By correspondence Kaysville
Six National Register buildings, no historic district, and one self taught architect behind four of them
The man who built Kaysville, and the three blocks that are still his
William Allen reached Utah as a boy in 1863, worked as a farmhand, followed his father into brick masonry, and taught himself architecture by correspondence course. He became the busiest architect in Davis County, and in Kaysville he designed the Presbyterian church, a county courthouse, the Barnes Block, the Tabernacle, the elementary school and the houses of the two families who paid for it all. Four of the city's six National Register buildings are his work, and Kaysville has no historic district drawn around any of them.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
Two different men stand behind the phrase. Kaysville takes its name from William Kay, the first bishop of the settlement that grew along Kay's Creek in the early 1850s, when the place was still called Kay's Ward. The man who built the Kaysville you can still walk through was someone else: William Allen, a brick mason's son who reached Utah in 1863 and taught himself architecture by mail. Allen designed four of the city's six National Register buildings, the 1912 Tabernacle, and the houses of the wealthiest families in town. There is no marked historic district here, no plaque trail and no boundary. There are just the buildings, close together on about three blocks of Main Street and the streets either side of it, and an hour on foot puts you past most of them.
The architect
A brick mason's son learned architecture by post, and then built most of what still stands
William Allen left England as a boy in 1862 and reached Utah in 1863. He worked as a farmhand, then followed his father into brick masonry, and he studied architecture and drafting by correspondence course until he had turned himself into the most sought after architect in Davis County. He settled in Kaysville and stayed there until he died on 11 October 1928.
That is a remarkable thing for a town this size. A self taught man designed the county courthouse, the town's tabernacle, its elementary school, its Presbyterian church and its main commercial block, and then the houses of the two wealthiest families in Kaysville. His work runs the length of the town: the Presbyterian church of 1888, a Davis County courthouse of 1889 to 1890, the Henry Blood house of about 1896, the Barnes Block of 1910, the Kaysville Tabernacle of 1912 and Kaysville Elementary of 1918, along with homes for both Barnes brothers, a Stewart, a Smith and a Barton, and one for himself.
A couple of those need a careful word. Two of the buildings on the list may no longer stand, the Presbyterian church and the early elementary school, and Davis County has had more than one courthouse over the years, so the courthouse credit is not a clean one. The buildings that are certain, and that you can still stand in front of today, are the ones below.
The picture is consistent from every angle: a self trained architect and brick mason who put up substantial brick homes and public buildings across Davis County, the John R. Barnes house among them. One man, largely self taught, built the public face of this town.
The family and the governor
A store in 1863, a bank in 1891, and a marriage that tied the whole street together
John Richard Barnes was born in England on 28 July 1833, emigrated to Utah as a convert in 1853, and settled in Kaysville, where for the next ten years he farmed and taught school. Then the sequence that shaped the street. In 1863 he opened the first general store in Kaysville and ran it for the rest of his life. In 1891 he founded the Barnes Banking Company. He added the Kaysville Canning Company in 1902, the Kaysville Milling Company in 1905 and the Davis County Canning Company in 1907, and he became one of the largest landowners in Davis County.
His house tells you what he did with the money, and it is the best small story on the street. Faced in the 1880s with a house that had gone out of fashion, Barnes chose to remodel rather than start over. What went up in the early 1890s was an entire new Queen Anne house added to the rear of the old one, with a half octagon turret on the north front carrying flat, segmental and half round brick window heads all at once, and then a balconied portico, a frame bay and cement quoins bolted onto the older house to make the two match. He rebuilt his house around his house rather than move.
Henry Hooper Blood is the thread that ties the rest of it together. Born in Kaysville on 1 October 1872, he worked his father's farm and attended school, served a mission in England, and in June 1905 became the manager of the Kaysville Milling Company, the mill John R. Barnes had founded that same year. He had married Minnie A. Barnes on 4 June 1896; she was born in Kaysville on 2 October 1872, the day after him. He broke ground for Allen's tabernacle as bishop in 1912. And he served as the seventh governor of Utah, from 1933 to 1941.
