Replaced the First Greek Church in Utah, consecrated in 1905. Designed in the Byzantine tradition, its construction began in July 1923 and was completed in August 1924. Surrounding the church were once many immigrant neighborhoods dependent on the railroads and mines. The church remains a symbol of early Greek life in Utah.
The Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church is evidence of the size and religious devotion of Salt Lake City’s Greek immigrant community. In the early 20th century, Greeks were the largest immigrant group in Utah. Salt Lake City’s Greek community was centered in a “Greek Town” with over 60 Greek businesses located on 200 South between 400 and 600 West. Completed in 1924, the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church is an excellent example of Byzantine Revival style architecture. A large gold dome crowns the building while two domed bell towers with decorative tiles frame the arcaded entryway. The tile roof, patterned brick, and elaborate capitals are also typical of the Byzantine Revival Style.
FOUNDERS OF THE GREEK ORTHODOX GREEK COMMUNITY OF UTAH
Next to family and life itself, the Greek immigrant loved the Greek Orthodox Faith. The discovery of copper in 1903 in Bingham Canyon, coal mines of Carbon-Emery counties and railroad construction, brough a major influx of Greek immigrants to Utah. Despite barriers in their new land, Greek immigrants began to make plans for the formation of a Greek Orthodox Church and Community. The immigrants displayed extraordinary zeal, dedication and leadership in organizing the first Greek Orthodox Church in Salt Lake City. On January 22, 1905 about 200 young Greek men met at the Odd Fellows Building in Salt Lake City for the purpose of organizing the GREEK COMMUNITY OF UTAH. Location of the new church was on Fourth South between the present Fourth and Fifth West Streets. In april (sic) 1905, Archimandrite Parthenios Lymberopolous, arrived in Salt Lake City as the first Greek Orthodox Priest sent from the Holy Synod of Greece. The first Liturgy was held on October 29, 1905. The 1905 Board of Trustees of the Greek Community of Utah included Nicholas P. Stathakos, president; Stravros G. Skliris, vice president; Anastasosios Pappas, secretary; George Christophylou, treasurer; and Trustees George Demetrakopoulous, Michael Litrivas, George Macherias, Konstantinos Papaioannou, Andreas Papanikolaou, George Soteropoulos, Gregory Soteropoulos and Stelios Theoharis. Having outgrown its facilities, after World War I the Greek Community made plans for the construction of the second Holy Trinity Church. This was built on its present site, Third West and Third South. Actual construction of Holy Trinity began in July 1923. The first Liturgy was held on August 15, 1924. Construction cost was approximately $150,000. The Holy Trinity Church of Salt Lake City has served as the “Mother Church” for other Greek Orthodox churches in Utah, including the Assumption Church of Price, the Transfiguration Church in Ogden, and the Prophet Elias Church in Salt Lake City. The plaque is dedicated especially to all those Greek immigrants and clergy who contributed time, effort, money and services to create Greek Orthodox Churches in Utah and whose example of service, vision, faith and leadership provides guidance and inspiration for all of us to follow. *MAY THE MEMORY OF ALL OUR FOREFATHERS BE ETERNAL* AIONIA H MNH AYTON P
CASTLE GATE, CARBON COUNTY, UTAH COAL MINE EXPLOSION MARCH 8, 1924
172 Miners were killed instantly, 49 of the miners who lost their lives were Greeks, 48 of the miners were from the Island of Crete. Andreadakis, Steve…….. list of names ….Zanis, Mike
The first Greek immigrants arrived in Utah in the late 1800s. They came looking for a better life and by 1905 they determined it was time to establish a church in their new land. On January 22, 1905, a general meeting of all Greeks in the area was called. Over 200 met in the Odd Fellows Building in Salt Lake City to organize the Greek Community of Utah.
Within a few months the property located here at 439 West 400 South was purchased and a loan of $7,000 was negotiated for construction of the church. In April 1905 the first Greek Orthodox priest, Archimandrite Parthenos Lymberopoulos, arrived from Greece. He officiated at the first liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church in Utah on Sunday, May 26, 1905, at a temporary place of worship on the third floor of the National Bank Building on Main Street and First South. On that day the official life of the Greek Orthodox Church in Utah began.
