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Show A New Architectural Understanding This short paper can only begin to suggest the richness of Utah's architecture. The size of the state and the great number of nineteenth-century buildings available for study makes these observations inescapably cursory. The pressing need remains for detailed community studies which will elevate this subject, overly simplified to date, back to its true complexity. A Mormon landscape has been discerned in the Mountain West,41 but its identity is still masked by an overriding concern for its form rather than its content. By trying to see the artistic basis for the design of pioneer buildings, we have shifted our gaze toward aspects of construction that transcend the practical, we have found that the solid and durable can also be decorative, and we have discovered that these old buildings are far from simple in their design. Folk houses are an important tool for understanding the everyday events and for getting to know the average people of the past. The task is to move beyond the "Brig-ham- Young-slept-here-so-the-house-is-historic" stage to the full realization of the potential of all old houses for constructing a complete historical record-a history that includes the unheralded many in addition to the glorified few. In the process, as the historian Davis Bitton has pointed out, we can begin to see the "Saints as human beings."42 56 |