The John Steele House is the historic home of a prominent early resident of Toquerville, Utah. One of the

Mormon pioneer The Mormon pioneers were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), also known as Latter-day Saints, who migrated beginning in the mid-1840s until the late-1860s across the United States from the Midwest to the S ...

s, John Steele built the house in 1862 and lived there until his death in 1903, working as an herbal physician and serving in a number of town and county offices. Its floor plan is a rare double-parlor style. The house was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1988 for its architectural and historical significance.

Architecture

The one-story house stands on a foundation of stone, with red

adobe Adobe (from arabic: الطوب Attub ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for mudbrick. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is use ...

walls and a wooden

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

roof. Most Toquerville homes from this period were built of log rather than adobe. With It is one of only three well-documented examples of a double-parlor house in Utah: it is divided into two parlors and a narrower hall on the northern end. The Steele house has an extra door compared to most double-parlor houses (with one door and three windows), producing a symmetrical facade that gives the misleading appearance of a double-cell house (with two rooms of equal size). The center room, with a large fireplace, served as the kitchen. An adobe

lean-to A lean-to is a type of simple structure originally added to an existing building with the rafters "leaning" against another wall. Free-standing structures open on one or more sides (colloquially referred to as lean-tos in spite of being unattac ...

was added in the 1860s–1870s on the left third of the rear, and further expanded with a frame lean-to on the right two-thirds in the 1930s. A full-width porch pictured in 1900 is now removed; it is unknown whether it was original. The exterior walls were probably

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and ...

ed white in the early 20th century. With a "virtually unaltered" interior and the original doors and windows, however, the house "maintains a high degree of its original integrity."

History

Toquerville had only been founded three years ago when John Steele moved there from nearby Parowan in 1861, as part of southern Utah's settlement by the

Mormons Mormons are a Religious denomination, religious and ethnocultural group, cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's d ...

. His family came in 1862. Experienced with making and laying adobe brick, which he had done in

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. The city is the core of the Salt Lake Ci ...

, Steele probably built the house himself that year. He served as postmaster (1865), justice of the peace (1868–1869), and as surveyor (1873) and assessor (1874–1875) of Kane County. He also had a nearby boot and shoe shop, and went on several

LDS Church The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a nontrinitarian restorationist Christian denomination and the largest denomination in the Latter Day Saint movement. Founded during ...

missions. But "Doc" Steele derived much of his reputation from setting bones, administering herbal medicines and making

horoscopes A horoscope (or other commonly used names for the horoscope in English include natal chart, astrological chart, astro-chart, celestial map, sky-map, star-chart, cosmogram, vitasphere, radical chart, radix, chart wheel or simply chart) is an astr ...

. Despite Utah introducing medical licensing, he continued to practice until his death in 1903. The privately owned house was listed on the

on April 7, 1988. The nomination cites its locally significant architecture and history: "There are approximately a dozen houses in the community that date from the first decade or two of settlement, but few of them are as old and as well preserved as the Steele House."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Steele, John, House Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Utah National Register of Historic Places in Washington County, Utah Houses completed in 1862 Houses in Washington County, Utah

Architecture

History

See also

References