The empty one Kaysville
Of 226 New Deal buildings put up in Utah, five were in Davis County and this is the only one left
The Rock Building, and the argument this town keeps having about it.
In November 1940 a twenty five year old mayor announced a fifty five thousand dollar city hall for Kaysville. Twenty thousand dollars of it came from the New Deal, the war stopped the work, and a county health director found the grant that finished it in 1943. It has been a city hall, a health centre, a library and an art gallery, and it has been effectively empty since 2015. It went on the National Register in 2019 and onto Utah's Most Endangered Places list in 2026.
Southern Utah is the ground I actually work, several hours south of Davis County, so these pages are researched rather than lived. What is on them was read where it is published: five National Register nomination files for Kaysville buildings, the city's own power presentation filed as a public notice document, the Davis County Clerk's canvassed 2020 election report, the county recorder's parcel layer and two independent boundary authorities, Utah State University's own posted rules for its botanical campus, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's failed bank record. Every figure carries the date it was checked. A Davis County partner agent takes the ground level work.
The live question
What is going to happen to the stone building at 44 North Main?
Nobody knows, and as of 15 August 2026 that is the honest and complete answer. Here is the state of the record. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 30 September 2019 as Kaysville City Hall, reference 100004476. Structural and mould problems were found during a 2017 remodel and it has been effectively empty since 2015. A demolition proposal was postponed in September 2021 after a petition and public opposition at a council meeting. In October 2022 the city issued a request for restoration proposals and gave preservation supporters roughly eighteen months. That window passed without a funded plan.
The newest thing on the record is from this year and it is not from the city. Preservation Utah named the Old Kaysville City Hall and Library one of the state's 2026 Most Endangered Places, describing the building as largely vacant and unsuitable for occupancy since 2017, noting that no long term plan or funding to save it has been established, and putting rehabilitation somewhere between 1.2 million and more than 3 million dollars. Anything you read that describes a settled outcome for this building is running ahead of the record, and there is a good deal of that in circulation.
What is on the record instead is one of the best pieces of writing about any building in Davis County, and it is a federal document. The nomination that listed the place in 2019 runs to sixty three pages and it reads like a page outline: a twenty five year old mayor announcing a fifty five thousand dollar city hall in November 1940, New Deal money, a war that stopped the work, a county health director who found the money to finish it, and a statement of statewide context that is worth the whole file. Of 226 buildings put up in Utah under the New Deal programmes, twenty two were city halls, five were in Davis County, and this is the only one of the five still standing.
The Rock Building, in numbers
$55,000
the cost announced by the mayor in November 1940
$20,000
of it paid by federal New Deal funds
1 of 5
New Deal buildings in Davis County, and the only one left
2019
the year it went on the National Register
How it got built
A mayor of twenty five, a world war, and a county health director working above a bank.
The nomination tells the story in sequence and the sequence is the point. "In November of 1940, 25-year-old Kaysville Mayor Thornley K. Swan announced construction of a $55,000 city hall building." A bond election followed in 1941, and part of the project, twenty thousand dollars of it, was paid for by federal funds through the New Deal works programme. Then Pearl Harbor. Work halted in December 1941, the federal funds were eliminated, and construction was deferred to 1943. The museum in town records the start of construction as 1 October 1941, which sits comfortably inside the nomination's 1941 to 1943 span.
What got it finished was a second idea rather than a second bond. Emphasis shifted to using part of the building as a health centre, led by Dr. Keith Barnes, the Davis County Health Department director and a Kaysville resident, who at that point had been running the county health department out of an office above the old Barnes Bank building in downtown Kaysville. Barnes proposed the federal grant that completed the job. City offices took the south side of the finished building and the county health department took the north. The building was finished in the autumn of 1943 and in use by early 1944.
That closes a loop with the rest of Main Street. The county's health department was operating out of a room above the Barnes bank, and the man in that room found the money that saved the city hall three blocks away. The bank, the family, the architect and the governor who brought the federal money are all one small network on one street, and the Main Street page carries the whole of it.
