Bird, Edward, House
Center and 300 East, Beaver, UTThe house is an excellent example of how the Second Empire style of architecture was translated into Beaver. From the front facade, one can see that there are four exceptionally tall windows and a door. While they roughly have the appearance of being evenly spaced, upon closer inspection the viewer notices they are not symmetrical and that the door is not centered. The very tall windows in conjunction with the Mansard roof give the house a vertical emphasis which is unusual in Beaver. The dormer windows with their decorative woodwork and the stone voussoirs over the door and windows contribute to the feeling of a high-style design. The house rests on a black rock rubble foundation and has a basement.
The plan of the house consists of two rectangles of approximately the same size but with one pushed out in front of the other. Despite a few differences between the details in the two rectangles, the whole house appears to have been constructed at the same time.
Edward Bird owned the house for twelve years before selling it in 1905 and moving to Circleville, Utah. Mr. David Edwards was the second owner, a man who lost an arm in an accident at the sawmill where he worked. He then herded sheep for a living and became a famed hiker who hiked even in his eighties. Mr. Edwards married an Englishwoman and they had six children. The house remained in the Edwards family for 72 years until it was recently sold.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.