On Sunday, October 29, 1905, the new church was dedicated on this site in an elaborate religious ceremony and was given the name Holy trinity Greek Orthodox Church. In 1920 the Greek Community took steps to build a larger church. The original church on this site was sold for $18,000. A new site was purchased on the corner of Third South and Second West (now 300 West) for $20,000. The cornerstone of the new, traditional style Byzantine church, also named Holy Trinity, was laid on August 28, 1923. It was consecrated on August 2, 1925.
As City Creek flowed out of the canyon, it split into two main branches – one of which ran through the western part of this block continuing on to the south of the city where it joined other creeks before reaching the Jordan River. As the city grew, residents constructed bridges across the creek to allow the passage of traffic and built houses and stores along its banks. Each spring brought a heavy run-off from the melting snow in the mountains, often causing property damage for those near the creek.
After particularly heavy flooding in 1853, the city consolidated both creek branches into a wide ditch down the center of North Temple Street to contain flooding. The water went directly from the mouth of City Creek Canyon to the Jordan River. The growing city soon obliterated the original creek bed and its original course was largely forgotten.
Sugar House Monument
Erected in recognition of the first effort made to manufacture beet sugar in Western America.
With dauntless perseverance through severe hardships the machinery was brought from Liverpool, Eng. To this place, where in 1853 the sugar mill was constructed.
May the spirit of this courageous venture continue to characterize this community.
The Old Sugar House
Home of one of the earliest efforts toward the creation of local industry in Utah.
At these crossroads in 1853-55, a structure was erected which stood for many years as a symbol of pioneer enterprise and courage. Its site was approximately two hundred feet east of this spot.
After the sugar project was abandoned, the old mill served many other useful purposes. Its life ended in 1928.
The Sugar House Mill: How Sugar House Got Its Name
This section of Parley’s Creek contributed to the creation of Sugar House as a thriving business district. Water from the creek powered a sugar mill near the corner of Highland Drive and 2100 South, which ultimately gave Sugar House its name. The mill was built in 1854 by pioneers hoping to produce white sugar from beets. The mill soon failed and by 1856 had been converted to the first paper mill successfully operated in the west. At one time, the Sugar Mill housed a machine shop for the Salt Lake and Utah Central Railway. It was later used as offices for Bamberger Coal Company until it was torn down in 1928.
The Sugar House Monument, built in 1930, is significant under Criterion A as a local landmark and the center of the Sugar House business district. The work reflects the cohesiveness of the merchants of the Sugar House business district as it was initially commissioned by the Sugar House Business Men’s League and renovations to it were spearheaded by the Sugar House Business and Professional Women’s Club. The monument was constructed in 1930 during the “A City Within A City, 1910-1954” context to commemorate the founders of the sugar beet industry in Utah. It is also significant under Criterion C as the outstanding work of a local sculptor, Millard Malin, combined with the design of the architectural firm of Anderson and Young. The fifty-foot high shaft retains its historic and architectural integrity and is being nominated as part of the multiple property submission, Sugar House Business District Multiple Resource Area. (*)
History of the Sugar House Monument
The plaza on which the monument stands was built in 1914 as 2100 South was realigned and Parley’s Creek was buried in conduit. It was reconstructed in 1927 by the city at a cost of $5,219. 7 The plan for a monument to be located on the plaza grew out of a suggestion made by Millard Malin, a sculptor, in 1928 to the Sugar House Business Men’s League that they erect a monument to “early Utah industry”8 on the plaza in Sugar House. He also presented a proposed two-foot high model for the statue to the group. The Sugar House Business League and the City of Salt Lake built the monument in 1930, following a competition to choose the winning design. The city share of the cost was $2,000.9 The plaza was dedicated on November 11, 1934.
The Sugar House Business and Professional Women’s Club, the Sugar House Chamber of Commerce and the Salt Lake City Commission joined together to clean up and maintain the monument and plaza in 1947. The clean up effort was part of Sugar House merchants’ efforts at beautification for the centennial of the original Mormon settlers entering Salt Lake City in 1847. The Salt Lake City Engineering Department cleaned the monument itself and replaced the wooden light poles at the ends of the plaza with ornamental steel ones as well as replacing curbs and gutters as needed.
