This mission chapel was erected in 1880 as part of the efforts of the Reverend Duncan McMillan to evangelize central Utah. Originally located on Main Street, the building was torn down and rebuilt at this location in 1937/38. This church also symbolizes a historic decision by the Protestant churches of Utah not to compete with each other in areas where their numbers were few, but to unite as a community church to serve all denominations.
This elegant stone house was built in 1883 for Isaac Behunin, one of the first settlers in Sanpete County. Mixing Gothic style inspired dormers with Greek cornice detailing, the house exemplifies the decorative eclecticism found in Mormon domestic architecture of the period. Behunin sold the house to Simon T. Beck in 1887 for $1,200. Mr. Beck was a wealthy sheepman.
This Victorian Eclectic style house was probably built about 1903 by Ephraim Jensen, a businessman and an official of the LDS Church. Jensen built several houses along the block, including 140 W. Clinton in which he lived. Upon completion the house was sold to Mrs. Anna Cornelia Tjirno about when little is known. Anna lived here until her death in 1924.
The Anthony W. Bessey Home 415 North 300 West in Manti, Utah
Anthony Bessey probably had this small stone house built shortly after his arrival in Manti in 1858. The home has a long association with the Bessey family and certainly construction features indicate an early building date. The house is historically important because as one of the first group of homes built outside the Manti forts, it represents the initial stage of local community development. Architecturally the Bessey House is significant as one of a number of typical house types utilized by the early Utah settlers and becomes an important example of Sanpete vernacular building.
The town of Manti, settled in 1849 by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, was the first town in the Sanpete Valley Colony. Colonists arrived in the fall of 1849 and after wintering in dugouts and wagon boxes, laid out a city in the spring and summer of 1850.1 By the winter some 20 log homes had been erected and work was beginning on a meetinghouse. One year later travelers to Manti reported seeing “several handsome two-story adobe houses, many one story dwellings, a good grist mill and a sawmill.” Threat of Indian attack caused a general pattern of fort building in the 1852-1854 period. Mormon forts were erected to enclose rows of small dwellings and the Walker War (1853-1855) made the security of protected habitation attractive to Manti residents. Peace in the later years of the decade allowed Manti residents to move out to their city lots and begin again the process of city building It was about this time, in 1858, that Anthony Bessey arrived in Manti.
Anthony Wayne Bessey was born in 1835 in Bethel, Maine. In his early years Bessey followed both the cabinetmaking and shoemaking trades. By the 1850’s Bessey had joined the Mormon church and in 1857 he migrated westward to “Zion” in Utah. At first he made shoes in Salt Lake City but in 1858 he moved his family south to the Sanpete Valley and settled in Manti. Here Bessey farmed and pursued his shoe making trade and by 1870 had a personal value of about $700 in property. For 18 years Bessey occupied a position on the high council of the Sanpete Stake of the Mormon church. In 1873-1875 he served as City Mayor and was elected to the city council in the years 1883-1890. Bessey probably had this small stone house built shortly after his arrival in Manti, c.1860. The house is an excellent example of the sturdy homes the Mormon pioneers built during the early stages of great basin settlement. In selecting a house design, Bessey followed a well-known traditional plan.
The Anthony Bessey House, built c.1860, is a 1-1/2 story square cabin folk/vernacular house type (see plan drawing). Measuring 22’x 17′ on the exterior, the house is one of the larger single unit square homes to be found in Utah. The second story is quite spacious and is reached by a boxed staircase which runs along the south wall. The stairs to the cellar run underneath those leading to the upper floor. On the north wall is the fireplace which is extremely large, more than 6′ in width. The interior has been remodeled to contemporary standards.
Externally the Bessey House is in excellent condition and virtually unaltered. The wall material is oolite limestone most certainly extracted from the “Temple Hill Quarry” several blocks to the east. The façade is coursed ashlar; the mortar is flush with incised lines emphasizing the geometrical coursing. Other walls are less handsomely treated and while they are cut-stone they lack the even coursing present on the façade.
