chapel

Jacob Barlow

This building was erected in 1861 by the Grantsville Branch, William G. Young was the Branch President. It was restored in 1950 and is now the Donner-Reed Memorial Museum at 90 N Cooley Street in Grantsville, Utah.

The Grantsville School and Meetinghouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places (#95001432) on December 13, 1995.

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The Grantsville School and Meetinghouse is locally significant as one of two historic meetinghouses and the only historic schoolhouse remaining in the community. Constructed in 1861, this building served as a school for thirty years. In the tradition of early Utah meetinghouses, the Grantsville School fulfilled a number of different needs. It was used for civic meetings, social events, and, prior to the 1865 construction of the Grantsville Ward Meetinghouse, it was used for religious services. When no longer needed as a school, it was adapted for use as the town’s city hall between 1894 and 1917. The Grantsville School is also architecturally significant as an excellent example of the first-phase meetinghouse building type, as documented in the Multiple Property Submission, “Mormon Church Buildings in Utah, 1847-1936.” Multiple use buildings such as the Grantsville School were common in the early settlement period of Utah’s history. The architecture of this building illustrates two characteristics of early Mormon meetinghouses-the use of readily available materials, in this case locally produced adobe bricks; and the use of Greek Revival elements, such as pronounced cornice returns and a pedimented doorway, to enhance an otherwise plain rectangular building. Since its construction, the Grantsville School has seen a minimum of alteration; consequently it is one of the oldest, and perhaps best preserved, schoolhouses in Utah.

Grantsville was founded in 1850 by a small group of Mormon settlers. The town was originally called Willow Creek, and was renamed Grantsville in 1853. In the spring of that year, the settlers literally moved their houses closer together for the purpose of erecting a protective fort located at the present day intersection of Clark Street and Cooley Lane. The first schoolhouse was a log structure built within the fort walls in 1853. This building served approximately 15-20 students and was also used as a meeting house and amusement hall. By 1860, the population of Grantsville had grown to such as extent that a new school was needed.

The new Grantsville School and Meetinghouse was built next to the log structure it replaced. The builder’s name is not known and the structure was probably erected as a community effort. The Grantsville School was most likely completed in 1861.4 According to one source, it functioned primarily as a school, but was also used as a recreation hall and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) chapel until a new chapel was built across the street in 1865-66.

Not long after the completion of the Grantsville School, another school, a log structure, was built for the children living at the east end of town. A note written in 1883 indicates that this second school was called the “Block School”, and the first school was the “Adobe School.” An account by Tooeie County School Superintendent, Joshua R. Clark, published in the Salt Lake Herald in 1881, illustrated that both schools were serving beyond capacity when it stated that the larger (adobe) school had a capacity of 75, but was serving 109 scholars. The over-crowded conditions led to additional classes being held in the town’s city hall and private homes during the 1880s. In the year 1892 a new school, the Grantsville Academy, was built and the adobe schoolhouse was vacated.

However, on September 29, 1894, the city council voted to begin using the building as a city hall. Historically, the adobe schoolhouse had a long association with the Grantsville City Council and is believed to have been the location of the first meeting of the city council in 1867. The Grantsville School was used as the city hall and jail until 1917. The property and building was acquired by Frank and Emma Burmester in 1921 and used for storage for the Burmesters’ service station. In 1941, Emma Burmester sold the property to J. Reuben Clark, Jr., the son of Joshua R. Clark. An organization called the Pioneer Land Marks Association (sic) was formed in 1942 to “take over title to the old School House and grounds.” The property was to be a gift from J. Reuben Clark. However, he retained ownership until the building’s restoration in 1950 in time for the city’s centennial celebration. The “Old Adobe Schoolhouse” was officially dedicated as “a memorial to the pioneers” on October 8, 1950. At that time, Mr. Clark donated the building to the Grantsville Stake to be used for women’s auxiliary meetings and for meetings of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers.

When no longer used for church and DUP meetings, the building was turned into a museum and the deed transferred to Grantsville City in 1969. Pioneer artifacts, including several items cast off by the 1846 Donner-Reed party, were relocated from the city’s high school to the museum. The site now bears the name Donner-Reed Museum, and is open by appointment. Though it has a new name, most residents referred to it as the “Old Adobe Schoolhouse”. Though Grantsville contains several well-preserved adobe buildings from the pioneer era, including several in the Greek Revival style, the Grantsville School and Meetinghouse is the earliest remaining public building. Closely linked to both early education and government in the city, it stands as an example of one community’s commitment to preserving its heritage.

Historic Context: Mormon Meetinghouses and Tabernacles in Utah, 1847-1936

The history of Utah is closely tied to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. More commonly known as Mormons, members of the church played a significant role in the early settlement and subsequent growth of the state of Utah. It is not surprising therefore that the religious buildings of the Mormons comprise one of the principal segments of the state’s architectural heritage. Within the larger theme of Mormon religious architecture, eight specific historic contexts have been identified [See the Multiple Property Submission, Mormon Church Buildings in Utah. 1847-19361. The Grantsville School and Meetinghouse is significant within one of these contexts, “Mormon Meetinghouses and Tabernacles, 1847-1936”.

