John Dorius Jr. Home and Barn

John Dorius Jr. was the son of a Danish immigrant father by the name of John Dorius.  Dorius was involved in farming, freighting and merchandising.  His career was spent in Ephraim during the 1880s and 1890s.  Ephraim in 1897 was a busy, bustling town when John Dorius Jr. built his three-story Queen Anne brick home at 46 West 100 North.  In addition to the home, a barn was also built on the property.  In 1905, the Dorius family moved to Salt Lake, selling their new home to E.M. Olson who operated the nearby Consolidated Wagon Company. Later the home was occupied by a Dr. Nielson who had his office there, Francis Gurney, Leon Olsen, a Snow College president, and others. Gary Phelps who owned the home a number of years later even rented it out to women attending Snow College.  The house is an example of Queen Anne architecture and the barn is an example of the same European workmanship.  Built before the turn of the century, this home was unlike many in the era, having both central heating and plumbing.  This was a concern to the people of Ephraim at the time, because of the commonly held belief that these things could create poisonous vapors. These fears were soon overcome when nothing of the like occurred. 

The home is a three-story brick home built in the Queen Anne architectural style, which was popular in Utah during 1890-1910.  The overall building is asymmetrical and there are projecting bays on the east and the west. The roof on the west bay is gabled and the one on the east is hipped. There is also a two-story wrap-around porch, which serves to balance out the prominent west bay, anchored at the corner by a conical roofed tower. The front porch is richly embellished with turned posts, balusters and spindled brackets. In addition, the roof of the porch contains a pediment of applied scroll-work with the date “1897” carved into it. The house is constructed of orange-colored, locally produced bricks laid in a stretcher-bond pattern. There are heavy rusticated stone lintels on each of the openings. Lastly, there are stained glass windows in the transom over the windows in the front bay, as well as in the window to the side of the front door and in the transom over the front door itself.

Of particular interest to historians and architects is the three-story wooden barn north of the home, reported to be one of Utah's finest and rarest examples of Danish construction. It is constructed of heavy hand-hewn and mortised timbers. The barn, built about the same time as the house, represents an excellent example of European craftsmanship which came to Sanpete Valley as part of Mormon colonization.  As previously mentioned, the house was occupied by several owners throughout the years.  One of those later owners was the Mark and Susie Nilsson family.  In addition to the renovations undertaken by Gary Phelps in the thirteen-room home, the Nilssons faced the challenge of removing old wallpaper and paint to find original paper and colors, as well as insuring that all odd-shaped roof areas were covered by new wood shingles.  After many hours of deliberation, they decided on the distinctive colors for the exterior trim which makes the home so visually outstanding. They also installed a modern gas furnace, lawn sprinklers, and new carpeting downstairs.  

After being restored, the home and the barn were added to the National Historic Register in 1985.