The house has a simple gable roof with stone fireplace at the north located internally in the wall. The stone end walls extend up to the ridge of the roof in the gables. Decoration is minimal with the heavy stone lintels over the façade openings the only suggestion of ornamentation. The façade itself is unusually asymmetrical. The front door is placed centrally, but windows occur only to the right or north side. The upstairs window is a “half” window, typical of 1-1/2 story structures. To the left of the door the wall is blank. This fenestration pattern is distinctive in its unabashed asymmetry but can possibly be partially explained by internal factors. On the south wall, beginning right at the southeast corner, the staircase extends about 3′ into the room. Windows on this end of the façade would be partially blocked by the staircase so were deleted from the overall design.
Alterations which detract from the home’s historic appearance are few. There is a one story plastered adobe room added to the rear. This west room is gabled with a brick stone flue chimney and is undoubtedly a 19th century addition to the original square house. A modern gabled front door canopy is the only serious alteration of the original house.
The square bay (roughly square) evolved as a folk building unit in England during middle ages and was employed extensively in cottage construction. The house appeared as a one-room type (with or without upper loft) as was utilized extensively throughout the English American Colonies.” Advancing westward, the “square-cabin” type house is ubiquitous on the American frontier. Mormon examples have been recorded at Nauvoo, Illinois and the square cabin house was extensively dispersed throughout the IDS western communities. Anthony Bessey most certainly would have been familiar with such a square house plan in his native Maine and opted for this rather modest design in his new western home.
The Bessey House is one of a number of folk building types employed by Manti residents in the first stages of settlement. The house is typical of smaller, more inexpensive homes built by the pioneers. Despite its rather distinctive façade, this house gains its architectural and historical significance through its unexceptional nature, i.e., its ability to define the capabilities of the average. There are both larger and smaller homes in Manti, built by people who had both more and less than Anthony Bessey. Bessey’s home, taken in the larger context of vernacular building tradition of the area, helps expand the historical record to include the total population, not just a small percentage of exceptional individuals.
The W. P. Fuller Paint Company Office and Warehouse, built in 1922, is significant under Criteria A and C. The building is historically significant for its association with the twentieth-century development of Salt Lake City’s west side railroad and industrial district. It is located in an area of Salt Lake City that was, in the early settlement period, a neighborhood of residences and small family farms. After the coming of the railroad in 1870, the area was the preferred location for large-scale industries that wanted to access the railroad and expand their manufacturing capacities. The Fuller building was a transitional building designed to accommodate both rail and truck traffic. The building is also architecturally significant under Criterion C as one of the first all concrete warehouses in the city. The design for the concrete frame and curtain wall construction probably originated at the national offices of the W. P. Fuller Company in San Francisco, but was executed by local contractors John F. and Henry E. Schraven. The formed concrete support columns were innovative engineering for Salt Lake City of the period, and modest Art Deco details were an early manifestation of the style, especially in such a utilitarian structure. The W. P. Fuller Paint Company Office and Warehouse is being nominated as part of the Salt Lake City Business District Multiple Resource Area context. After sitting mostly vacant for several years the building was rehabilitated in 2004 and is a contributing resource in one of Salt Lake’s historic west side neighborhoods.
As the political capital of the State of Utah and the social and economic center for the Intermountain West, Salt Lake City has been one of the nation’s major regional centers since its establishment in 1847. The discovery of valuable ores in the canyons near Salt Lake in the early 1860s and the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 secured the city’s place as a major center of mining, smelting and refining. As a result, the number of foundries in the city quadrupled by the turn of the nineteenth century. Most of these facilities were located along an industrial corridor along either side of the numerous rail lines between 300 West and 500 West.(Originally 400 West was known as 3rd or Third West. All numbered streets in the area were renumbered in 1972. The original numbering system was based on the zero-numbered “Temple” streets bordering Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City. West Temple, an original zero street, was followed by 1st West, 2nd West, 3 West and so on. Similar numbering came from North Temple. Address numbers were based on the origin point at the intersection of South Temple and Main Street (East Temple). This resulted in some confusion between street numbers north and west of the origin, and numbers to the south and east. For example, the address of Fuller Paint building was 404 West 4th South, although it was located at the corner of 3rd West and 4th South. In 1972 North and West Temple streets were renumbered 100 North and 100 West. First West became 200 West, 2nd West became 300 West, etc. The older numbering system is found on all historic documents used in researching this nomination; however, within the nomination the streets and buildings are designated by their current addresses. ) The construction of the Rio Grande (passenger) Depot at 300 S. Rio Grande Street (350 West) in 1910, as well as nearby freight depots, was celebrated as an event and was another sign that the previously semi-rural neighborhood had become city’s railroad district, and center for industry and warehousing.
