The Thomas and Mary Hepworth House, constructed in 1877, is architecturally significant under criterion C as the only known 2-story Italianate central-passage house in Salt Lake City. As such it marks a culmination of the long tradition of central-passage house designs in the United States and particularly in Utah. The house illustrates the longevity the tradition enjoyed in Utah before giving way to the popularity of the Victorian Picturesque styles of the 1880s. In some ways the house design was a bridge from the old to the new, with its traditional central-passage plan, updated with more vertical Victorian proportions and with stylish Italianate detailing.
The Thomas and Mary Hepworth House is located at 725 West 200 North in Salt Lake City, Utah and was added to the National Historic Register (#00000404) April 21, 2000.
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The Thomas and Mary Hepworth House, constructed in 1877, stands facing north on 200 North in the Northwest residential section of Salt Lake City. The House originally stood on 5/8 of an acre, which likely included a number of outbuildings. The west section of the property was eventually sold off, so that the house now sits on just under 1/3 of an acre. This smaller lot at one time included a barn, a garage, and a shed, none of which survived beyond the 1960s. While homes were built in the neighborhood soon after the area was platted in 1849, only a few of the early houses remain. Most of the houses in the area date from the 1880s to the 1910s, a period when the larger lots were sub-divided into numerous small parcels. This period of smaller homes built on smaller lots corresponds with the transformation of the neighborhood from a somewhat rural area to a more working-class urban neighborhood. As one of the oldest homes in the neighborhood, the Hepworth House stands out as one of the larger homes on one of the larger lots in the area.
The Thomas and Mary Hepworth House is a two-story central passage “l-house” with a single-story ell attached to the rear of the house. The foundation is constructed of local pink sandstone, laid in a random ashlar pattern in the front of the house and a random rubble pattern in the rear. The main two-story body of the structure is built of a soft-fired orange-colored brick laid in common bond pattern, while the single-story rear ell is frame covered with drop/novelty siding. The main elevation consists of five bays and a square porch protecting the central entry door. An Italianate cornice with panel moldings and paired sandwich brackets trims the roof and punctuates the gabled ends of the house with returns. The eaves conceal functioning box gutters and a corbelled chimney stands at each gabled end.
The form and massing of the Hepworth House have undergone relatively little change since its construction in 1877. The footprint of the house originally formed a simple T. The only change in the basic footprint came with the early addition of a single-room in the southwest corner of the T. This addition was in place at least by 18981 , and had likely been there for quite some time before that year. Long porches originally flanked both sides of the rear ell, but they were altered over time and eventually removed. Otherwise, the body of the structure remains primarily as it was built. The greatest changes to the house came through the deterioration and removal of original detailing. The original front porch, while essentially the same size as the current one, was far more elaborate. It had wooden balustrades, fluted Corinthian columns, and a balustrade on the roof above, creating a second-story balcony. This balustrade had disappeared by the 1920s and by the late 1930s the columns and railings had been removed3 . The rest of the porch was replaced in the 1980s, due to structural problems. Likewise, the chimneys deteriorated over a long period of time and were eventually knocked off at the roofline and covered over in the 1980s4 . The chimneys were re-built in 1996 based on photographs and the remaining physical evidence. Decorative Italianate pediments originally hung over each window and the main entrance on the front of the house. These details were likely removed in the 1950s when the house was modernized with asbestos siding. The siding on the front and side elevations was removed in 1999 to reveal the original brickwork. The cornice detailing on the front and back of the house also suffered from neglect and most of it was removed. These sections of the cornice were re-constructed in 1997, based on photographs and the surviving cornice sections. Originally, the front part of the house had double-hung sash windows with two-over-two divided lights. The sashes were replaced with aluminum framed windows, probably in the 1960s or 70s, but the window casings were left intact.