The brass bas-relief plaque at the base of the monument on the north picturing the old sugar mill was added in 1948, using funds raised by the Sugar House Business and Professional Women’s Club. Malin’s original design had the sugar mill plaque on the north and one of fur trading at the Smoot trading post that was located on the site of the monument on the south. The south plaque was never finished.
The Artists
The sculptor of the monument, Millard Fillmore Malin, was born in Salt Lake City in 1891. He studied art at the University of Utah under Edwin Evans from 1914-1915 and later enrolled at the National Academy of Design in New York. He worked under Norman A. MacNeil from 1917-1918 on a sculpture of Ezra Cornell, which is located at Cornell University. He also assisted Gutzon Borglum on the Stone Mountain Memorial in Georgia. After his move back to Salt Lake City in 1923 he concentrated his work on monumental and architectural sculptures. His sculpture is realistic and he is considered one of Utah’s most outstanding sculptors.
His most famous work is the Sugar House Monument but he also completed other public sculptures in Utah. The Utah State Capitol building houses busts of two Native Americans of the Ute tribe, Unca Sam and Chief John Duncan, and a commemorative bronze plaque for the battleship Utah honoring the victims of the Pearl Harbor bombing. From 1950-1960 he completed baptismal fonts and other works for LDS 10 temples designed by Edward O. Anderson as LDS Church architect in Los Angeles; Bern, Switzerland; London, England, and New Zealand. The Dinosaur Monument located at the Utah Field House of Natural History in Vernal, Utah, was completed in 1964. Research astronomy was Malin’s avocation and he published three titles on gravity and the solar arrangement.
After winning the competition for the monument, Millard Fillmore Malin called in Edward Oliver Anderson and his partner, Lorenzo (Bing) Young, to collaborate on the design. 11 Malin and Anderson met while they were both at the University of Utah in 1914-15 and they became lifelong friends. Edward Oliver Anderson was also born in 1891. He was involved in many building projects for the LDS Church such as the Waycross Branch in Waycross, Georgia, the North Afton Ward in Afton, Wyoming, and the Bryan Ward in Salt Lake City. Anderson was the LDS Church Architect and also served on the board of temple architects. He designed the Idaho Falls Temple in 1945 with a team of four others. This temple design began the LDS Church post-war temple-building program that increasingly utilized standard plans. He also did the three-story London Temple in 1958.
Lorenzo Snow (Bing) Young was born in 1894 in Salt Lake City, a grandson of Brigham Young, the second president of the LDS Church. He was a graduate of Pratt Institute in New York and spent forty years practicing architecture in Salt Lake City. During his career he helped to design over 300 buildings including the new Marriott Library at the University of Utah; Olympus and Highland High Schools in Salt Lake City, and the Special Events Center at Brigham Young University. He was also a member of the LDS Church Board of Architects during the construction of the Los Angeles and Idaho Falls LDS temples. Before his death in 1968 he was a partner at Young and Fowler Associates.
Anderson and Young were partners for eight years from 1928 to 1936. During this time the firm of Anderson and Young designed and constructed buildings for the LDS Church in St. George and Richfield, Utah. Other examples of their work include the Granite Stake Tabernacle and Lincoln Ward on 2005 South 900 East in 1929 2 ; the Tudor Revival Milwaukee Ward in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and the Vernal First Ward in Vernal, Utah. A notable non-ecclesiastical public building of their design is Kingsbury Hall, the University of Utah Auditorium in Salt Lake City, built in 1928 (NR, 1978).
The monument is in a simplified Art Deco style that occurred in Utah primarily from 1930-1940. The ornamentation of the Art Deco style was influenced by the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs. The monument displays many Art Deco ornamental patterns, like the angular decorative geometric designs on the sides of the vertical shaft and the vertical molded patterns typical of the style. The carved Limestone bands that run horizontally along the north and south sides of the pool beds as well as two bands on the bottom section of the shaft, above the seated statues, have stylized plant and natural motifs. Malin describes the pattern used as “Double Sun.” It has a sego lily at the center and is surrounded by the sun with its corona, stars, planets and a crescent moon.
There are two massive bronze figures seated at the base facing east and west. The female figure to the east represents the fertility of the Salt Lake Valley and is modeled on Marjorie Lewis, a friend of the sculptor. The male figure is modeled on Max Croft, a stone worker who was found by the sculptor as he was heaving rocks to create the monument. He represents a mill builder and is pouring water from an urn over a wheel.
