LDS Church’s Beehive House remake may do away with popular Lion House eatery​on February 8, 2025 at 1:00 pm

In the broad sweep of history, the Beehive House on South Temple might be Salt Lake City’s most important home.

​See the LDS Church’s plans for the historic Beehive House and Lion House on South Temple, including a popular restaurant.  

In the broad sweep of history, the Beehive House on South Temple might be Salt Lake City’s most important home.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day is nearing completion on several years of meticulous restoration work on the 170-year-old landmark, along with the neighboring Lion House and other buildings on that southeast corner of Temple Square where pioneer-prophet Brigham Young and his family once lived.

So careful is this restoration — more than a decade in the making — that church officials and members of city’s Historic Landmark Commission spent a full 90 minutes Thursday thrashing out what to do with a set of doors — before the panel nixed the church’s approach. Its members voted 5-2 to reject a church proposal to remove the Beehive House’s eastern doors, saying instead the 134-year-old oak entryway facing State Street needed to remain.

Before it was all done, a church historian let slip that a popular restaurant located in the Lion House — called the Lion House Pantry and renowned among generations of Latter-day Saints for its soft, fluffy rolls — may be no more.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it. Sorry!” the church’s historic sites curator, Emily Utt, told commissioners, a smile on her face, as several in Thursday’s hearing caught the news of the Lion House cafeteria’s apparent demise.

Reached Friday, a church spokesperson did not offer additional comment.

Layers upon layers of history

The restoration project at that corner of South Temple and State Street centers on the Beehive House, the Lion House to the west and a small complex between them, including what’s called the President’s Office and the Territorial Governor’s Office — both of which Young used before his death in 1877.

The rework, according to the church’s 2022 announcement, is aimed at upgrading old facilities in the buildings, fixing structural deficiencies and saving aging features in both houses.

The Lion House closed in 2020 with the U.S. onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Beehive House, in 2023, in advance of the restoration. It’s unclear when the landmark sites — logged in the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 about a decade after they narrowly escaped demolition — will reopen to public view.

In terms of preserving their history, here’s where the story gets more complicated. One architect for the church joked that it took him a year and a half of study to understand all the layers.

One restoration, three different eras

In essence, the buildings are old enough that they span several periods that church preservationists have deemed important enough to be reflected in the restoration. The main one is Brigham Young’s time, between the 1850s and 1877, but former church Presidents Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F. Smith lived there, too, from 1900 to 1920.

Smith, in fact, is said to have received a vision regarding the redemption of the dead while in the home on Oct. 3, 1918. It is recorded as Section 138 in the faith’s Doctrine and Covenants.

The place was also a boardinghouse for young women from around 1910 to 1940.

So the multilayered restoration, according to Utt and others, is altering various parts of the buildings in keeping with the architectural look and feel of each of those eras — all in seemingly minute detail.

And, yes, that’s part of why the placement of two doors became such a head-scratcher to the city’s preservation experts.

City says no

The double doors, splendidly crafted Italianate-style oak entries, hang on the Beehive House’s east facade on State Street, though they once fronted the home’s southern entrance.

The church originally asked the city to approve demolishing the twin 19th-century doors and replacing them with a replica of a different, single door reflecting the same era. That, according to the church’s analysis, would be the more historically accurate move.

The city’s answer Thursday: No can do.

Two commission members — Alan Barnett and chair John Ewanowski — voted to support the church’s proposal, while five voted it down.

Though not original to the Young era, city experts say the doors date to a 1888-1891 addition to the rear by one of his sons, John W. Young. They came close to being disposed of in a 1960s-era remodel of the Beehive House but were instead shifted to the east.

After being attached to some part of the Beehive House for more than 13 decades, the doors “are a character-defining feature of the building based on both the age and the design of the doors,” according to a city report.

Doors to replace the restaurant?

The stately, tarnished gold-colored entry doors remain in excellent condition and don’t need replacing, the report says. And city rules call for leaving such architectural features in place.

What’s more, the idea of combining a single-entry door on the east side and another single door on the south, the city’s report says, “has no basis in history” and would “degrade” the site’s historic integrity.

Now it turns out, even if the church’s plan had won approval, the doors aren’t slated to be demolished, according to Utt. Instead, they are to be placed in the church’s permanent collection.

Utt said they could, in fact, be turned into one of the museum displays for the Lion House, potentially as an exhibit.

She then mentioned that the church’s floor plan for the future Lion House museum spaces would position its introductory exhibit where the Lion House Panty had been located.

“You’re taking out the restaurant?” commission member Babs De Lay asked, to which Utt smiled, apologized for the mention and moved on.

“Oh man!” lamented De Lay as others chuckled. “I loved that place!”

Before the church’s door replacement proposal got shot down, an official working for the church assured the panel its restoration crews would comply however the commission ruled.

“We do feel strongly about this,” added Steve Cornell, a church-hired architect with Salt Lake City’s FFKR. “We feel like this is going to make it a better project — but, yes, we will follow whatever recommendation you provide.”