An Architectural Travel Guide to Utah

By Martha Bradley Evans

An Architectural Travel Guide to Utah invites visitors and other explorers of Utah to see the state’s history, material culture, settlement, and natural landscape through the lens of its buildings. With more than 600 buildings as examples, this guide takes readers through Utah’s cities and rural villages, exploring neighborhoods and other built landscapes. An adobe house from the 1860s speaks volumes about the transmission of ideas, respectability, the places of origin of Utah’s white settlers, and their use of place-specific materials. The Utah State Capitol reflects the Neoclassicism preferred for statehouses throughout the nation, but its site overlooking a canyon to the east, the Great Salt Lake to the northwest, and the long view south down State Street—one of the longest streets in America—set it apart and make it very much of its place. From the most common vernacular cabin to the modern architecture of Abravanel Symphony Hall and the Salt Lake Arts Center, this guide uses the diversity of Utah’s architecture to showcase the diversity of its people, their visions for the good life, and the particular responses of their  built environment to the unique geography of this beautiful state. Includes 276 images, many in color.

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Martha Bradley Evans is a professor in the College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Utah, as well as the senior associate vice president of Academic Affairs and dean of Undergraduate Studies. She is the past vicechair of the Utah State Board of History, a former chair of the Utah Heritage Foundation, a fellow of the Utah State Historical Society, and a recipient of the Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence. Her books include Kidnapped from that Land: The Government Raids on the Short Creek Polygamists and Plural Wife: The Autobiography of Mabel Finlayson Allred, among others.

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Table of Contents:Preface
Context for the Guide
Overview of Utah History
Selection of Buildings
Sources and Readings on Utah Architecture
Utah’s Architectural History
SALT LAKE: Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County
REGION A: Box Elder, Cache, Rich, Weber, and Morgan Counties
REGION B: Davis, Tooele, and Utah Counties
REGION C: Summit, Duchesne, Uintah, Daggett, and Wasatch Counties
REGION D: Juab, Millard, Sanpete, and Sevier Counties
REGION E: Carbon, Emery, and Grand Counties
REGION F: Beaver, Iron, and Washington Counties
REGION G: Wayne, Piute, Garfield, Kane, and San Juan Counties