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UTAH PRESS \SSOCIATION Clippillg Service (XOI132H-X67X SALT LAKE TRIBU NE Monroe pavilion, built in 1907, was the recreation center for Sevier County in pre-TV days. Rural Monroe Was Plugged Into Dance Craze, And Kept in Step With Its Own Jazzy Pavilion One of the first City View columns this nonarchitect wrote for The Tribune a dozen years ago dealt with the Ambassador Club building at 500 East and 100 South. It mentioned that the club was doomed to vanish shortly and that it was a favorite haunt of Gov. J. Bracken Lee and other card-playing notables. Also. the old structure was the nation's first federal housing project. It was built by the kind-hearted "feds " to house female polyga· mists displaced by federal laws banning such marital bondage. But not a single woman could be induced to move in! The day after the column appeared. I had a phone call from a nonadmirer. "You neglected to say that when the club was a hotel , it had a dance floor and orchestra." the caller declared indignantly. "You didn't say that that was where I danced with Rudolph Valentino." Now. I've always been chary of items concerning dancing, since I never learned to hoof it properly. At New York University, I was employed in the check-room at most college dances. The tips helped pay for tuition and the pastrami-on-rye sandwiches that constituted my favorite diet (15 cents, dill pickle included). DanCing, Architecture: Here I will mix the subjects of dancing and architecture and even Christmas: Today's sketch shows a rather odd structure - namely the Monroe Pavilion, built in the town of Monroe, in southern Sevier County, in 1907. It is identified by M. Guy Bishop in his new History of Sevier County as "the recreation center" for that area "for many years. " If I am to believe Merial Musig Hawkins. a resident of Bountiful but a native of Monroe, that 1907 pavilion is still beloved by oldtimers as a favored spot for local terpsichorean revelry. Dancing, that is. She kindly included in a missive information from the journal of Sylvia Collings Musig, JACK GOODMAN reflecting the spirit of those bygone days. Sylvia reported, "On Thanksgiving 1907 the opening dance was held on the Monroe Pavilion. Oh what a crowd. how wonderful it seemed, and what a glorious time we had. There were dances Thurs" FJi .. and Sat night. " We are informed that at turkey-trot time, Monroe had no electricity. "On Christmas Eve as we were dancing, just at midnight, the electric lights flashed on in the Pavilion for the first time. Monroe had been promised lights for Christmas and they were there. This was quite an event in the history of our little town. The electric lights added to the attractiveness of the new pavilion and I shall never forget the good dances that we had during those holidays." The Monroe Pavilion was built in 1907 by Peter Lundgren. His descendants report that this forward-thinking good citizen, unable to raise some heavy beams himself, went to a local saloon "and asked some men that were there to help him put up the roof trusses. They said they would for a round of beers." Since the trusses are still in place, one assumes the suds were forthcoming. The pavilion - one of several dance spas in rural Utah - also was Monroe's first movie theater, with Sevetine Andreason behind the projector. Hans Tuft was president of the group that ran the entertainment center. Today one suspects Monroe has as many entertainment sources as most Utah towns. The greensward-facing pavilion contains paired goal- posts, and doubtless there is a baseball diamond nearby; the sole sign of the structure's unusual initial function is the narrow ticket window to the right oC the entrance double doors. There was room Cor more than dancing, oC course - many oldtimers speak oC enjoying roller skating under the gabled, ventilated roof. The taller section of the structure, at left in today's drawing, housed the elementary school and the initial quarters of Monroe's High School. The high school's initial classes were on the first floor of the grade-school building. Fourteen students completed the first high-school courses in 1907, the year the pavilion opened. Nila Ware is listed as first valedictorian. Monroe Particulars: All of which fails to answer another oddity linlted to the pavilion. My source is the 1940 or first edition of Utah, a Guide to the State, written by some of the state's best-known authors and historians, under the leadership of Gail Martin and Darrell J . Greenwell of Ogden, state administrators of the Federal Works Agency and the Utah State Institute of Fine Arts. The guidebook notes that Monroe had 1,288 population in 1940, was a lamb-raising and fruit-growing center, elevation 5,775 feet, with "broad tree-lined streets and houses of the pioneer era." It adds, " Modem dances are inconvenienced by a local ordinance requiting the passage of visible light between partners." Further research is obviously needed. Was that ordinance ever enforced? Is that why the pavilion was built - or is that why it closed, to be turned into housing and later into manufacturing space for the Carlisle Manufacturing Co.? Jack Goodman has been asso- ciated with The Salt Lake Trib- une as a staff or free-lance writer for 51 years.