The most common types of nineteenth-century Mormon religious buildings were the meetinghouses and tabernacles. Designed as assembly halls for regular Sunday services, these buildings differed principally in size and scale. Tabernacles were typically large buildings with a seating capacity sufficient to accommodate the membership of several LDS wards, with wards being the smallest unit of ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the LDS Church. Smaller Mormon towns consisted of a single ward, while the larger communities were subdivided into several such districts. Every ward had a meetinghouse, or ward meetinghouse. Wards were further organized into larger geographical groupings called stakes, and usually (though not always (each stake had its own tabernacle. Tabernacles and meetinghouses were generally placed in a central location within the gridiron plan of the Mormon town. There are approximately 20 tabernacles and 237 meetinghouses remaining in Utah that were constructed prior to 1940.

Tabernacle and meetinghouse design went through five significant periods of historical development. The first period is associated with the early years of Mormon western settlement and begins with the arrival of the Saints in the Great Salt Lake Valley in 1847 and extends until around 1870. Settlement period religious buildings were often constructed using readily available materials such as log, adobe, and stone. They were rectangular in plan and generally exhibited a minimum of architectural detail. The typical meetinghouse or tabernacle was a rather plain gable-roofed structure with the entrance in the narrow end. Some of the more substantial of these early buildings had Greek Revival or Gothic Revival features, though most could be described as generically classical, having plain but emphasized cornices and symmetrical fenestration. During this phase, the smaller meetinghouses were likely to serve a variety of functions such as schoolhouses, city halls, and social centers.

A second period of LDS Church tabernacle and meetinghouse architecture was ushered in by the ecclesiastical reforms of the late 1870s. Church membership had grown significantly during the 1850s and 60s. As the population increased, the system of ward organization that had been implemented during the initial years of settlement demanded attention. Beginning in the early 1870s, a general reorganization of the church commenced. The boundaries of many existing stakes were expanded to incorporate new areas of colonization. New wards were created in communities which had experienced substantive growth. Also, the administrative structure was solidified and channels of communication between Salt Lake City and the local branches were further defined. Along with the reorganization came a period of intense building activity. New stakes required new tabernacles and the creation of new wards meant constructing new meetinghouses; consequently a significant number of new religious buildings appeared throughout the state during the years between 1870 and about 1885. These buildings were generally larger and more substantial than those of the settlement period. The double-aisled New England meetinghouse plan was commonly utilized, and both Greek Revival and Gothic Revival features were still in vogue. At this time also it became characteristic of Mormon communities to have separate buildings for different functions. That is, the meetinghouse or tabernacle was used exclusively for assembly, a special office was built to handle the collection of tithing, the women’s church auxiliary had its own meeting hall, and so forth. Another result of this increased building activity was that many of the first-period structures were demolished to make way for the new ones.

The expansion activities of the IDS Church were curtailed during the 1880s and 1890s as the leadership’s attention was increasingly consumed by the struggle with the U.S. Government over the doctrine of polygamy. Under pressure from Congress, The Mormons disavowed the practice of plural marriage in 1890 and the way was paved for Utah to become a state in 1896. Nearly twenty years of political conflict, however, had left the church in confusion and disarray. Beginning in about 1898, a serious revitalization program was launched that included, among other things, a restructuring of the hierarchy, a return to financial solvency, a revival of faith and commitment among the membership, and a rebuilding of the church architecture.

As a symbol of rededication, a massive church building effort was initiated in 1898 that lasted until around the end of World War I. This period of architectural development may be considered one of “activation”, as the church moved to strengthen its institutional base in Utah and surrounding states. It was during this time that the first “modern” meetinghouses appeared. These multifunctional buildings gathered all the activities of the local church under one roof. Ward buildings now included an assembly hall or chapel, the offices of the bishop, a room for the women’s auxiliary, and classrooms for Sunday school. Designs varied. On one side, a conservation faction within the church hierarchy favored the Neoclassical and Colonial Revival, while on the other, progressive groups championed Prairie School and Arts and Crafts designs. All in all, the early years of the twentieth century mark one of the richest periods in LDS Church architectural history.

The fourth period in tabernacle and meetinghouse development spans roughly a thirty-year period between 1925 and 1955 and represents a time of both consolidation and experimentation. Again, there are both conservative and progressive strains. The multi-functional building became the mainstay of the building program, but designs ranged from the Moderne to the Colonial Revival. The IDS Church grew rapidly during the 1940s and 1950s and the need for new meetinghouse construction was even greater. Standardization increased, and there was a drive toward architectural efficiency that eventually lead to the creation of the LDS Church Building Department in 1954. 17 The work of building department architects remains the final and fifth stage in the development of Mormon religious architecture in Utah.

The Grantsville School and Meetinghouse is significant within the first or settlement phase of tabernacle and meetinghouse development. There are currently 20 meetinghouse buildings remaining in Utah from the first phase. It should be noted that not all were built prior to 1870. Because many outlying communities were not founded until the 1880s, first period buildings may actually exist from the 1890s and early 1900s. Most of these later-settled towns skipped period II, moving directly to the various forms of the multi-functional ward meetinghouse. In Grantsville, the first period meetinghouse was replaced by another meetinghouse in 1865, the Grantsville First Ward (National Register, 1982).

The remaining Period I meetinghouses are as follows:

Of the early meetinghouses with a documented multi-purpose function (marked with **), there are now six buildings remaining, and three have been extensively altered and no longer retain their historic integrity.

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