One architect, one family and one governor, on three blocks. Blood married into the Barnes family, ran the Barnes mill, lived in a house Allen designed, laid the cornerstone of a tabernacle Allen designed, and came back as governor with the federal money that built the stone city hall at the top of the same street.
A brick mason's son who learned his profession by post designed the bank block, the tabernacle, the schoolhouse and the houses of the two families who paid for all of it. Four of the six National Register listings in this city are his, and there is not a plaque with his name on it anywhere.
The six listings
Every National Register building in the city, with its address and the year it went on
This is the whole set. Four of the six are private homes, so the last column is the one that matters most: it tells you how you may look at each building.
| Building | Listed | Address | What it is, and how to see it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Henry Blood House | 1980 | 95 South 300 West | A Queen Anne house begun about 1896 for a future governor of Utah and enlarged in 1915, designed by William Allen. A private home, seen from the sidewalk. |
| John George Moroni Barnes House | 1982 | 42 West Center Street | One of the two largest and most elaborate houses in Kaysville, and an Allen design. A private home, seen from the sidewalk. |
| John R. Barnes House | 1982 | 10 South 100 West | Built in three stages from about 1869, ending with a full Queen Anne house added to the rear about 1892. A private home, seen from the sidewalk. |
| LeConte Stewart House | 1996 | 172 West 100 South | A 1922 English period revival cottage by Pope and Burton, with the painter's studio, a coop and a barn behind it. A private home, seen from the sidewalk. |
| Thomas J. and Amanda N. Smith House | 2006 | 472 North Main Street | A brick house of about 1901 by Allen, built north of the original town plat and later used as offices and apartments. Check what it is before you look. |
| Kaysville City Hall | 2019 | 44 North Main Street | The 1941 to 1943 stone city hall by Ashton and Evans, the last New Deal public building standing in Davis County. Closed and unsafe to enter; outside only. |
There is no Kaysville historic district, and the Kaysville Tabernacle is not on this federal list, which is why the Tabernacle counts as a state listing rather than a national one. A National Register listing recognizes a building's importance; on a private home it does not open the door to the public, and it does not, by itself, limit what the owner may do.
The Tabernacle
The Kaysville Tabernacle stands at 198 West Center Street, about a fifth of a mile west of City Hall. Its cornerstone was laid on 24 July 1912 under Bishop Henry H. Blood, later governor of Utah, and the building was dedicated on 24 May 1914. William Allen designed it. It replaced an adobe meetinghouse built between 1855 and 1863 that had outgrown its congregation. The iron box set under the 1912 cornerstone was opened on 16 April 2022.
The commercial street
A bank block from 1910, and a row of shops that opened together in 1948
The town museum's walking tour names the buildings on Main Street and gives the dates, and the run of them is the reason the street reads the way it does. At 4 South Main, a building put up about 1919 on the site of the pioneer Egbert Hotel, holding The Weekly Reflex newspaper and the Inland Printing Company. At 14 South Main, the Egbert home of about 1860, turned into a hotel in 1867 as a waystation between Salt Lake City and Ogden. At 1 North and 11 North, the Barnes Banking Company and the cooperative mercantile, with the Barnes Block built in 1910. At 13 to 15 North, Bowman's Supermarket from 1927 to 1957, on ground that had been a coal shed, a lumber yard and a granary.
Then comes the part a visitor can still see the shape of. The Kaysville Theatre at 21 North Main opened on 14 February 1948 with 550 seats, air conditioning and upholstered chairs. Stewart's Gift Shop opened on 14 February 1948. Parker Radio and Appliance at 41 North Main opened on 14 February 1948. And Frost Drug at 27 to 31 North, a pharmacy with a soda fountain, opened five weeks later on 20 March 1948. Four businesses, one block, one post war building season, three of them opening on the very same day.