Block 47 of Salt Lake City’s Plat A was located just west Block 48, the site of Salt Lake’s first pioneer fort and today’s Pioneer Park. By the 1880s, two tracks of the Oregon Short Line Railroad ran down the center of 400 West. The east half of Block 47 was originally divided into residential lots, but the 1898 Sanborn map indicates an early industry, a coal storage plant with a rail spur, was in the area. By the time of the 1911 map three industries (a seed and produce company, a meat packing plant, and a lime-cement company) had built in the, middle of the block. Two rail spurs curved from the main line into the block to service the companies. There were still several dwellings and one store at the north and south ends of the block.
On August 24, 1921, W, P. Fuller & Co. purchased the property from the heirs of Henry Reiser. A building permit for the construction of a four-story warehouse at be built at a price of $100,000 was approved on May 3, 1922. No architect was listed.3 The builders were listed as John F. Schraven (1854-1939) and his son Henry E. Schraven (1879-1945). The Schraven family moved from Kentucky to Utah in 1902 and immediately began their father-son contracting business. Henry Schraven continued the firm after his father’s retirement in 1929. The firm built the Salt Lake library, the Model Laundry building, a number of public schools, and several projects for the Union Pacific Railroad. Construction probably took place that summer. The address is listed in the 1922 city directory for Salt Lake City.
William Parmer Fuller (1827-1890) was born in New Hampshire. He went to California in search of gold in 1849. Unfortunately, he was frustrated in his quest for gold and became a paperhanger in Sacramento. He partnered with a man named Seton Heather and the two made a fortune in the paint and glass industry. Fuller settled in the San Francisco area in 1862 where he founded a branch of Fuller and Heather. In 1877, when Fuller established a partnership with the Whittier Company, the firm built the largest plant on the Pacific Coast. The partnership dissolved in 1894, and the reorganized W. P. Fuller & Company began to realize plans to dominate the paint, oil and glass market in the Western United States. The company first expanded into other parts of California and then to the Pacific Northwest. The company established its first branch in the Intermountain West in Boise, Idaho in 1908.
In 1921-1922, Salt Lake City became the fifteenth branch and the eighth executive office for the Fuller Company. The building in Salt Lake City was designed as a regional office and distribution center. A separate retail store was established in the downtown business district. Prior to this time, the company had used hardware merchants and dealers for distribution. At the time of the construction of the building in Salt Lake City, I. F. Littlefield, assisted by William P. Fuller II, managed the company. The 1920s marked a period of change for the company: the proliferation of specialized retail stores and ownership of the land where offices and warehouses were located. The design of the building was probably generated by architects in the corporate office. There is a Fuller building with a similar design in Tacoma, Washington. The family and company had sustained heavy losses during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. This event may have made the reinforced concrete construction method particularly attractive for warehouse designers at the Fuller Company.
The W. P. Fuller Company was one of six paint manufacturers in Salt Lake City, most of which were local firms. As was customary at the time for many industries, W. P. Fuller had a retail store in downtown Salt Lake at 40 East 200 South (building demolished). The company sold paints, oils, glass, varnish, and greases. The office and warehouse was located at 404 W. 400 South, near the railroad tracks. A newspaper article from the Deseret News, dated December 2, 1922, described the recently completed building in detail. The reporter was particularly impressed by the 70,000 square feet of floor space, the 15,000-gallon water tank, and the Fuller roofing material. According to the article, the main floor was to be used for office space, shelving, storage, and for glass cutting. The main floor tower room was used for paint testing. At the rail platform, three rail cars could be unloaded (or loaded) simultaneously. The truck landing could service four trucks at a time with a garage room for the company’s rolling equipment. The mezzanine was used for storing brushes, bronze powders, tools, etc. The second floor was devoted to the paints, varnishes, and enamels. The top floor was where the glass was stored. The offices took up only a small portion of the warehouse floor. The office was the only part of the building heated.
Art B. Cadman, the manager at the time, was quoted in the article was the manager in the 1920s, describing the company’s new facilities: “W. P. Fuller & Company stated in 1849 and has been reaching out for larger territory ever since. This is now the most easterly branch and one of the largest, as well as embodying all the latest innovations that experience has found necessary.” Cadman stated that the Salt Lake branch had “by far the largest territory to serve in regard to distance covered of any of the Fuller branches” and that the “payroll will probably include 75 men and woman all of whom are Utahns.” The author of the article declared, “It should be a matter of pride to Salt Lake that it is classes as one of the biggest branches of this great [Fuller] organization.”