The governor is worth naming here because the nomination does. "The seventh governor of the state of Utah, Henry Hooper Blood, was a Kaysville native who held office during the Great Depression," it records, and "Blood's position as governor positioned him to obtain federal monies for his hometown." Blood served from 1933 to 1941 by the usual accounts, though this building's nomination and an older Kaysville nomination disagree by a year on the end date. His own house at 95 South 300 West is on the National Register, and as bishop he had broken ground for the Kaysville Tabernacle in 1912.
The details
Getting there
Park on or near Main Street in the couple of blocks north of Center Street and walk. The building sits back from the street behind a paved plaza, which is unusual for Main Street here and is deliberate: the plaza and the monument in it were part of the original 1943 design. Everything worth seeing is from the pavement. Do not attempt to enter, do not go looking for an unlocked door, and treat the site as what it is, a closed municipal building in poor condition.
Before you go
- The stone is the thing to look at closely. The nomination describes a polychrome fieldstone veneer laid in random rubble, gathered from regional sources, matching the earliest stone houses in the area.
- The monument sixty feet back from the street commemorates the 1854 Weinel Flour Mill, was built in 1943 alongside the building, and is by the same architects. It is a contributing resource in its own right.
- Read the condition honestly. The nomination records water damage, failed drywall and deteriorating wire mesh that could result in the detachment of the stone exterior unless remedied.
- Check the city council agendas before repeating anything about the building's future. The last verified action is the October 2022 request for proposals and the 2026 endangered listing.
The building
Local fieldstone, a Salt Lake firm and a style with a name most people have never heard.
The nomination's own description is the cleanest available: "The Kaysville City Hall, constructed 1941-43 is a long, one-story central-block-with-wings-type building designed by the noted Utah architecture firm of Ashton and Evans in a PWA Moderne (Stripped Classical) style. The exterior is clad in local fieldstone." The architects of record are Raymond J. Ashton and Raymond L. Evans, and the style name is worth learning because it explains what you are looking at: classical proportions with the ornament stripped off, which is what public money built in the late 1930s and early 1940s across the country.
The stone is the local half of it and it is why the town calls the place the Rock Building rather than the old city hall. The nomination is specific: "the Kaysville City Hall is constructed of a polychrome fieldstone veneer laid in a random rubble pattern. The metamorphic stone was gathered from regional sources and matches that of the earliest stone houses built in the area." A New Deal building in a national style, faced in the same rock as the pioneer houses two streets away. That is the sentence that makes it a Kaysville building rather than a federal one.
The firm is not a local one and its other work says so. The nomination lists Ashton and Evans as the designers of the George Thomas Library and fieldhouses at the University of Utah, the university's Union Building, the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Building, the Salt Lake Sears store, Bushnell Hospital in Brigham City, the Utah State Penitentiary at the Point of the Mountain, and the naval supply depot at Clearfield, which is the site that became the Freeport Center. The same drawing office produced a small city hall in Kaysville and one of the largest supply depots in the world twelve miles up the road.
The listing itself is not a general historic designation. It is Criterion A, area of significance politics and government, period of significance 1943 to 1969, with significant dates of 1943, 1944, 1945, the mid 1950s and 1962, and it counts two contributing resources: the building and the monument in front of it. Its other recorded name is the Davis County Health Department, Kaysville, and it was listed under a thematic grouping for public works buildings rather than on its own.