A few doors further, the E. L. Linford Building of about 1927 at 47 North Main held Thomas Lunch, a duck pin bowling alley, Larkin's Cafe and The Villager over the years, and 37 to 39 North carried Emelee's from about 1954, the Charm Shoppe from 1957 and the Hay Day Cloggers from 1986. None of those is a monument. Together they are the ordinary commercial history of a Utah main street written down building by building, which is far more than most towns this size have on paper.
One detail is worth carrying on the walk because it shows you something on the ground. The Smith house at 472 North Main was built north of Kaysville's original town plat. So the walk north up Main Street physically leaves the old plat before it reaches the last listed building on the route, and the change in how the lots sit is visible if you are looking for it.
Walking it
How to see Main Street on foot, and the rule for the four that are homes
The town museum publishes a building by building walk of Main Street. Start near 50 South on the west side and go north to about 200 North; the whole route is three blocks, so park once and walk it. The Tabernacle is two blocks west on Center Street, and the four listed houses sit on short detours a minute or two off Main. There is no signage, no plaque trail and no visitor center, so carry the walk on your phone.
The details
Four of the six listings are private homes, and one has been lived in continuously since 1923. The Blood house at 95 South 300 West, the John George Moroni Barnes house at 42 West Center Street, the John R. Barnes house at 10 South 100 West and the LeConte Stewart house at 172 West 100 South are all private residences. Look from the public sidewalk, keep off the property, and do not photograph through a window. The Smith house at 472 North Main has been used as offices and apartments, so check what it is before you treat it as either. The stone city hall at 44 North Main is closed and unsafe to enter, so it too is an outside visit.
Afterlives
A painter who taught for free at lunchtime, and a bank that ran the town for 119 years
The other name this street carries belongs to a painter rather than a builder. LeConte Stewart's house and studio at 172 West 100 South went on the National Register in 1996, and there are four contributing buildings on a three quarter acre lot: the house, the studio, a chicken coop and a barn. The studio is the part nobody writes about, and it survives unaltered from its 1922 construction, a one story stucco building with a steeply pitched gable roof, a run of casement windows facing the garden, and a swan's neck pediment over the door. A son recalled that the coop and barn held chickens and one cow until the 1960s.
The story worth carrying off that file is a teaching one. Stewart moved his family in during January 1923 and found no art program in the local high school, so he gave free lessons during the lunch hour and after school. A few years later he had gathered enough support to get art classes established for the students during the school day. He headed the art departments at Ogden High and then East High in Salt Lake City between 1923 and 1938, won first prize at the Art Barn in 1936 for a canvas called House by the Railroad Tracks, and lived in that house until he died in 1990. It was the only home he ever owned.
And the ending of the family story sits at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation rather than in any local history. The Barnes Banking Company, founded in Kaysville in 1891, was closed by the Utah Department of Financial Institutions on Friday 15 January 2010, with the FDIC named receiver. The FDIC set up a Deposit Insurance National Bank of Kaysville to hold the insured accounts. The receivership was terminated on 1 February 2025, after a notice of intent published in February 2024. The cost to the deposit insurance fund came to about 271.3 million dollars. A bank founded in 1891 ran this town for 119 years, and its receivership finally closed fifteen years after it did.
That is a business fact and a place fact, nothing more. It says nothing about who lives in Kaysville now, nothing about the town's economy today, and nothing about what an address here is worth. The market side of that question sits on the practical Kaysville city guide, and what living in the older part of town actually asks of a household is on the mover page.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Quick answers
Main Street, answered
Kaysville takes its name from William Kay, the first bishop of the settlement that grew along Kay's Creek in the early 1850s, when the place was still called Kay's Ward. Settlers once pushed to rename the town Freedom, but the Kaysville name stuck. One thing to keep straight: the man the town is named for and the man who designed most of its landmark buildings are two different people. The buildings are the work of William Allen, a self taught architect who came later.