By the 1930s, rail activity in the area had decreased, but a 1937 tax photograph of the south elevation shows the truck docks in use. In 1941, the seamed metal and frame addition was built on the west elevation. It was used as a glass warehouse. A lunch stand was built on the southwest corner of the property in 1949. There was also a service station in the yard. In the early 1950s, the interior was substantially remodeled. Historic photographs taken in 1951 by the Shipler photographers of Salt Lake City indicate the offices were expanded and modernized on the second floor and mezzanine levels. The exterior was probably painted at the same time. The large corrugated metal shed was added to the property in 1951. By the 1950s, the company had moved their retail store to 211 South State Street. A full-page advertisement in the 1951 Salt Lake directory read “W P. Fuller & Co. for Paint – Glass – Wallpaper; Manufacturers of Paints for Farm, Home, Industry; Complete Glass and Installation Service.”
The W. P. Fuller Paint Company building was in use by the Fuller Company until 1965 when it was sold to the Nielson Investment Company. The office and warehouse was used as rental space for a variety of businesses. The 1969 Sanborn map shows the building divided for use by an auto repair shop, a sign painting company, and a school supplies warehouse. The metal shed housed three enterprises: a tire warehouse, a furniture warehouse and a garage. Between 1986 and 2003, the property changed hands five times. The Snarr Advertising Company was a long-time tenant. The owners mostly leased the space for light manufacturing and storage; for example, trucking, distribution, and the manufacture of fireplace equipment. On at least two occasions, in 1,998 and 1999, proposed plans for the adaptive reuse of the building were never realized. Big-D Construction Company purchased the building in November 2003. The company converted the building into its corporate offices in 2004 as part of a federal tax credit rehabilitation project.
Rasmus Justesen was a sheepman and polygamist who built this 1-1/2 story stucco-over-adobe for his first wife, Sarah Shepherd and her family. In addition to his sheep business, Rasmus fought in the Black Hawk Indian War, sat on the Spring City Council in 1876 and was elected mayor twice, in 1880 and in 1897.
Located at 12 North Main Street in Spring City, Utah
This small, brick one-part commercial block was built by John R. Baxter in 1915 and at first operated as a confectionery in conjunction with the theater. It served as a confectionery for over 63 years, selling penny candy and operating as an ice cream parlor.
The J. Leo Fairbanks House, built in 1908, is both historically and architecturally significant. Historically it is the only house associated with both J. Leo Fairbanks and his father John B. Fairbanks, both of whom made significant contributions to Utah art as artists, educators, and promoters of art. It is also the only extant building that was used as a residence and studio by the entire Fairbanks family, including the nationally famous sculptor Avard Fairbanks, a brother of J. Leo. Architecturally the house is significant as a unique variant of the Colonial Revival style in Utah. Sophisticated early examples of Utah’s Colonial Revival style are very limited, and the Fairbanks house is probably one of the three best documented extant examples of the style in Salt Lake City.
Built in 1908 for Utah artist J. Leo Fairbanks, this house is both historically and architecturally significant. Historically it is the only house associated with both J. Leo Fairbanks and his father John B. Fairbanks, both of whom made significant contributions to Utah art as artists, educators, and promoters of art. It is also the only extant building that was used as a residence and studio by the entire Fairbanks family, including the nationally famous sculptor Avard Fairbanks, a brother of J. Leo. Both J. Leo and John B. studied in Paris and returned to Utah where they became best known for their work on religious murals in temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), John B. having painted some of the murals, and J. Leo having restored some damaged murals. Both taught art at the LDS University in Salt Lake City and elsewhere, and each held the position of supervisor of art in public schools, John B. in Ogden, and J. Leo in Salt Lake City. Architecturally the house is significant as a unique variant of the Colonial Revival style in Utah. Sophisticated early examples of Utah’s Colonial Revival style are very limited, and the Fairbanks house is probably one of the three best documented extant examples of the style in Salt Lake City. Two other examples listed in the National Register include: the Walter E. Ware House, 1184 First Avenue, built ca. 1905 and listed in 1980 as part of the Avenues Historic District; and the Mort Cheesman House, 2320 Walker Lane, built 1912-13, and listed in the National Register as an individual nomination in 1982.