This eclectic Chateauesque style building was constructed in 1899 by the Roman Catholic church. It was designed by Carl M. Neuhausen, architect of the Thomas Kearns Mansion and the Cathedral of the Madeleine, both located on South Temple Street. Bishop Lawrence Scanlan of the newly formed Salt Lake City Diocese began acquiring land for the orphanage but encountered financial problems. Jennie Judge Kearns, wife of mining magnate and U.S. Senator Thomas Kearns, donated $55,000 to purchase the land and cover the entire cost of construction.
The Kearns-St. Ann’s Orphanage, operated by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, served the social, religious, and educational needs of many children for over fifty years. The children shared responsibility in the total operation of the facility, with the exception of accounts and records. The orphanage was converted to a parochial school in 1954, officially known as St. Ann’s School, and had an initial enrollment of 240 students from kindergarten to fourth grade. The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word assumed leadership of the school at that time. Each year thereafter an additional grade was added until all eight grades were included in the school. In anticipation of the school’s restoration in the 1990s and to symbolize its link with the past, it was renamed Kearns-St. Ann School.
To the Sisters of the Holy Cross whose devotion to St. Ann’s inspired in little children the one and only hope. – Placed here by the descendants of the late Senator and Mrs. Thomas Kearns
Located at 430 East 2100 South in South Salt Lake City, Utah and added to the National Historic Register (#80003925) on October 3, 1980.
The Kearns-St. Ann’s orphanage is a two and a half story brick structure designed by Carl M. Neuhausen, the architect of the Kearns Mansion and the Cathedral of the Madeleine on South Temple. St. Ann’s in its modest decorative elements alluded to Renaissance and Mannerist detailing, as do both the much more elaborate Kearns Mansion and Neuhausen’s own house on First South. Neuhausen’s eclectic style was rare in Utah, and the few buildings by other designers lack Neuhausen1 s skillful use of the Chatesque manner. The orphanage represents the important educational and religious contributions to Utah society of Bishop Lawrence Scanlan and Thomas and Jennie Kearns.
Money for the construction of the school was made available to Bishop Lawrence Scanlan from Mrs. Thomas Kearns. Scanlan had acquired a parcel of land near Eleventh South, however, after one payment he had exhausted the funds. Kearns gave the church $55,000, which was enough to purchase the land and cover all building costs. Two thousand people witnessed the placement of the cornerstone on August 27, 1890.
St. Ann’s brought together several of the most influential Catholics in Utah. Thomas Kearns, the mining magnate, and his wife Jennie changed the social landscape by creating new educational and religious institutions in Utah. Bishop Scanlan was the first Bishop of the newly formed Salt Lake City Diocese (Utah and Nevada). He had served as a missionary in the area since the 1870s, and recognized the need of support institutions to aid the Catholic missionary effort.
The social order found at the orphanage was unique among the many forms of socialism in Utah during the early history of Utah. The children at the orphanage were to share in the total operation of the facility, except the handling of accounts and records. The Sisters of the Holy Cross charged no admittance fee to the parent or guardian .although those who could afford something often paid a monthly fee. After the tragic coal mine explosion at Scofield, Utah on May 1, 1900, the orphanage offered its help to assist children left orphans by the blast. The orphanage served the needy for fifty-two years before it was converted into a school.
Funding for Saint Ann’s has come from a number of sources. First of course was the money from the Kearns Foundation which later withdrew its support. In 1902 Patrick Phelm left his estate, valued at $76,000, to the school. In 1979 the school was still operating from the Phelm estate. Of course the parish has always tried to assist the school and the school has provided its facilities to the Catholic and non-Catholic community as well.
In 1953 Sister Mary McElligott, superior, and two other sisters from Brownsville, Texas, began direction at Saint Ann’s. On September 19, 1954, Kearns-St. Ann’s Orphanage was converted into a parochial school, officially known as St. Ann’s School. The name “Kearns” was dropped and removed from the exterior façade. Shortly afterwards the Kearns family announced they would no longer render financial assistance to the school and removed most of the schools elegant furnishings. The new order of sisters now in charge at the school began the change outlined in the physical description. The lavish abundance of trees, both evergreen and deciduous, that surrounded the school were cut down as was the orchard. These were replaced with lawns and playing fields.
