140 West 2nd Street

George and Jane Romrell Pierce built this house starting about 1877. They first lived in a board house located next door at 142 W 2nd ST; read there for a sketch of the Pierce family.

The orange bricks of this house were handmade, probably at the Gates Adobe-Brick Mill. The adobe, hand-made bricks were formed in molds, dried in the sun and then fired in a kiln; the bricks closest to the fire in the kiln turned out harder than the bricks located farther from the fire. After firing the adobe brick in the kiln, the color of the brick changed to orange; these orange bricks were sometimes called “burnt bricks”; they were much more durable than adobe bricks, but the hardness and the size of the orange brick was irregular. They were still “soft” compared to the bricks that would be made in the future. To protect these orange bricks from rain dripping off the roof, a three-foot rock foundation was built around the house from the ground up. [1]

In the 1880s this six-room orange brick house was a step-up for the large Pierce family. It had no modern heating or plumbing but it was solidly built and had six rooms with plaster walls. Compared to mansions in Ogden, it may be a frugal, relatively simple farmhouse; yet it had an intrinsic charm that kept subsequent generations repairing and updating it and loving it.

In 1939 Lyman and Violet Anderson were fascinated by this old, well-used farmhouse. They bought and began restoring the old pioneer home.

In the 1940s, as an engineer for Ogden Union Railroad & Depot Co., Mr. Anderson drove the train on the Five Points spur on the south side of 2nd Street. When driving the train eastward up 2nd Street and approaching his own home, Mr. Anderson would blow the whistle, and his young son would run down the lane and ride with his father to Five Points and back again. This was a delight to all the neighborhood. The train on this spur was very slow moving. Workers on the train would sometimes throw candy to the children on 2nd Street, and the children would throw back apples or pears in season.

In the 1950s Mr. Anderson and his son dug a cellar under the east section of the house, one shovel full at a time; the stairway to the cellar is in the rear lean-to. Next to the lean-to they made a sixteen-foot extension of the cellar with a sloping 4-foot-high roof for the purpose of dumping coal. The Andersons also hand painted some of the exterior bricks dark red and the mortar black to enhance the appearance of the old orange brick. [2]

The Pierce/Anderson house still belongs to Anderson family descendants in 2022.

[1] - Observations by Gordon Q. Jones in 2001 during on site visit, author of Pioneer Forts in Ogden Utah, 1996, Ogden Chapter SUP.

[2] - Deborah Blake, Family Jewel, Standard Examiner- Historic Homes, 2003; interview 2nd Street resident Genevieve Sherner.