| When | What happened | Where it is recorded | What it means for the building now |
|---|---|---|---|
| November 1940 | A 25 year old mayor announces a 55,000 dollar city hall | The National Register nomination, listed 30 September 2019 | The origin date, and the reason the period of significance starts in the war years |
| 1941 to 1943 | A bond election, 20,000 dollars of New Deal money, then a halt after December 1941 and a restart in 1943 | The same nomination; the local museum records construction beginning 1 October 1941 | The war is why the building is a 1943 building rather than a 1941 one |
| April 1944 | The health centre opens; a newspaper of the day records that the first clinic would be held on 20 April 1944 | Quoted in the nomination from a 1944 newspaper | A 1944 record of a building's opening, and it is quoted as exactly that and nothing more |
| 1962 to 2006 | The Kaysville Public Library occupies the building, first alongside city offices and then alone after the city moved out in 1987 | The nomination, with the county's own later dates | The use most people in town remember, and the reason it is called the old library as often as the Rock Building |
| 2014 | The county library moves to a new Kaysville branch at 215 North Fairfield Road | Davis County; recorded in the nomination's chronology | The last occupant leaves, and the building's vacancy begins in earnest |
| 2017 | A council authorised remodel uncovers mould in the walls and further inspection finds more work needed to make it habitable | The Kaysville-Fruit Heights Museum of History and Art | The moment the question changed from what to put in it to whether to keep it |
| September 2021 | A demolition proposal is postponed after a petition reported at more than 800 signatures and public opposition at a council meeting | Contemporary news reporting | The first time the building was formally at risk, and the first time the town said no |
| October 2022 | The city issues a request for restoration proposals, giving supporters roughly eighteen months | Contemporary reporting and Preservation Utah | The window lapsed in early 2024 without a funded plan, which is where the record stops |
| 2026 | Preservation Utah names it one of the state's Most Endangered Places, with rehabilitation estimated at 1.2 million to more than 3 million dollars | Preservation Utah, read 15 August 2026 | The most recent verified development, and the reason this page has a live question rather than an answer |
Sources as named in the third column, all checked in August 2026. Rows before 2017 are documented in a federal nomination; rows from 2017 on rest on a local museum, contemporary reporting and a statewide preservation body, and each is attributed accordingly. No city council decision after October 2022 has been verified, so none is printed. Check kaysville.gov's agendas and minutes and the Utah Public Notice Website before repeating anything newer than this table.
The library and the gallery
The busiest library per capita in the state, and an art gallery in the corner room.
The library thread starts twenty years before the building and the nomination carries it: after a special election in 1920, Kaysville's first public library opened on 22 October 1921 in a leased building on Locust Street, and "It quickly became the busiest library per capita in the state." That is a quotation from a federal document rather than a local boast, and it is the sort of line that tells you what a small farming town in the 1920s thought was worth spending money on.
The library moved into the stone building in 1962 and stayed for more than forty years. The nomination and the county records give the rest: city offices moved out to the new municipal building to the south in 1987, the library then had the whole building, Davis County took over library operations in 2006, and the branch moved to its current home at 215 North Fairfield Road in 2014. The nomination, prepared for a 2019 listing, records the building as vacant and not in use, with the note that the city had plans to make new use of it in the near future.
There was also a gallery in it, and the name attached to it is the other name Kaysville's Main Street carries. The LeConte Stewart Art Gallery occupied the south west corner room. The nomination is refreshingly blunt about the room's decor, noting that its Craftsman and Prairie School inspired treatment "was actually a 1980s makeover and is not historic," and that at the time of survey the room was still furnished but all of the art work had been removed. Stewart himself lived and worked at 172 West 100 South from 1923 until his death in 1990, in the only house he ever owned, and his house and studio are separately on the National Register.
The building's condition is the reason none of that can be visited. The nomination records it plainly: "water damage has caused the drywall to fail, exposing the metal wire mesh... The wire mesh has deteriorated in some areas and could result in the detachment of the stone exterior unless remedied." That was written for a 2019 listing. Nothing published since indicates the water problem has been dealt with, and the 2026 endangered listing describes the building as unsuitable for occupancy.
Nothing has been decided about this building, and the confident summaries circulating about its future are not sourced to anybody who can decide it. The verified record stops at three points: the October 2022 request for restoration proposals, whose roughly eighteen month window lapsed in early 2024 without a funded plan; the building's condition as described in the 2019 nomination; and Preservation Utah's 2026 Most Endangered Places listing, which states that no long term plan or funding has been established and puts rehabilitation at 1.2 million to more than 3 million dollars. Summaries that give a demolition date, a museum lease, a restoration start or a funding source do not trace to a council decision. If this building matters to you, the two places to look are the city's own agendas and minutes and the Utah Public Notice Website, and it is worth checking quarterly rather than annually. Checked 15 August 2026.