Enrollment has gradually increased from 168 in 1900. When the orphanage was converted into a parochial school in 1954 it enrolled 240 students from Kindergarten to Fourth Grade. By 1966 that number had grown to 460 pupils through eight grades. The enrollment has now stabilized.
In 1955 money became available for the construction of a convent west of the school. Architect B. Bruce Folsom was chosen to design the convent that can house 11 sisters. Twelve years later (1967) a sharply contrasting St. Ann’s parish church with seating for 750 people, was built east of the school. The architect was William H. Louis.
Dunman was on afternoon bike patrol at this location when a vehicle jumped the curb and struck him from behind. The 30-year-old officer suffered massive head injuries and died shortly after arriving at the hospital.
Following an investigation, the suspect was charged with negligent homicide. An earlier drug charge was also reactivated. Regardless, he secured bail and subsequently fled the country.
Officer Dunman was married and the father of three children. He is buried in the Bountiful City Cemetery.
“left camp late this day on acct. of having to find a good road or pass through the Swamps of the utah outlet finally succeeded and encamped on the East Bank of Utah outlet making 5 [miles]”
-James F. Reed, August 23, 1846
Utah Crossroads Chapter – OCTA
HU-5
This is part of the series of California Trail markers I’ve been documenting on these pages:
Built near several warm springs, the Wasatch Springs Plunge is significant for its Mission style architecture and as a early municipal recreational facility. The warm springs along this portion of the Wasatch Fault were used by Native Americans even before the arrival of the Mormon pioneers who quickly developed the springs and constructed numerous bathing facilities, praising the warm sulphurous water for its curative and rejuvenating qualities. The substantial masonry building was built by Salt Lake City in 1921 and replaced earlier frame buildings.
Designed by the noted local architectural firm of Cannon and Fetzer, the building exemplifies the Mission style. The stuccoed walls, red tile roofs, curvilinear parapets, arched openings and arcades are characteristic of Mission style which emanated from California at the end of the nineteenth century and was based on old Catholic missions.
Due to problems with the water, deterioration of the structure, construction of newer pools and changes in demographics, the facility fell into disuse in the 1970s and was closed. It was later rehabilitated and reopened in 1983 as The Children’s Museum of Utah.
The Wasatch Warm Springs Plunge is significant as the last remaining evidence of the centuries long human use of mineral waters which rise along the Wasatch Fault at the north end of Jordan Valley. It also is significant architecturally as an example of Cannon and Fetzer’s work. Since Cannon and Fetzer are best known for their Prairie School designs, the Warm Springs is interesting as an example of their work in a different style, the Spanish Colonial Revival Style. The concept of a municipal warm springs bath on this scale providing grooming and sleeping facilities, is in itself unusual, making the function of this structure perhaps as significant as its design. The hillside thermal springs, which include Beck’s Hot Springs, Hobo Springs and Warm Springs, and the Hot Spring Lake which they created, once formed a 2-3 mile strip of sites in which the sick, the mystical, the playful could find solace and recreation.
The Plunge, which used the waters of Warm Springs, was built in 1921 by Salt Lake City as a municipal pool. Of the 17 areas in Utah whose springs yield thermal waters (15.5°C and Higher) 1 , this is the only one developed with public funds and that public support began in 1848. The plans for the Plunge were produced by the prominent Salt Lake architectural firm of Lewis T. Cannon and John Fetzer. For the next several decades, the Plunge served the thousands who came to swim and soak in the waters.
Wasatch Warm Springs Plunge used the waters of the Warm Springs and, in fact, the facility was called the Warm Springs Municipal Bath until 1932 when the name was changed to Wasatch Springs Plunge by city commissioners hoping to thereby encourage more summer business. The sign on the building, however, reads Wasatch Warm Springs Plunge.
Warm Springs was that spring nearest Great Salt Lake City which was established in 1847 by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who were seeking refuge and security in the Great Basin. Warm Springs was, therefore, the first of the many mineral springs in the area to be developed as a health/recreational site. In fact, the close proximity of the springs was one of the factors which influenced the church leaders to establish their first and major settlement in the valley. The hot springs were thought to be valuable in curing many illnesses. This factor seemed important at the time, because many of the pioneers had suffered illness on the long trek from the middle west.
