Old dance hall kicks up heels

FOUNTAIN GREEN, Sanpete County — Six years ago when volunteers announced they wanted to restore Fountain Green's historic dance hall and theater, a lot of people thought "pipe dream."

City fathers told Gene Peckham, one of the volunteers and now chairman of the Fountain Green Heritage Committee, "If you want to knock yourselves out, if you want to go down to the building and put in time, go ahead."

Now, after a $700,000 restoration, a building that is literally the last of its kind is going to last a lot longer.

Although some of the early naysayers have apologized — one went to Peckham's house to do so — their skepticism was probably justified: The volunteers had no money and the building appeared to be headed back to dust like other dance halls around Utah built by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the early 1900s.

The roof and part of the floor had caved in. Deteriorated pieces of the building had fallen into the centers of the rooms. Parts of the building were almost knee deep in pigeon droppings.

But the old hall had something else — an exceptional history. Unlike the others, it's a combination building with a theater on one side and dance hall on the other.

For decades, the building was "the heart of the community," the Heritage Committee said in an application for reconstruction money. A dance was held every weekend, and everybody came — mom, dad and the kids. Dean Hansen, who was mayor when the restoration project was launched, remembers his parents taking him to a dance in pajamas and bare feet.

When Fountain Green sent soldiers to the world wars — or welcomed them home — the town staged a dance.

A live orchestra nearly always accompanied the dancing. In the 1920s and '30s, one of the most popular groups was the Wool City Band, named for Fountain Green's sheep industry.

The theater side was used for community and children's plays and for silent movies. A man named John Oldroyd cranked the hand-operated projector. Deniece Blackham, who died earlier this year at 92, played vaudevillian music on the piano to accompany the movies.

In the 1940s, when the church started selling off its dance halls, the one in Fountain Green hall was purchased and converted to a general store and roller-skating rink. In the 1970s, the store owner shut down his business and boarded the building. It remained vacant for 30 years.