This house offers a view of the range of Spring City’s architectural tradition. Built c. 1875, the original structure was a stone, hall-parlor house. The rear adobe addition was probably completed within just a few years after the main portion. Little is known about Iver Petersen, except that he also built the stone granary located on the property. The granary is one of the best preserved and most substantial granaries of Spring City.
Located at 309 North Main Street in Spring City, Utah
Iver Petersen (1844-1881), a Danish immigrant, built this stone, hall-parlor plan house in the mid 1870s. A rear adobe addition was constructed shortly thereafter. He died at a young age leaving a widow with several young children. A stone granary behind the house has been made into a living space.(*)
Constructed c. 1911, this one-and-one-half-story house is a nice example of large bungalow, the most common house type in Utah during the early twentieth century. The house exhibits characteristics of the transition between the waning Victorian Eclectic style and the then current Arts and Crafts style. These details include wide eaves with classical modillions, large side dormers, decorative iron railing and square classical columns on the large from porch, and the decorative use of multiple materials with the combination of brick and patterned shingles in the gable ends. These elements combine to produce a unique dwelling.
According to the title, Esther Catherine W. Haslam was the original owner of the house and she deeded it to David and Emma Haslam in 1943. Most likely the house was always used as a rental, for city directories indicate that neither of the Haslam families lived here, and residents’ names changed on a regular basis.
Built in 1908-10 by Patrick J. Moron as a carriage house, this structure was converted into a duplex in the 1930s. Moran operated his own contracting company known as P.J. Moron Contractor Inc., and became president of the Portland Cement Co. of Utah in 1918. He designed this one-and-one-half story building with Arts and Crafts and English Tudor stylistic features such as half-timbering, gabled dormers, stucco walls, exposed rafters, and casement windows.
This building was originally designed as a carriage house to accommodate four electric carriages or three automobiles. An underground gasoline tank provided fuel for the vehicles through a pump inside the south door. A large basement held a coal room and commercial-size furnace that heated the carriage house, the Moran family dwelling to the north, and the bungalow to the northeast, built for Moran’s mother-in-law. A bedroom over the porte cochere (archway) was used at one time by the chauffeur and his wife and, later a housekeeper. When ownership of the property changed c. 1936, the carriage house was remodeled for use as a duplex.
This home is located at 17-19 South 1100 East in Salt Lake City, Utah
Johannes Huber was the catalyst by which hundreds of Swiss immigrants established themselves in Midway and the west. He immigrated by ox train in 1863, overseeing sixty converts to the Mormon church, including his future wife. Brigham Young called Huber to return and serve as President of the Swiss-German Mission, 1871-1874, where he translated and published the Book of Mormon. Maria Magdalena Munz Huber was schooled in the fabrication of textiles and lace. She extended this homesite as a refuge and gathering place for community events, especially in music and the arts.
Huber built this one-story, wood-frame house in 1878. Inner adobe brick walls were covered with board-and-batton in a hall-parlor plan. Two later lean-to additions were used as dining and kitchen work areas. In the gabled attic slept nine of ten children. Travertine limestone was gathered from warm mineral springs to form the two-foot thick walls of the creamery, c. 1885.
John Huber wrote the history of Midway from 1859-1910. He died in the home in 1914, his widow, Mary Huber, in 1935, and their youngest son, Joseph, remained until the inception of Wasatch Mountain State Park.
The Meiling-Seely House, 91 South 500 West, Mt. Pleasant, Utah
A Danish immigrant, Jens C. Meiling, built the first, smaller part of this fine brick home in 1870. the bulk of this one-of-a-kind residence was erected around the earlier house, in 1890 by John H. Seely. Influenced heavily by Neo-classicism, the house has round-columned, classical porches, a bracketed cornice, two-story, square corner tower and extensive ornamental brickwork.