The 2-3 mile strip of hot springs and lake had been used for preceding centuries by the American Indians – Shoshones, Utes, Paiutes – who traveled through the area on hunting, foraging, trading and social expeditions. The earliest meetings between the Indians and the settlers during the winter of 1847-48 demonstrated the tragic consequences of such meetings for the former and their use of the Thermal waters. The Indians (Ute) caught from the settlers measles which spread among them as an epidemic. Mormon journalists reported: “They assembled in large numbers at the warm springs, bathed in the waters and died.”
The preceding years of use by Indian Peoples of the thermal waters have, thus far, not been described. No oral traditions concerning that use have been recorded. Perhaps future archaeological investigations may constitute to that description.
One of the members of the Mormon pioneer band who explored in July of 1847 the area round the settlers’ camp on City Creek described the original topography of the 2-3 mile strip: “A pretty large stream of sulphur water boils out of the rock at the foot of the mountain (Beck’s springs) and thence branches out into several smaller streams for some distance till those enter a small lake.”
It was another of these early settlers, Thomas Bullock, who first developed warm springs (about 1 1/2 miles north of the LDS Temple Block): “My fingers rooted out the stones, and a couple of brethren afterwards assisted me with spades to dig out a place, about sixteen feet square, to bathe in,..seven or eight persons often bathe in it at a time; those who once bathe there want to go again.”
Bullock also reported that church president Brigham Young ordered that a boat be built for use on the hot springs lake – one of the first of the pleasure boats used there for recreational purposes. The lake eventually became surrounded by hotels and boat docks and, according to oral tradition, houses of prostitution on the northwest shores. After 1892 when the city put in a gravity sewer system which served this north end of town, the lake began to slowly drain, it was completely drained in 1915, upon recommendations of the City Board of Health because it had become a mosquito breeding area.
The warm springs site developed by Thomas Bullock proved popular with residents and visitors alike. One of these early “tourists” to enjoy the springs was William G. Johnson, a member of an 1849 California-bound wagon train. He reported: “…a number of us visited a warm spring, one of the principal attractions of the valley and a possession of great value to the settlement…While there we met several men and children bathing, and learned that they visited it with great frequency. The Mormons, we were told, have great faith in the efficacy of the spring for healing, and as a panacea for diseases in general. By a regulation of the church, which governs matters secular as well as spiritual, on Tuesdays and Thursdays women only are allowed to bathe here, and the men on the other days of the week.”
It is the public development of the Warm Springs site which contributes to its significance. That long municipal support began in 1848. At a meeting of the settlers, Daniel Spencer, the road master, was authorized to levy a poll and property tax to defray the expense of certain projected public improvements, among which was a bathhouse at Warm Springs. In the summer of 1850 enough funds had been collected to build an adobe building over the springs, with a boarded inner pool for women, and an outer one for men. Several private rooms were fitted with wooden bathtubs.
The building, which was located on the site now used as the Wasatch Springs Park located just south of the Plunge and which is marked with a memorial plaque erected in 1965 by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 10 was dedicated by Mormon church leaders on November 27, 1850. Addresses were given by Brigham Young and others. A feasting and dancing went on into the evening. This event signified the importance with which the city’s fathers regarded the springs. Young hoped that the Bath House, as it was called, would become a good source of revenue for the community.
Such hope was premature. However, other people saw promise in the site. Early in 1860 a group of men planted a grove of black locust trees that had been raised from seeds curried across the plains by pioneers. In a few years a large grove of trees provided shads for bathers and picnickers, in 1866 Dr. King Robinson, who had come to Utah as the assistant surgeon at Camp Douglas, filed a claim on the land surrounding the Warm Springs. The Bath House had been abandoned in 1865 in favor of a more luxurious plunge built south of the first location, so the site was unoccupied. And land titles in Utah until after 1870 were complicated because actual land offices had not been established until 1869 to properly register claims. Robinson built a saloon on the property. The city council claimed that the land belonged to the corporation and ordered the marshal to destroy the building and eject the doctor. Robinson appealed to the federal court which decided against him. Other of his property was destroyed by a gang of men and Robinson himself was soon afterwards murdered on Salt Lake City’s Main street. His assassins were never arrested and the incident contributed to the tensions and antagonisms between Mormons and non-Mormons.