The interior of the house is laid out in a typical central passage “l-house” plan. The entry hall contains a staircase to the second floor. A paneled octagonal newel post stands at the base of the staircase. The post as well as the surviving octagonal balusters and handrail are of walnut. The rest of the woodwork in the house, which is of pine or fir, was originally painted to imitate oak and maple. Eventually all the woodwork in the house was painted over with solid paint colors. On the main floor there is a single large parlor on each side of the entry hall. The parlor on the east was the formal parlor and included a fireplace with a cast-iron mantel, a plaster medallion on the ceiling, and a coved plaster cornice around the room. Unfortunately, the original mantel and the ceiling medallion disappeared from the house. Only portions of the cornice remain. On the second floor, there were originally two bedrooms off each side of the central hallway. In 1943, when the house first became a multi-family dwelling, the southeast bedroom was divided into a bathroom and a kitchen. At some point partition walls were also constructed underneath the stairway and at the top of the stairs to divide the house into apartments. The frame ell at the rear of the house originally included a dining room, a pantry, and a kitchen, as well as a small room that at some point became the first bathroom in the house. A single room addition (mentioned above) was constructed (or perhaps created from an existing porch) in the corner formed by the ell and the brick portion of the house on the west side.
The Hepworth House was constructed in 1877 for Thomas and Mary Hepworth. Thomas and Mary were natives of England, born in 1826 and 1832 respectively. Not long after their marriage they converted to Mormonism in Liverpool and in 1852 they set out for America, making the long sea voyage and then the wagon trip across the plains to Utah. While they apparently lived in a number of communities in Utah, they eventually settled in Salt Lake City, where Thomas worked as a butcher in the City Market and in time set up his own meat market, T. Hepworth and Sons. In 1872, Mr. Hepworth purchased a piece of property on the west side of town5 . It is likely that at the time the property already included some kind of residence, because the Hepworths were listed in city directories as living on the property for several years following the purchase, but before the current house was built.
By 1877, the Hepworths had accumulated enough wealth to build a new home and construction apparently began late in the summer of that year. Physical evidence of this date of construction is found in the house itself. The roof of the house is made of planks apparently taken from some kind of billboard or fence. On the planks there are still fragments of posters advertising the coming of “Montgomery Queen’s California Menagerie, Caravan and Great Double Circus.” This circus performed in Salt Lake City on July 2 and 3, 18776 . By late August the planks had apparently been salvaged for use in the Hepworths’ new house, for a cryptic note in the attic states, “7 days, masons started Thursday August 23,1877.” This is likely a reference to the commencement of the stone foundation for the house. The brick portion of the house and the frame ell were constructed together. The only addition to the house over the years came fairly soon in its history, as evidenced by the square nails and the same circus-billboard planks used in its construction. Sanborn Maps show the one-room addition in place by 1898, but it had likely been there for quite some time before that. The Hepworths, who would have had 8 children living at home when the house was built, continued to occupy the house as their children married and left home. Thomas died in 1895, following an accidental fall in an elevator shaft. After his death, Mary continued to live in the house until 1904. Failing health prompted her to go live with a daughter in Los Angeles, where she died in 1905. The family sold the house to Samuel and Emma Bjorklund in 1906. They also sold off the western part of the original property separately and a new house was soon constructed there.
Samuel and Emma Bjorklund were both natives of Sweden. While there is no evidence that either of them were ever members of the Mormon church, it is likely that they came to Utah with family members who had converted to Mormonism. In Sweden, Samuel had been trained in “dental surgery, tonsillectomy, and barbering,” but was apparently not allowed to practice the first two professions after arriving in Utah in the early 1880s7 . He did, however, work as a barber for many years in a succession of barbershops in Salt Lake City. Samuel and Emma were married in Salt Lake City in 1886 and eventually had four children. They occupied a number of residences in the city and even had one built, but they didn’t settle down permanently until they purchased the house from the Hepworth family. During the time the Bjorklund family owned the house the only significant changes they made to it were the removal of the rear porches and the pillars and balustrades on the front porch. After their children were grown, one un-married daughter, Inga, and one widowed daughter, Frances, continued to live in the house. Following Emma’s death in 1932 and Samuel’s in 1939, the two daughters continued to occupy the home for a couple of years.
