Utah Heritage Foundation

There's been lots of news in the world of Utah historic preservation lately, so I thought a summary would be in order.

Yes to Granite

On Monday, October 17, The Salt Lake Tribune endorsed the bond election in South Salt Lake to buy and rehabilitate Granite High School.  So has Utah Heritage Foundation.  The UHF Preservation Round-up blog talked about the benefits of this bond on three separate occasions (here and here and here).

At the regular meeting of the Utah Heritage Foundation Board of Trustees on January 20, 2011, the Trustees voted unanimously in a resolution to “support saving the historic exterior walls of the Provo Tabernacle.“  This resolution was made with the intent to strongly encourage The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to rebuild.

Several Trustees expressed the same deep heartache that the residents and regular users of the Provo Tabernacle felt to see a physical landmark of this stature that held memories from childhood, teen and college years, and adulthood fall to a ruinous end.  Thus the reason for the passage of this recent resolution in hopes that there will be news of a positive announcement in the near future.

What do you think should happen at the Provo Tabernacle?  Give us your feedback.

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

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

In a follow-up to our latest Heritage newsletter featuring some of the fine films we can recall filmed in historic locations, we’ve had some feedback on Drive me Crazy.  Released in 1999, it was filmed in the Yalecrest neighborhood of Salt Lake City at 1764 and 1756 Hubbard Ave. right during the time of the demolition/building of the now famous Hubbard House (also known as the garage-mahal or the fire station).

As Lisette Gibson of 1764 Hubbard tells it, “Melissa Joan Hart and her mother lived in our house and cute Adrian Grenier lived next door.  The producer’s goal was to find two, 2-story houses spaced close together where the teenagers could look and talk through the upstairs windows.  It was a wild 10 days with a lot of filming inside and out (plus a sound stage), and it even included them building a huge tree house in our apple tree out back (briefly seen in the last shot).  We have a lot of stories (good and bad) from the filming.”

I agree with Lisette that it was a fun film with a lot of great shots of SLC, Ogden High School, Sugarhouse Park, and Provo Canyon.

Are

The devastating fire at the Provo Tabernacle (left, photo courtesy Utah State Historical Society) is a sobering reminder that rehabbing a landmark building is only the first step in saving it.  Thorough documentation and a detailed management plan are essential not only to its scheduled and preventive maintenance but, hopefully, to its restoration if - and in this case, when - tragedy strikes.

 This icon of Provo’s downtown is as much a repository of its history and cultural memory as the extensive collections in BYU’s libraries, and much more accessible because of its prominent location.  How many of us remember college convocations, concerts, receptions, church meetings and other gatherings within its walls and on its grounds?  Its ultimate loss would be a personal tragedy for the hundreds of thousands of people - my sister and I among them - whose memories were sparked by its burning rafters, and a knockout blow to those already reeling from the fight to save Provo’s dwindling stock of historic buildings.

Who said that economic times were slow?  Certainly not in Utah County.  You can witness rapid investment priming the pump of Utah’s economy all over Utah County, and especially in downtown Provo where the cranes are rising and trucks are hauling.

Unfortunately, one of the things the trucks are hauling is demolition debris from several older and historic buildings in Provo’s downtown historic district.  Yes, it was certainly time for some of these to probably go as they had been underutilized, unsupported by economic development programs for years, and thus neglected.  But there was still some charm and character in their scale and features and thus their contribution provided some good nature to being there.  Even in the last round of discussions with the Landmarks Commission, there was acknowledgment that in the future the city cannot allow contributing buildings to be altered, thus making them non-contributing buildings while they are listed in the local historic district or they will be de-listed and demolished just like these buildings.

So what the historic district is getting in place of handsome brick and stone, arched windows with lintels and keystones, Art Moderne and Victorian Commercial styles is glass, glass, and more glass.  On the North side, the Utah County convention center will take nearly an entire block and include a small plaza, but not include an entrance door along the entire stretch of 200 West, even though it looks like it does.

Utah Heritage Foundation supports NuSkin’s proposed expansion in downtown Provo, but not at the expense of five historic buildings and breaking up the historic Plat of Zion.  What makes any downtown area exciting and economically viable is adding more people to the environment.  The other key factor that commonly makes downtown areas unique and enticing is historic preservation.

Therefore, demolition within the Center Street Historic District should not bear the cost of constructing NuSkin’s new building.   We strongly believe that any new building should avoid demolishing historic buildings by building at the corner of 100 West and 100 South.  At this location, a major building for NuSkin still conforms to Provo’s General Plan Policies regarding Downtown and could potentially be joined to the currently used Kress Building on Center Street for continued use.

Additionally, Utah Heritage Foundation is strongly encouraging Provo City not to close 100 West to traffic.  As a historic segment of the city’s Plat of Zion and a major transportation artery, fragmenting the historic grid with the closing of a street to regular traffic begins to diminish the significance of the purpose for which the original Mormon town plat was laid out in 1850.

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See the Historic Resources of Provo via Web

The Provo City Community Development Department in conjunction with the Provo Landmarks Commission has assembled a stunningly comprehensive and interesting virtual tour or historic Provo via Google Maps.  Their interactive map identifies the following categories of resources:
- Provo Landmark Register Properties (red);
- National Register of Historic Places (various);
- National Historic Landmarks (red star);
- Utah Heritage Tree (green);
- Markers and Memorials (purple);
- Other sites of interest (yellow).

Provo City's efforts to produce this map recently won an award from the Utah Chapter of the American Planning Association.