Charles Dennis White House

The Charles D. White House is significant in terms of its architecture and the lives of its original occupants.

The house represents one of Thomas Frazer f s best designed homes in his mature style of building. Its proportions are pleasing, as are its lines, with all its parts contributing to the whole. The craftsmanship is unsurpassed and, structurally, the home is in excellent condition.

Charles D. White was a prominent citizen in pioneer Beaver. He was a farmer and a herdsman, both managing and owning large herds of cattle and sheep. In 1875 he managed the sheep herds of the L.D.S. Church’s United Order. He was also for many years the superintendent of the Beaver Co-op Store, a very large mercantile institution.

Mr. White also played a very active role in his Church. He served as bishop of Beaver’s First Ward (L.D.S. Church) from 1877 until 1891 when he was named President of the entire Beaver Stake.

Mr. White was a polygamist and one of his two wives was active in Church affairs.

His first wife, Mary Ann Greenwood White, grew up in Beaver and served in the Beaver Stake Relief Society as a treasurer and a counselor. His second wife was Margaret Gilles, but not much information is available regarding her life.

In conclusion, the Charles D. White house is significant because it is still regarded as one of Beaver’s mansions. It’s size and quality of construction are indicative of Mr. White’s prominence in his community. The design is representative of Thomas Frazer‘s mature style of building, a style that was first synthesized some five year earlier in the Duckworth Grimshaw House, also in Beaver, Utah. The Charles D. Whtie House is Frazer’s largest extant house and it displays five of the six architectural elements common to his style of building: dormer windows, a center gable, ashlar stonework, bargeboard along the eaves and dormers, and white-painted mortar joints.

115 East 400 North in Beaver, Utah – Listed on the National Register of Historic Places (#80003889) on February 14, 1980. The text on this page is from the nomination form for the register.

The Charles D. White House is a large, one and a half story home. It was built c. 1882 by Thomas Frazer, the local stone mason, for White and one of his two families. The house has an original “T” plan and has a simple vernacular, gabled design. It is constructed of a native black basalt, with a gray granite being used for the lintels above the windows and doors. Large basalt blocks comprise the quoin stones at the corners of the building.

On the ground floor, the front façade displays four windows and one door, all arranged symmetrically. Upstairs, there is a central gable with a door in it, and dormer windows on either side. The dormers and eaves are finished with a decorative bargeboard, while the steeply pitched roof supports two end-wall chimney stacks.

The rear section of the house is similar to the front façade in that it has two dormer windows upstairs, on either side of a door which leads out to a porch. The eaves and dormers are again finished with bargeboard and there is another end-wall chimney.

The masonry work is very typical of Thomas Frazer’s building style. The two facades that face the street are built of cut stone, while the remaining facades are composed of rubble stone. With the cut stone blocks, Frazer squared them roughly, then set them in place and gave them a perfectly square appearance by adding black-dyed mortar to their edges. He then either beaded the mortar joints or recessed them and he always painted the mortar joints white. At the C. D. White House, the mortar joints are recessed and their white appearance is perfectly preserved under the porch in the corner of the house.

The most interesting detail on the interior of the house is the hand-painted graining on the French doors of the music room.

One of the original granaries is still standing on the east side of the house. It displays one façade of cut stone, the side that faces the street, and has a door and a window on the same façade.