Utah Heritage Foundation

Do you like cycling?  Love old barns?  Want to know why there’s an angel on this barn?  Planning is underway for the Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area Bicycle Barnstorming tour June 2012.

The purpose of the event is to update and extend a barn guide done in conjunction with the national Barn Again! program in 1998.  Photos and text will be posted to a Facebook page on the fly to create a dynamic barn guide that will be made into a smartphone app and a printable PDF.

Parowan is a “can do” community proud to be known as the Mother Town of Southern Utah.  It was settled in 1851, the first Mormon colonial village in the southern part of the Utah territory, and boasts an abundance of historic buildings from the pioneer era, as-well-as a fair share of interesting 20^th century architecture, including a unique Prairie Style Mormon church (left).

Volunteers were out in force early on Saturday, August 6, 2011 to help with the inaugural Yankee Meadow Half Marathon.  Racers were bused to the start at the Yankee Meadow Reservoir.  Besides spectacular mountain and red rock canyon scenery, the race course went past Parowan’s historic cemetery with its beautifully-constructed WPA rock wall, and took runners on a two-mile plus loop past historic buildings in the heart of town before finishing at the Iron County Fairgrounds.



Mayor Donald Landes presented goody bags to the top three runners in each age group that included two books promoting Parowan’s heritage, Images of Parowan’s Past and Heritage Cookbook III, which is illustrated with photos of Parowan’s historic buildings.

The race expo was another stroke of marketing genius, featuring local businesses rather than the usual entourage of oustide running gear vendors.  Parowan is definitely winning the race to promote its economy and its heritage with the inaugural Yankee Meadows Half Marathon. 

Utah Heritage Foundation commends The Spectrum for its editorial on July 18, 2011 urging that school buildings be more energy efficient.  But why stop there.  The National Trust for Historic Preservation has been pointing out for years that the greenest buildings are often those that are already built. 

In a planning meeting for the re-use of Denver’s Emerson School, consultant Jim Dinola, a principal with Green Building Services in Portland, Oregon noted that the energy efficiency of older schools can be improved by doing some of the simple things homeowners do to make old houses more efficient.  These include insulating the attic, tightening windows and doors to eliminate leaks, and making thermostats operable (so that rooms are not heated to 85 degrees while sitting empty overnight, for example). Other energy savings will require more substantial investment, such as the overhaul of the school’s heating and cooling systems.  These retrofits often compare favorably with the cost of new construction.

Older schools in established neighborhoods like East Elementary in St. George, Utah (photo courtesy Washington County Historical Society) can usually be reached safely by pedestrians, reducing traffic and pollution from vehicles.  A recent Preservation Nation blog gave a way to measure the walkability of schools and their neighborhoods using the Active School Neighborhood Checklist (ASNC).  The checklist was born out of the federal Safe Routes To School program. The goal of SRTS is to make it safer and easier for children to walk and bicycle to school. 

Robert Gardner designed an innovative new elementary school for Hurricane, Utah in 1954 (left).  Washington County School District closed the building in 2009 and moved Hurricane Elementary into a new facility.

Hmm, what to do with an old school building in the heart of town next to a museum and an art center all surrounded by park-like grounds with mature trees.  The City of Hurricane bought the building intending to demolish it for a new community center, but some people had a better idea, and the city agreed.

Interns from the Rhode Island School of Design working for architect Peter Stempel’s non-profit FormTomorrow made as-built drawings of the school during the summer of 2010.  They also prepared a site master plan showing how the Hurricane Elementary School building could be reused as part of the community center complex (orange figure center right in the illustration below, image courtesy FormTomorrow).

Communities that value their historic resources have effective Historic Preservation Commissions (HPCs).  Leeds, Utah, is one of those places.  Guided by Vision Dixie principles and leadership from the HPC, the town included a meaningful historic preservation element in their recent general plan update.  They followed that with a Reconnaissance Level Survey (RLS) to get a current baseline inventory of historic resources in their jurisdiction.  Then they took the logical next step, reviewing and revising their historic preservation ordinance to align it with the vision in their updated general plan and the RLS results.

With advice from the HPC, the town is using the information collected in the RLS to set goals and priorities for rehabbing, maintaining and using publicly-owned historic properties to benefit the community and is encouraging and assisting owners of privately held historic properties, including homeowners, to do the same.  (Right, Sarah Ann and William Stirling House, built 1876.)  Leading by example, the town is taking advantage of the opportunity to literally capitalize on their historic resources in a very tangible way by promoting heritage tourism to the Wells Fargo Silver Reef Museum and capturing visitor attention and dollars by acting as a gateway to the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area at the rehabilitated Orson B. Adams House in nearby Harrisburg. 

