After the Salt Lake High School was established in 1890, it operated in a number of different locations before settling into the former home of the University of Deseret, located on the present-day site of West High School. In 1912, a building was completed on the west side of the same block to house the companion Technical High School, which was intended to provide an alternative vocational course of study. The new building contained such spaces as a blacksmith shop, woodworking shop, machine shop, brass and iron foundry, drafting room, and exhibit room.
The building was designed by the Salt Lake architectural firm of Lewis Cannon & John Fetzer and represented one of the finest examples of Prairie Style architecture in Utah. It was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Administration Building for the Larkin Soap Co. in Buffalo, New York. The Prairie Style was characterized by horizontal bands of windows divided by projecting piers. Each pier had a cap with a decorative geometric design. The Larkin building also included a couple of larger piers topped with a geometric cap and sculptures, giving the building a particularly monumental appearance.
Not only did the Technical High School have a distinctive Prairie Style look, but it also incorporated artwork by one of Utah’s most important artists. Sculptor Mahonri Young was commissioned to design three sculptural panels and four figures to be placed on the building. Young created models of the sculptures, which were copied by an assistant and cast in concrete. The panels depicted woodworking, blacksmithing, and metal casting. Four freestanding figures represented a blacksmith, a carpenter, a stone carver, and a potter. The sculptures reflected the kind of manual craft being taught in the building.
This panel portrays the blacksmithing trade, with men shoeing a horse, working at an anvil, and working the forge.
Another panel portrays men working in a wood shop.
Behind the bleachers on the south end were the carpenter and the stone carver.
On the north end of the façade behind the stadium stood Mahonri Young’s muscular sculptures of the blacksmith and the potter.
The Technical High School was absorbed into West High after a number of years and the building served as the Industrial Arts building for decades. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, due to its architectural and artistic value. Despite this significance, the school district chose to demolish the building in the late 1990s. A new stadium was constructed and a parking lot took the place of the old Technical High School. Four of the figures were salvaged, restored, and placed around the West High Campus, but in the intervening years three of the deteriorated figures were removed, so only one remains. With the building and most of the sculptures now gone, our primary evidence for this part of Utah’s architectural and artistic history is found in the photographs that survive.
The broken statues from the west side of the demolished Technical High School were used by the Machine Erectors Union to practice lifting with cranes.
(Photo by the author.)
The second set of Mahonri Young statues were repaired and the potter, the stone mason, and the carpenter were placed on pedestals along the north side of the High School (as seen in this 2012 photo by the author). The blacksmith was placed inside the building. In recent years the outside sculptures deteriorated to the point that the school district made the decision to remove them entirely.
The only Mahonri Young sculpture that survives from the Technical High School is one of the blacksmith statues, which was placed inside a new wing of West High School.
(Photo by the author.)
The location on 400 West where the Technical High School was located is now occupied by a parking lot and an enlarged football stadium.
(Photo by the author.)