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Show Abstract During recent years, a number of studies have shown that American frontier regions may be characterized by diversity in their early domestic architecture as immigrant building practices persist through the initial settlement period. Only after several generations of adapting old forms and adopting new ones does a regional architecture based upon a small number of shared house types emerge. The Mormon-settled Far West, however, has traditionally been set apart from this pattern of gradual regionalization; Mormon communitarian values, the planned nature of their communities, and an overriding emphasis on social order are seen to have caused a rapid convergence of architectural practices and the immediate creation of a uniform, "Mormon'' building style. It is the contention of this study that the perceived uniformity in nineteenth century Mormon architecture has been the result of a proforma validation of a prevailing form of historical explanation rather than the serious study of the buildings themselves. The purpose of this work has been to conduct the first systematic field investigation of eariy Mormon folk architecture and, in so doing, to test empirically the hypothesis of Mormon cultural homogeneity. The work was conducted in the Sanpete Valley of central Utah. This area contained the number of nineteenth century houses that would allow generalization yet was of a size that could be studied comprehensively. The results of the investigation of over 800 buildings reveal that folk ix |
