Edwin Robert Booth House

The significance of the Booth House lies in the merit of the architecture. The refined Victorian elegance of this home speaks eloquently of the bourgeois values of the rural entrepreneurial class and the effort they put into making their homes reflect their distance from the less successful participants in the frontier settlement experience.

The text on this page is from the nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places (#79002497), it was added to the register December 6, 1979 and it is located at 94 West 300 South in Nephi, Utah.

Edwin Robert Booth Jr. (1857-1914) was the Nephi City Recorder when he married Anna Elizabeth Brough (1860-1931) and built this home. He had been a councilman in Nephi’s first city government (1889). In 1899 he was elected mayor of Nephi. During the years following this term of office, he served as the postmaster. Booth f s business ventures included executive involvement with the Utah Wool Growers Company and the Nephi National Bank.

Utah Wool Growers Company and the Nephi National Bank. This impressive Victorian house was built by a man influential in local politics. His wife was a member of one of the first non-Indian families in the area–her father John had been one of those (as had Edwin f s father, Edwin Sr.) who had built within the Salt Creek Fort which had been constructed, beginning in 1854, as a defense against local Indians. Her brothers built ; homes in the area James built the home directly south.

Because of Edwin’s civic and business involvements, the Booths entertained extensively. The double parlor in the home was the setting for many parties and dinners–with nieces and nephews pitching-in to help.

Edwin Booth died in 1914; the house became the property of his wife. She lived in the home until 1927, then moved to Salt Lake City to live with her only child, Athelia Pitchforth. Anna’s brother Barton and his family moved into the house. Eventually they rented out the east half of the house, adding a dormer in the attic. The house passed to Athelia upon her mother’s death in 1931. Inherited debts and the general nationwide economic depression contributed to ownership of the house being transferred to a local bank. The Barton Brough family moved out of the home in 1938. His brother William F. bought the house and used it as rental property.

Odell Taylor bought the house several years later. Upon his death, the house was torn apart by relatives looking for money which he had supposedly hidden in the house. It remained unoccupied for many years. In July of this year the Steven Andersons moved into the home and are in the process of restoring it to its former glory.

Constructed in 1893 by Oscar M. Booth, this house is an excellent example of the Queen Anne architectural style in Utah. Some identifying features of the home include its side-hall plan, asymmetrical massing, long wrap-around porch, and the octagonal tower with conical roof. Mr. Booth was a local carpenter and builder who is best known in the Nephi area for his design of the Whitmore Mansion, listed on the National Register. It is also reported that in addition to the work Booth did in Nephi, he also worked in the Avenues in Salt Lake City during the 1890s. He was born in 1868 in Utah and continued his building activities, primarily in Juab County, until his death in 1944. Mr. Booth, along with his wife rose, owned this home until 1897, when it was then sold to another local resident of Nephi. The home retains its historic integrity and is a contributing resource within the city of Nephi.

395 East 100 South in Nephi, Utah

The George Carter Whitmore Mansion

This three story (basement and full attic) home is done in Eastlake/Queen Anne style with all the ornamentation, shingles, finials, moldings, lattices, carved panels, friezes, balusters, that characterize the style. The building replaced an older adobe building and intruded upon the commercial district.

The home was built on a foundation made of red sandstone quarried from nearby Andrews Canyon. This sandstone was also used around some windows and door frames. The tanned colored brick was shipped in from the east. The mortar is red to match the sandstone.

The home is asymmetrical in composition. There is a domed turret topped by a tin finial. Tin finials also top a gabled end and the side porch.

This side porch is rounded and articulated with round posts and a bracketed cornice.

The front porch also has rounded posts and a projecting pediment which has carved wood ornamentation. The front steps are flanked with two sandstone projecting sear walls on which the words “Colonial” “Villa” are chiseled.

The north side porch also has a projecting, carved pediment. On the second floor above the front porch is a spindle and spool-like baluster in front of double doors.

Both the front and the north side doors have glass ovals. The north side door also has a carved wood ornamentation.

The first floor windows are done with leaded glass in the upper sashes. Several of the windows on the first and second floors have curved glass panels.

The interior of the home is dominated on the first floor by the central staircase of carved, massive oak. The floors are also of oak. Oak is used in the four matching sets of sliding doors. The oak mantels are intact on the fireplaces in the reception room and the parlor. The parlor also has a rounded chamber decorated with oak filigree work.

The text on this page is from the nomination form (#78002663) for the National Register of Historic Places. The mansion was added to the register December 12, 1978 and it is located at 106 South Main Street in Nephi, Utah.

The Sanpete Valley Railroad was built in 1880; it ran from Wales, Sanpete County to Nephi for the purpose of hauling coal. The railroad completion initiated a business and building boom in Nephi Nephi became the center of four highways and the terminus of two railroads. It became known as “Little Chicago.”

George Carter Whitmore was one of the merchants (Hyde and Whitmore Mercantile Establishment ) in Nephi who prospered during the boom.

George C. Whitmore, the son of James M. (physician) and Elizabeth Carter Whitmore, had come to Utah with his parents from Texas in 1857 with the Homer Duncan Company. The family settled in St. George where James M. was killed by Navaho Indians in 1861.

George C. moved to Nephi in 1872 and began to establish himself as one of Nephi’s leading entrepreneurs and, later, philanthropists. In 1885 he organized the First National Bank of Nephi which eventually had three other branches the State Bank of Payson, the Fillmore Commercial and Savings Bank and the Fountain Green State Bank. (His brother James M. was a successful businessman in Castle Valley and established in 1901 the First National Bank at Price.)

George C. also speculated in land and had large land holdings in Nevada and Utah, particularly in Carbon County. His speculating was not always appreciated by others, as is indicated in a rather notorious water rights case in which Whitmore was eventually found guilty of usurping water on the Grassy Trail Creek. (L.A. Scott-Elliott vs. Whitmore, 1893)

Using his financial and social position, Whitmore also became involved in politics. From 1900 to 1908 he was a member of the Utah State Senate. He was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1904 and 1912. He was even considered for nomination as a candidate for governor but declined because of poor health. Prominent Utah politicians such as Simon Bamberger were frequent guests in Whitmore’s home.

This pretentious home representing the economic security and social prominence which Whitmore possessed, was designed and built by Oscar Booth, a local architect, using local labor 1898-1900. Whitmore, his wife Mary Elizabeth Hague and their eight children lived in the home only a few years before George C. died in Pasadena, California in 1917. His funeral was reported to have been one of the largest ever held in Nephi.

His son George M. who had taken over as president of the Nephi Bank also took over the home, (George C. had four sons who lived to maturity: George M. and L.L.A. took over the directorship of the Nephi Bank; Harvey E. was president of the National Copper Bank of S.L.C. and John W. owned the successful Toggery Clothing Store in Nephi and became mayor there 1911-1913.)

In 1938 the Whitmore family requested Frank Brough, who was then cashier in the Nephi Bank, to move into the mansion and care for it and other Whitmore holdings, including the cattle ranches in Carbon County. Brough used the reception room on the first floor of the mansion as his office. The Broughs lived in the home 21 years.

In 1962 Fred C. Painter purchased the home. (and sold it in 1978) Concreting over the front lawn and neglecting the house, the Painters used the property as part of their Painter Motor Company.