Several structures were built after the 1865 move of the facilities a few yards south of the first bathhouse which had been built directly over the springs. The water from the springs was now piped underground through hollowed out logs to fill two pools and several private tubs all of which were housed in a large wooden structure which also accommodated offices and private rooms. A concrete building which housed at different times a saloon, offices, storage and baths was built just to the south of the plunge building and a frame house was built just to the north of it to serve as the dwelling for the bath proprietors. 13 From 1867 to 1877 the proprietor / manager was Henry Arnold, Sr.
In 1872 the city’s title to the warm springs was secured and in that year the Salt Lake street railroad was established and its first one and one-half miles of track for the mule-drawn cars were laid from Temple Square to Warm Springs. The plunge and private baths were re-fitted and re-decorated and they were “freely patronized by Salt Lake City residents as well as by all visitors.”
In 1885 mining entrepreneur John Beck developed a pleasure resort on property between Beck’s Hot Spring. The spring largest, hottest and farthest from the city, and the Hot Spring lake. It became a major resort in the west until a disastrous fire in 1898. Although the area continued to be used for recreation under various owners for the next several years, the glory days were over. In 1953 the property was acquired by the State of Utah as part of the development of Interstate Highway 89.
Another bathing resort was developed at the Wasatch Springs. Originally the site was developed in the 1890s as a bottling company and a wooden structure was built to house the operations (located at 987 N Beck). Later the building was used as a plunge, but that was abandoned in the early 1930s. The building was destroyed in 1953.
It was the Warm Springs which continued as a viable recreation site. From 1876-1916 the city leased the 10-acre development to various private entrepreneurs. In 1890, the proprietors were listed as Henry Barnes and Edward Byrne. Also described then were the waters as a gravity treatment: “(the) waters are considered a great beautifier of the complexion; also a sovereign remedy for the removal of tan, freckles, etc., the curative properties, imparting to the skin a bright and smooth surface, give a white and velvety appearance, thus making them a favorite resort for ladies.”
In 1916 the city assumed full control of Warm Springs Sulphur Baths. In 1921 the city contracted with the architectural firm of Cannon and Fetzer to design a new building to serve the users of the warm Springs. It was built a few yards north of the old baths.20 In July of 1922 the old bathhouse and adjoining buildings were burned.
The new building, Warm Springs Plunge, accommodated two large pools, the smaller of which was reserved for private parties, several private soaking tanks, offices, locker and dressing rooms. The facilities also inducted a barber shop, a hair dresser, a ladies and a mens masseur. There were also 5 private rooms on the second floor which accommodated out-of-town visitors. These rooms were popular until a hotel-motel was built across the street to the west.
In 1925 the site of the 1860s complex was cleared and developed by the city as the Wasatch Springs Park.
The Plunge remained a popular recreation facility. However, as the years passed, it became less a resort used by tourists and leisure-seeking residents and more a municipal pool providing swimming to hospital patients and workers (St. Mark’s Hospital had been built to the west in 1879, later rebuilt in 1892), children from boy’s clubs and Neighborhood house, and residents of Swede Town, Capitol Hill, West side. The plunge operated at a deficit.
In 1946 the State Dept. of Health provoked a controversy about the condition of the waters. The state contended that the bacterial count was so high as to be a safety hazard and ordered the city to chlorinate the water. Since sulphur water cannot be chlorinated without producing a damaging precipitate. The city considered selling the property, but finally resolved the controversy by converting in 1949 the 2 large pools into fresh, chlorinated water and pumping the thermal waters only into the small, private baths.
As the population center of the city moved further south and additional swimming facilities were built elsewhere, the use of the Plunge declined and the facility fell into disrepair. In June 1970 the city commission closed the plunge after chunks of concrete fell from the ceiling and posed hazard to swimmers. However, following a $93,000 remodeling project which included a new roof, the facility was reopened.
Early in 1976 the building was closed again because of economics and was then used by the City Parks Dept. as storage,25 but is now vacant and a victim of vandals.
The building which serves as a local landmark of the long history of human use of the thermal waters in the area and as the reminder for many Salt Lake residents of pleasant hours spent at the “Muny Baths” is currently under consideration by the city as a potential site of offices and space by several community organizations.