J. Leo Fairbanks, the designer and original owner of the house at 1228 Bryan Avenue, was born in Payson, Utah in 1878 to John B. and Lily H. Fairbanks. Following the lead of his father, John B. Fairbanks, and having studied under him at the LDS University, he became an artist. In 1901 he replaced his father as a teacher for one year at the LDS University, and then went to study in Paris. He studied with Laurens and Simon, and sculptors Bonn and Verlet before returning to Utah in 1903. He was then employed as supervisor of drawing in the Salt Lake City schools, a position which he held until 1923. He also served as the art director at LDS University and as president of the Utah Art Institute. J. Leo is best known for his many religious (LDS) paintings, and worked on the restoration of damaged mural sections in the Salt Lake City LDS Temple. He devised several successful schemes for mural decoration for the interiors of public halls. In 1924 he moved to Oregon where he became the director of the art department at Oregon State College.
J. Leo was single when he designed and had this house built in 1908. 1 According to his brother Avard, inspiration for the design of the house came from the old family home in Dedham, MA, the famous Jonathan Fairbanks home, built in 1636, and from European sources to which he had been exposed during his years of study. J. Leo invited his father, a widower, and the rest of his family to live with him, and the house served as the Fairbanks family home and studio for over fifteen years. They had previously resided at 1152 East Bryan Avenue.
J. Leo, his father John B., and his brother Avard were all notable Utah artists, and each resided in the house for an extended period of time. Some of the second story rooms were used as a home studio. John B. was born in Payson on December 27, 1855 to Utah pioneers John Boylston and Sarah Van Wagoner Fairbanks. He studied art in Paris from 1890 to 1892 under Rigelot, Constant, Lefebvre and Laurens. Although his work includes some paintings, he is best known for the murals he painted in the LDS temples in Salt Lake City, St. George, Utah, and Mesa, Arizona, and for the Century in Progress exposition in Chicago, the San Diego exposition and the Texas centennial. He was a professor of art at Brigham Young University, Weber Stake Academy, and at the LDS University. He became the first supervisor of arts in public schools in Ogden in 1898. Avard, the most famous of the Fairbanks artists, was a child prodigy, and is the best known among traditional realist sculptors working in Utah.4 He spent his childhood in this house. He too studied in Paris at the Academie de la Grande Chaumier et Colaross and then with Injalbert at the Ecole Moderne. He became the first dean of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Utah.
The house was rented periodically during the later years of Fairbanks occupancy. It was sold to Edward G. Titus, Director of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Co., in 1925, and he owned the house until his death in 1964. The current owners are Michael Treshow and Marilyn Tueller who bought the house in 1982 and are restoring it.
This house was constructed in 1919 to replace the original ranch foreman’s cabin that was built soon after Stewart Ranch was established c. 1902. The builder and first foreman to occupy this house was Randolph Fife, a nephew of the four Stewart brother who founded the ranch. Subsequent occupants include Alex Murphey (1923-c. 1930), Herman Cooley (c.1938-1955), and Arvin and Ardean Anderson (1955 to at least 1986). Stewart Ranch functioned first as a livestock operation (c.1902-1931) then as a dairy ranch (1931-1955). It concurrently served as a recreational retreat for its owners – the Stewarts then the Hewletts – who were successful business and professional men in Salt Lake City. Stewart Ranch was probably the largest and longest lived of the “recreational ranches” that were established in this area during the early twentieth century by prominent families from Salt Lake City.
The Lars Andersen house in Ephraim is architecturally significant as an example of Scandinavian folk building in Utah. The house contributes historically to the thematic nomination, “The Scandinavian-American Pair-house in Utah.”
Lars S. Andersen was born in 1829 in Denmark. Converting to the LDS Church in 1852, he emigrated to Utah in the winter of 1855. Arriving in Ephraim in the summer of 1856, Andersen soon became a leading citizen of this community. He was primarily a farmer, but also served as tithing clerk, and director of the Ephraim Co-op Store. Active in the Church, Andersen was a counselor to the Stake President, Canute Petersen, and filled a Danish mission in 1873-1875. In 1879 he became bishop of Ephraim.