In about 1941 the Bjorklund family sold the house to a third immigrant couple, John and Marie Roothoff. The Roothoffs were natives of Holland and had come to Utah as Mormon immigrants. The Roothoffs lived in the house for only a few years, but their impact on the history of the building was great. After living in the house for a time, they began in 1943 to divide the house into apartments9 and then moved out, continuing to rent out the apartments for a number of years. In 1953, Irven and Mary Light purchased the house as their own residence, but continued renting out part of the house as well. During the time they owned the property, the Lights carried out the most extensive changes to the structure. This included removing some of the decorative woodwork on the exterior, covering the brick with asbestos siding, and further dividing the house to accommodate apartments10 . After the Lights sold the house in 1963, it would pass through multiple landlord owners, functioning as a rental property for more than thirty years.
The house is currently undergoing an extensive restoration. As noted earlier, the chimneys have been re-built, most of the asbestos siding has been removed from the brick section of the house, and missing cornice details have been reproduced. The restoration will eventually include replacement of aluminum-framed windows with historically accurate wooden-sash windows, reconstruction of the historic front porch, and duplication of the missing window pediments. Fortunately, there is sufficient photographic and physical evidence to accurately reproduce these lost elements.
Architectural Significance
The Hepworth House is located on the west side of Salt Lake City in one of the original city plats (Plat C) laid out in 1849 by Mormon pioneers who had first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley two years earlier. This plat, like other portions of the city, was made up of a grid of wide streets surrounding ten-acre blocks. Each block contained eight lots. In 1872, Thomas Hepworth purchased one-half of one of these lots on a block situated about 7 or 8 blocks from the central business section of the city. It is clear from the house he built that Thomas Hepworth had become quite prosperous and wanted a home that would express that status. Consequently, he chose a house form that had long been “something of a national symbol of economic achievement” – the central-passage house11 . Furthermore, he chose a two-story version with the more impressive five-bay façade. To this strong traditional symbol of success he added vertical proportioning and stylish Italianate detailing, including a bracketed cornice, pediments over the windows, and porch balustrades and Corinthian columns. It is clear even today that there was a conscious effort to make the house as impressive as possible. The brick portion at the front of the house has all the large windows and all the elaborate detailing. The rear ell was constructed of wood and lacked detailing. The bulk of the available resources went instead for the main façade.
By 1877 the central-passage house had long been a popular form in Utah. The form had its roots in the Georgian house and, in time, became the quintessential American house. The two-story, single-pile version became so common in the midwestern states of Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana, that it was dubbed the “l-House”. Early Mormon settlers brought this preference for the central-passage house to Utah and in the early 1850s most of the finest homes in the early Mormon communities were built in that form. This included the Beehive House, Brigham Young’s official residence, as well as those of other prominent LDS church leaders. Although the central-passage form was not the most common form in early Utah, it was the house plan of choice for almost anyone who could afford it, and Salt Lake City boasted scores of classically proportioned central passage homes. In Utah, as in other parts of the country, the central passage house was a recognizable symbol of social and economic success.
The elite preference for this form persisted through the 1860s, despite the introduction of new architectural styles in the Eastern United States. The coming of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 brought the end of Utah’s isolation and the 1870s saw new styles beginning to impact the trends in Utah Territory. While some adopted the new styles outright, many simply applied the new styles to familiar building forms. This was particularly true in the smaller towns in the territory, where classically inspired building forms with Gothic Revival or Italianate detailing became fairly common. In Salt Lake City, where the newer styles were more likely to be fully embraced, as in Brigham Young’s lavish new Second Empire “Gardo” House, the mix of the old and new still found a place. The Thomas and Mary Hepworth House is an outstanding urban example of these architectural “bridges” between the traditional and the up-to-date.
While the Hepworths occupied the home for many years, their house was never more stylish than the day it was built. By the early 1880s building in such a style was almost unheard of in Salt Lake City. Within a decade the tradition of central-passage houses had almost completely died out in rural Utah as well.
Today, the Thomas and Mary Hepworth House remains as a rare symbol of nineteenth century values and social structure. Of the numerous central-passage houses that once stood in Salt Lake City, only a handful remain. Of those that do, only the Hepworth House, with its central passage plan and its Italianate detailing, reflects the architectural transition from old to new that took place in Utah in the 1870s.