The Leeds Historic Preservation Commission serves not only as an advisory body to the town council, but is doubly effective as a Certified Local Government (CLG) and a National Trust Forum member with access to CLG matching grants from the Utah State Historic Preservation Office and eligibility for matching grants from the Utah Preservation Initiatives Fund (UPIF), administered by the Mountains/ Plains Office of the National Trust for Historic preservation.  The town has used its CLG grants to fund restoration work at the National Register-listed Leeds CCC Camp, to purchase and install interpretive markers, and to fund its Reconnaissance Level Survey.  UPIF grants could pay for feasibility studies to rehab historic buildings like the Leeds Tithing Office (left) through a public-private partnership with its owner, or to prepare a preservation management plan for the Wells Fargo Museum and Silver Reef historic district.

Congressman Rob Bishop (above, 4th from left) knows how to work a room.  Preservation leaders applauded when he said he supports tax credits for rehabbing historic buildings.  He drew even more applause when he said he would support a federal homeowner tax credit.

Bishop (R-UT-01), the Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands of the House Committee on Natural Resources, was the keynote speaker at the joint Advocacy Day luncheon of the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers (NCSHPO), the National Alliance of Preservation Commissions (NAPC), the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Preservation Action.  The groups met at the historic Hotel Fairfax in Washington D.C. on March 7-9, 2011 for their annual mid-year meeting, scheduled to coincide with the release of the President’s budget, and the beginning of appropriations hearings for FY 2012.

Rob Bishop lives in a historic home in Brigham City, Utah, a community brimming with historic buildings, and is a member of the House Historic Preservation Caucus.  He explained that he supports federal rehabilitation tax credit programs, including one for homeowners, because they promote private investment by local property owners rather than mandating federal intervention and funding.

All I can say is, Wow!  If you love modern architecture and design, Palm Springs Modernism Week is for you.  Modernism “week” is actually 10 days of tours, lectures, screenings, parties and exhibits.  On a limited schedule this year, my first time there, I only managed to attend two lectures and a movie screening – to my great regret.

War and Peace, the California Design Dividend was a fascinating lecture by Bill Stern, executive director, Museum of California Design, about how the material shortages of WWII sparked the spare, but brilliant innovations by small California startup design companies that we now call Mid-Century Modern style.

The screening of Peter Moruzzi’s Desert Holiday (book title Palm Springs Holiday), a humorous vintage postcard tour of early Palm Springs architecture and resorts was a big hit, presented in a packed ballroom at the Riviera Palm Springs decked out as a movie theater, complete with complementary popcorn. 

Superlatives and smiles abounded at the St. George Historic Homes Tour the afternoon of Saturday, January 15, 2011.  Preservation Commissioner Lynne Cobb pronounced the event “Wildly Successful,” after hosting an estimated 500+ guests at the National Register-listed William F. Butler House.

UHF Field Rep Susan Crook reported 336 guests signed in at the Arthur Miles House where she served as host, but the actual count was probably over 700.  St. George Live! actor Durrant McArthur, in period costume as his pioneer forbear Daniel McArthur, greets a guest in the parlor of the Miles House during the tour (left). 

In addition to St. George Live! actors, tour guides included preservation commissioners and staff, and Washington County Historical Society board members.  The volunteers piled into St. George Live! buses for a preview tour Friday afternoon, seen below at Green Gate Village near Judd’s Store, which has been in continuous operation for 100 years.  The iconic St. George Tabernacle is in the background.  The St. George Historic Homes Tour was one of the kick-off events for the City’s sesquicentennial celebration.

Cobble Crest may be a national treasure.  Are there any other outdoor dance pavilions so little altered in Utah?  Were there ever any small open-air dance pavilions elsewhere in the U.S.?  Apparently not, if a quick email survey of other Partners in the Field is any indication.  These dance venues seem to be unique to Mormon country.

Of the few outdoor dance pavilions left in Utah, only one other is still in use:  the Big Apple in Torrey, and it was reconstructed.  Kanarraville’s Cobble Crest appears to be almost unchanged from when Iva Williams Wood built it in the 1930s.  That’s a good thing when nominating a structure to the National Register of Historic Places.  And this place appears to be National Register-worthy.

Read the UHF Board of Trustees Resolution on the Provo Tabernacle.

Read the history of the Provo Tabernacle from the Salt Lake Architecture blog.