On home tour, old meets the new

The house at 551 E. 11th Ave., with its four-column, pseudo-Greek facade and its prairie style interior, was built in 1909 by the Goddard Investment Co.

The picture of Jerry Garcia in the living room, the red Christmas lights in the kitchen and the two pink flamingos outside were all added later.

With houses built between 1909 and 1997, the Utah Heritage Foundation's annual Historic Homes Tour was a mixture of both old and new last Saturday.

Focusing on homes around 11th Avenue and B Street, tour director Katelyn Bradley said the event attracted about 1,500 people.

"Everyone seems to be enjoying the homes," Millie Kay Francis, a volunteer for the foundation, said as she sat outside the Jerrold Pratt Beesley house at 463 11th Ave.

Francis said she was serving in her first year as a co-chairwoman for the foundation, overseeing the Period Revival home built in 1928.

With a Gothic-style door, cove ceilings and gumwood floors, Francis said the owners recently expanded the house with a 1,000-foot addition.

"I'm amazed at all the good things they did," she said. "The most impressive thing was that they were able to find the same brick as the rest of the house — red, scratch-face brick."

The Beesley home wasn't the only juxtaposition of old and new on Saturday's tour.

The J. Alf Jacobson house, a Tudor revival cottage at 338 11th Ave., was built in 1937. Its steeply pitched roof, colorful bricks, tall chimney and leaded windows give it the feel of an Elizabethan home, Bradley said.

Across the street from the Jacobson House, the next stop on the Historic Homes Tour was built in 1997 — 60 years after its neighbors. Bradley said the home was selected for the tour because of its efforts to blend in with surrounding homes.

Bradley said owner Robert Baumer and designer Bryan Wright worked hard to ensure that the home did not look out of place in the neighborhood. Baumer and Wright relied heavily on the style of Frank Lloyd Wright for the home, using masonry detail, a covered porch and planter boxes.

"That's why we chose that home," Bradley said. "It is a new home, but we thought it would be interesting to incorporate a newer home that was architecturally aware of its surroundings, because that's what the Heritage Foundation is all about."