History
The Ebenezer Beesley House was constructed in 1866 in Salt Lake City, Utah, during the early decades of Latter-day Saint settlement of the Salt Lake Valley. The house was the home of Ebenezer Beesley, an English-born convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who emigrated to Utah in 1859 and became a prominent figure in the territory's musical life. Beesley served for many years as a director of the Salt Lake Tabernacle Choir and composed and arranged hymns that remain in Latter-day Saint hymnody.
The house was built of adobe, the dominant building material for early Salt Lake City residential construction. The Mormon settlers established adobe yards within the first years of arrival in 1847, producing sun-dried bricks from the alluvial clays of the valley floor. Adobe was inexpensive, durable, and well suited to the dry climate of the Great Basin, and it formed the structural fabric of thousands of pioneer-era homes, meetinghouses, and public buildings before fired brick and milled lumber became widely available later in the century.
The Beesley House is a representative example of the vernacular adobe houses of the 1860s, with modest scale, plain massing, and the symmetrical fenestration characteristic of the period. The architect is unrecorded, as was typical for adobe residential construction built by family labor and neighborhood masons rather than designed by a formal architect.
The property remains a private residence and is not open to public visitation. Its survival into the twenty-first century is significant given the loss of much of Salt Lake City's pioneer-era adobe stock to demolition, fire, and the spread of later development.
Within the Utah adobe tradition, the Beesley House belongs to the early settlement-period building campaign that established the Salt Lake Valley as one of the most prolific centers of nineteenth-century adobe construction in the American West outside the Spanish-speaking Southwest.
Common questions
What is the Ebenezer Beesley House?
The Ebenezer Beesley House is a historic two-story adobe brick and stucco vernacular dwelling in Salt Lake City, Utah. The house is one of only a few I-form stuccoed adobe structures remaining in the city, a form once common in Utah's nineteenth-century towns but now nearly disappeared.
When was the Ebenezer Beesley House built?
The Ebenezer Beesley House was probably constructed by 1866, when Beesley is recorded as living at the address. It is described as a nineteenth-century structure and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
Where is the Ebenezer Beesley House located?
The Ebenezer Beesley House is located in Salt Lake City, Utah. A specific street address is not provided in the available records for this entry.
Is the Ebenezer Beesley House open to the public?
No, the Ebenezer Beesley House is a private residence and is not open for tours.
Why is the Ebenezer Beesley House historically significant?
The Ebenezer Beesley House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Its significance arises from its vernacular design, dictated by local tastes and living conditions rather than mainstream architectural trends, and from being one of the few surviving I-form stuccoed adobe structures in Salt Lake City.