Meiling came from Denmark and in 1859 acquired 20 acres of farmland in Mt. Pleasant. He supplemented his income by making bricks. For many years, Sanpete settlers had difficulty securing clay of sufficient quality to produce fired brick and relied mainly upon sun-dried adobe as a building material. Meiling’s brick yard, located just west of town, was the first in Mt. Pleasant to turn out kiln-fired bricks, probably in the late 1860’s. Meiling sold the house to John H. Seely in 1887 for $1500. Seely was one of the most successful livestock breeders in the Intermountain West. He is credited with introducing purebred French Rambouillet sheep into Utah during the 1890’s. His achievements with selective breeding improved Utah’s range stock, contributing directly to the remarkable success of the local sheep industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Seely helped make Mt. Pleasant the Rambouillet breeding capital of the world, as well as the commercial center of central Utah’s livestock industry.(*)
This 1 1/2 story Victorian, eclectic crosswing home is believed to have been built in 1881. The adobe bricks that form the walls were made on the property from sand and clay from the backyard and the nearby hill to the north. Some of the other materials in the home were previously used and came from the mining town of Silver Reef. Silver Reef is located approximately 30 miles north of Santa Clara on Interstate 15 and had been a silver mining boomtown in the 1860s. By the 1880s, the town was being phased out and both materials and entire buildings were up for sale. The Hafens took advantage of this opportunity by purchasing lumber and possibly other materials to build the home. It has received only one addition, a room on the rear, since it was finished.
The home quickly became an integral part of Santa Clara’s early history. It served as Santa Clara’s first official post office, and it also housed the beginning of Santa Clara’s merchandise cooperative. After Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI) was founded in Salt lake City, other cooperative stores were founded throughout Utah. One of these was started in Santa Clara. John George Hafen became its first manager, and he stored the merchandise stock in one of the rooms in the house.
John George Hafen was born in Switzerland in 1838. His mother died a few years later. In 1861, he and his father and sister Barbara traveled from Switzerland to Salt Lake City. Upon arriving at their destination, John George was married to Susette Bosshard, a young woman he had met before leaving Switzerland. They were all new converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had traveled with other new members who came to Salt Lake City to reside with the main body of the Church. Soon after arriving, however, this group of Swiss settlers was called by Church President Brigham Young to travel on to the southern part of Utah. President Young assigned them the task of establishing a town on the Santa Clara River. Within weeks of their arrival, the town site was surveyed, and on December 22, 1861, it was dedicated.
The new Santa Clara residents intended to establish a grape-growing industry. Residential lots and vineyard plots were assigned through drawings from a hat. John George Hafen, his father Hans George Hafen, and his sister Barbara and her husband drew adjoining lots and vineyard plots. John George Hafen built a small log cabin for himself and Susette on their lot, and Hans George Hafen built a small shanty on his property. Eventually, they built and moved into the large home on Santa Clara Drive that is pictured here.
Located at 117 E 200 N in Springville, this 1876 home was formerly owned by Thomas Mendenhall, the co-owner of Deal Bro’s and Mendenhall Mercantile and the owner of the first bank. His family was one of the 8 original families to settle Springville.
The Crossgrove House, built circa 1885 and later expanded, is a two-story brick vernacular classical residence. The Crossgrove House represents a multi-generational family’s contributions to the Draper community. Three generations of the Crossgrove family lived together through the most important decades of Draper’s development. The first owners, James and Martha Crossgrove, were notable farmers and ranchers; James also started a brickyard and was a brick mason during the late 1800s. The second owners, Baynard and Matilda Crossgrove, lived in the house and oversaw the transformation of the family holdings into a large-scale poultry farm. Their daughter, Hulda, was the third owner of the property. Hulda was an educator at the Draper Park School for many years. The house remained in the family for over 100 years, until 1999.
The Niels P. Hjort house is architecturally significant as an example of a modified temple-form, gable-facade cross-wing type, which was one of the basic residential building types implemented by early Utah settlers. The vernacular classical design of the house, with subtle Greek Revival influence and stone construction, is in many ways typical of early Sanpete Valley dwellings, where oolite limestone was a common building material. This particular type of limestone was used not only in swellings but in larger commercial, public, and religious buildings including there prominent Manti LDS Temple. It was even exported for out-of-state construction projects.
Sanpete Valley had an ethnically diverse population, drawing immigrants from all parts of northern Europe. Neils P. Hjort, as a Norwegian immigrant, was a member of the Scandinavian population in the valley. Although some Scandinavian immigrants constructed houses after the traditions of their homelands, Hjort, perhaps feeling the need to acculurate with other Mormon converts, chose to build his house in a traditional American form.