Living with it
A town museum in the foyer of one building while the one it wants stands empty up the street.
The most telling thing about the Rock Building is where the town's museum currently lives. The Kaysville-Fruit Heights Museum of History and Art occupies the north foyer of the current City Hall at 23 East Center Street, with hours given on its own site as Monday to Thursday from half past eight until five and Friday from half past eight until one. In 2018 the city offered the museum committee the chance to negotiate a lease of the stone building for museum purposes. Eight years on, the museum is in a lobby and the building is empty two hundred yards up Main Street. Confirm those hours before making a trip; they were checked in August 2026 and a volunteer run museum changes them.
For a household weighing an address in the older part of Kaysville, this building is a useful thing to understand rather than a thing to worry about. It tells you what kind of civic argument this town has: a petition of eight hundred signatures against a demolition, a council that postponed rather than pushed, a request for proposals rather than a bulldozer, and a statewide preservation body still watching in 2026. That is a slow, public, documented process, and the documents are all readable by anyone who wants them.
It also tells you something about the street. Main Street between roughly 50 South and 200 North is a genuinely legible three blocks: a 1910 bank block, a 1912 tabernacle, a 1943 stone city hall, a run of 1948 shopfronts and four National Register houses within a short walk. Very few Utah cities of this size have that much standing in one place, and none of it is on the practical city guide.
What this page will not do is tell you what the building is worth to a neighbourhood or what it does to a value, because nothing published supports either claim. The market half of a Kaysville address belongs on the practical city guide, and the rest of what living here asks is on the mover page.
The same three blocks
The man who built Kaysville
The Barnes Block, the Tabernacle and four listed houses, most of them by a mason who learned architecture by post.
Read the guideThe other civic story
City power since 1908
The utility this town bought for 1,850 dollars, and the fiber network it declined to buy in 2020.
Read the guideThe street in July
The Fourth of July
The parade runs down the same three blocks, past this building, on the one day the whole town turns out.
Read the guideThe neighbour's version
The Sycamore district
Farmington's federal historic district, one town south, and what a National Register listing does and does not do to a house.
Read the guideThe practical side
The Kaysville city guide
What an address in the older part of town actually runs to, and everything the market side of this city asks.
Open the guideThe wider county
Davis County on The Local
A companion for every town on this bench, plus the seven subjects that belong to none of them alone.
The region hubKeep reading
More of Kaysville on The Local.
The wires
City power since 1908
A franchise in March 1908, the whole system bought in June for $1,850.
Read the guideThe bench park
East Mountain Wilderness Park
One hundred and forty acres, tent sites you walk into, and the one gate a dog may use.
Read the guideThe university's
The Utah Botanical Center
A university campus with stocked ponds, free every day, reached from the wrong exit.
Read the guideBy correspondence
The man who built Kaysville
He learned architecture by post and built four of the six listed places in town.
Read the guideOne big week
The Fourth of July
Seven days at the end of June, and the town does not pretend to a second week.
Read the guideMoving here
Moving to Kaysville
The postmark says one city and the parcel can say another. Read the parcel.
Read the guideThe companion
Kaysville, in full
Wires from 1908, a bench park, a New Deal building, a university campus and one week.
Read the pageQuick answers
The Rock Building, answered.
The old Kaysville City Hall at 44 North Main Street, built between 1941 and 1943 in local fieldstone and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on 30 September 2019 under reference 100004476. The nomination describes it as a long, one storey central block with wings, designed by the Utah firm of Ashton and Evans in a PWA Moderne or Stripped Classical style, clad in a polychrome fieldstone veneer laid in random rubble and gathered from regional sources. It has housed city offices, the Davis County Health Department, Selective Service offices, the Kaysville Public Library from 1962 and the LeConte Stewart Art Gallery.