William Allen, and he was largely self taught. He left England as a boy in 1862, reached Utah in 1863, worked as a farmhand and then followed his father into brick masonry, and he studied architecture and drafting by correspondence course until he became the busiest architect in Davis County. Four of Kaysville's six National Register buildings are his work, along with the 1912 Tabernacle. He lived in Kaysville until he died there on 11 October 1928.
For a town this size the list is long: the Kaysville Presbyterian Church of 1888, a Davis County courthouse of 1889 to 1890, the Barnes Block of 1910, the Kaysville Tabernacle of 1912, Kaysville Elementary of 1918, the Henry Blood house of about 1896, and homes for John R. Barnes, John G. M. Barnes, a Stewart, a Smith and a Barton. Two of those, the Presbyterian church and the early elementary school, may no longer stand, and the county has had more than one courthouse, so the courthouse credit is not clean.
No. Kaysville has no National Register historic district and no locally designated one either. What it has instead is six individually listed National Register properties standing inside the city, which is an unusual combination: plenty of listed buildings and no marked area around them. Farmington and West Bountiful, two towns south along the same bench, both have federal districts. Kaysville does not.
Six of them: the Henry Blood House at 95 South 300 West, listed in 1980; the John George Moroni Barnes House at 42 West Center Street, listed in 1982; the John R. Barnes House at 10 South 100 West, listed in 1982; the LeConte Stewart House at 172 West 100 South, listed in 1996; the Thomas J. and Amanda N. Smith House at 472 North Main Street, listed in 2006; and Kaysville City Hall at 44 North Main Street, listed in 2019. Four of the six are private residences.
From the sidewalk only. Four of the six listings are private homes and people live in them now. A National Register listing recognizes a building's importance; it does not open it to the public, it does not create any right to enter, and on a private home it does not by itself limit what the owner may do. Look from the public street, keep off the property, and do not photograph through a window. The stone city hall at 44 North Main is closed and unsafe to enter, so that one is an outside visit too.
Its cornerstone was laid on 24 July 1912 under Bishop Henry H. Blood, later the seventh governor of Utah, and the building was dedicated on 24 May 1914. It stands at 198 West Center Street, about a fifth of a mile west of City Hall, and it replaced an adobe meetinghouse built between 1855 and 1863 that had outgrown its congregation. William Allen designed it. One note for anyone listing it: the Tabernacle is a state historic property rather than a National Register one, so it does not appear on the federal list of Davis County buildings.
It failed. The Barnes Banking Company, founded in Kaysville in 1891 by John R. Barnes, was closed by the Utah Department of Financial Institutions on Friday 15 January 2010, with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation named receiver. The FDIC set up a Deposit Insurance National Bank of Kaysville to hold the insured accounts, and the receivership was terminated on 1 February 2025. The cost to the deposit insurance fund came to about 271.3 million dollars. The bank had run the town for 119 years.
A Utah landscape painter and printmaker who lived and worked at 172 West 100 South in Kaysville from 1923 until his death in 1990, in the only house he ever owned. The 1996 National Register listing has four contributing buildings on a three quarter acre lot: the 1922 English period revival cottage by the Salt Lake firm Pope and Burton, his unaltered 1922 studio with casement windows onto the garden and a swan's neck pediment over the door, a chicken coop and a barn. He found no art program at the local high school, so he gave free lessons at lunchtime and after school and eventually got classes established during the school day. It is a private residence.
Three blocks with six listings and one man's name on four of them
Kaysville's older streets read more clearly than most Wasatch Front towns their size, and none of it shows up in a market summary. A 1910 bank block, a 1912 tabernacle, a 1943 city hall and four listed houses sit inside an hour's walk, and four of the six were designed by a man who taught himself the trade by mail. If you are weighing an address in this part of town, or trying to work out what a listing does and does not mean for a house you are looking at, tell me what you are solving and I will connect you with a Davis County partner agent who knows these streets, and stay on the financing side myself.
Or call Scott: (435) 357-4345or send Scott a message
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