| OCR Text |
Show United States Department of the Interior National Park Service / National Register of Historic Places Registration Form NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018 (Expires 5/31/2012) Amundsen, Dyre & Maria, House Salt Lake County, Utah Name of Property County and State Statement of Significance Summary Paragraph (Provide a summary paragraph that includes level of significance and applicable criteria.) The Dyre and Maria Amundsen House, built in 1891 and restored in 1998, is locally significant under Criterion C in the area of Architecture. Although the Victorian-style one-story brick house was converted to an office in 2004, a number of notable exterior and interior features have been preserved. These include the granite foundation, a tall wood mantel, and plaster ceiling medallions. The house was owned and occupied by members of the Amundsen family for over one hundred years. During that time, the house was transformed from a brick farmhouse for a major farmstead to an asbestos covered suburban home to a restored Victorian landmark. The house is particularly remarkable for its survival at the edge of an explosion of residential and commercial development that took place in Murray between the 1950s and 1970s. The period of significance dates from the construction of the house in 1891 to the remodeling in 1951. The house is a particularly elaborate early example of a cross-wing Victorian cottage in Murray, especially considering the construction materials were acquired by the barter system common for the time period. The property meets the registration requirements under the Multiple Property Submission, Historic Resources of Murray City, Utah, 1850-1967. The associated historic contexts are "Early Residential and Agricultural Buildings of Murray, 1850-1910" and the "Americanization of Murray's Residential Architecture, 1902-1965." The Dyre and Maria Amundsen House has good historic integrity and contributes to the historic character of its Murray neighborhood. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Narrative Statement of Significance (Provide at least one paragraph for each area of significance.) Architectural Significance When the Amundsen House was built in 1891 in the Victorian Eclectic style, it did not have the visual complexity of contemporaneous homes in the fashionable urban neighborhoods of Salt Lake City. The house did have a simple elegance that was suited to its rural setting. The unknown builder used a modified cross wing plan and a variety of materials to achieve the visual interest that is characteristic of the Victorian-era domestic architecture in Utah. Dyre Amundsen helped to haul granite blocks for the construction of the Salt Lake City LDS temple and family oral tradition suggests that Amundsen was given permission to select cast-off blocks for personal use. Much of the wood used in the house came from locust trees that Dyre Amundsen planted in the late 1860s or early 1870s. The red and contrasting yellow bricks were likely produced at the local brickyard in Murray. The brick and windows were paid for by a one-acre crop of potatoes. The interior spaces in the south half of the house are larger than the typical house of the period. Family tradition states that Dyre Amundsen received the two large plaster ceiling medallion moldings from the LDS Church as payment for hauling the granite blocks. The brick moldings, granite blocks, ceiling medallions, wide corridors, are atypical for a Victorian-era cross-wing house of the period in Murray. The Amundsen House as a product of the Victorian period marks a pivotal point in Murray's history. The availability of kiln-dried brick in the 1860s and the coming of the railroad in the 1870s transformed Murray's domestic architecture from vernacular buildings to Victorian forms with asymmetrical massing and a variety of texture. The Victorian cottage was the most popular house type in Murray between 1884 and 1910. Dyre and Maria Amundsen originally built an adobe house on their homestead in the late 1860s, then worked many years to afford the spacious brick home that built in 1891. In the post World War-II era, the old brick house may have seemed out-of-date as frame cottages and brick ranch houses were built on the former Amundsen homestead. The family had the house covered with asbestos siding in 1951 effectively suburbanizing it for the next generation. The 1996 to 1998 rehabilitation of the house restored much of the Victorian elegance and was awarded a Utah Heritage Foundation award in 1999. 6 |