Because of the stone, and because the stone is local. The National Register nomination records that the metamorphic fieldstone was gathered from regional sources and matches that of the earliest stone houses built in the area. So a building designed in a national federal style by a Salt Lake City firm is faced in exactly the same rock as the pioneer houses a couple of streets away, which is what makes it a Kaysville building rather than a generic New Deal one. It is also called the old city hall and the old library, and all three names refer to the same place.
No decision has been verified. A demolition proposal was postponed in September 2021 after a petition reported at more than 800 signatures and public opposition at a council meeting, and in October 2022 the city issued a request for restoration proposals with a window of roughly eighteen months, which lapsed in early 2024 without a funded plan. In 2026 Preservation Utah named the building one of the state's Most Endangered Places and stated that no long term plan or funding has been established. Anything giving a demolition date, a lease or a restoration start does not trace to a council decision. Check the city's agendas and minutes.
No. It is closed and it is in poor condition. The 2019 National Register nomination records that water damage has caused the drywall to fail, exposing metal wire mesh, and warns that the deteriorated mesh could result in the detachment of the stone exterior unless remedied. Structural and mould problems were found during a 2017 remodel and the building has been effectively empty since 2015. Preservation Utah's 2026 listing describes it as unsuitable for occupancy. This is an exterior visit from a public pavement and nothing more.
Partly through a mayor and partly through a governor. The nomination records that in November 1940 the 25 year old mayor Thornley K. Swan announced a 55,000 dollar city hall, that a bond election followed in 1941, and that 20,000 dollars came from federal New Deal funds. It also records that Henry Hooper Blood, the seventh governor of Utah and a Kaysville native, held office during the Depression and that his position positioned him to obtain federal monies for his home town. When the war eliminated the federal funds, the county health director Dr. Keith Barnes proposed the health centre grant that finished the job in 1943.
It is the only one still standing. The nomination states it directly: the Kaysville City Hall was one of 226 buildings constructed in Utah during the 1930s and early 1940s under the works programme and other New Deal programmes, of which twenty two were city halls, a total of five buildings were constructed in Davis County, and Kaysville City Hall is the only one of the five that is extant. That single sentence is the strongest argument for the building's significance and it comes from a federal document rather than from a local campaign.
A cast concrete bench and monument commemorating the 1854 Weinel Flour Mill. It was built in 1943, at the same time as the city hall and by the same architects, and it sits in a paved plaza about sixty feet back from Main Street. The National Register listing counts two contributing resources at the site, the building and this monument, so it is a listed feature in its own right rather than street furniture. It is easy to walk past and it is the second thing to look at on a fifteen minute visit.
In the north foyer of the current City Hall at 23 East Center Street. The Kaysville-Fruit Heights Museum of History and Art gives its hours as Monday to Thursday from 8:30am to 5pm and Friday from 8:30am to 1pm, checked in August 2026 and worth confirming before a trip. The museum has been among the strongest advocates for keeping the stone building, and in 2018 the city offered its committee the chance to negotiate a lease of it for museum purposes. The museum serves both Kaysville and Fruit Heights and is named for both.
A Salt Lake City architecture firm, Raymond J. Ashton and Raymond L. Evans, and the nomination lists their other work to make the point that this is not a small town commission. It names the George Thomas Library and fieldhouses at the University of Utah, the university's Union Building, the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Building, the Salt Lake Sears store, Bushnell Hospital in Brigham City, the Utah State Penitentiary at the Point of the Mountain, and the naval supply depot at Clearfield that became the Freeport Center. The same office drew a small city hall in Kaysville and one of the largest supply depots in the world twelve miles north.
A building this town has spent five years refusing to knock down.
The Rock Building is a good example of what the practical guides to a city leave out, and of why the older streets of a place are worth understanding before you buy on one. Kaysville's Main Street holds a 1910 bank block, a 1912 tabernacle, a 1943 New Deal city hall and four National Register houses inside a short walk, and none of that appears in a market summary. If you are weighing an address in the older part of town, tell me what you are trying to solve and I will introduce you to a Davis County partner agent who works these streets, and stay on the file for the financing side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.