Keith and Griffin Houses
34 & 35 Haxton Place 1910,
Frederick A. Hale, SLC

Pairs of sandstone pillars topped by wrought iron arches mark the entrance to Haxton Place. This small, picturesque subdivision was developed in 1909 by real estate investors James Keith and Thomas Griffin. They named the development after a street in Griffin’s native London. To insure that only “first class” residences would be built in Haxton Place, they placed restrictive covenants on the properties specifying the height, setback, and minimum cost of the houses. As was typical of subdivisions across the country in the early 20th century, the covenants also prohibited the sale of any property to persons of African or Chinese ancestry.

Keith and Griffin built their own English Country-inspired homes at the south end of Haxton Place. While their houses look like a duplex, they are actually separate buildings divided by 17 inches. The space between the houses is stuccoed over to give the appearance of a massive single building. The houses’ asymmetrical facades, steep roofs with clipped gables, and tall, narrow, multipane windows are drawn from the Tudor Revival style. There were originally tennis courts behind these houses for the use of Haxton Place residents.
(from Preservation Utah’s walking tour)

34 Haxton Place at the South Temple Historic District in Salt Lake City, Utah.