The senator's house that caught fire on Christmas night
A hundred feet from where you stand, Utah's official residence nearly burned down in 1993.
Last reviewed 13 September 2026 · A three-minute read · 1875–1985
The short answer
David Keith Mansion and Carriage House on South Temple Street in Salt Lake City was built between 1898 and 1900 for David Keith, a mining and newspaper baron who financed and published the Salt Lake Tribune. Keith lived there until 1916 and died in 1918, the same year as his neighbour and fellow mining senator, Thomas Kearns.
Salt Lake City's Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Madeline, 1908. A trolley car is to the left, on South Temple Street. — 1908 · George Lytle Beam · Public domain
1902
A silver senator built a house to rival the Vanderbilts
Thomas Kearns made his money in silver. He struck it rich at the Silver King Mine in Park City, then went to Washington as a U. S. senator. In 1902 he finished building a house to match that fortune, at 603 East South Temple, a hundred feet from where you stand.
He hired Carl M. Neuhausen, the same architect who designed the Cathedral of the Madeleine a few blocks away. Neuhausen gave Kearns a Chateauesque pile that rivaled the Vanderbilt and Carnegie houses back east. Fine woodwork, imported stone, a house built to entertain. Presidents came through it. Theodore Roosevelt, a personal friend of the senator's, was a guest here.
Kearns died in 1918. His widow, Jennie Judge Kearns, kept the house for almost twenty years. In February 1937 she gave it to the state of Utah. She set one condition: it had to always serve as the governor's residence. For two decades governors lived here. Then, from 1957 to 1977, the Utah Historical Society used it as a library and museum instead. Governor Scott Matheson pushed to bring it back as a home for the state's first family. In 1980, after a major renovation, a governor moved back in.
The house survived a century of use before it nearly didn't survive one night.
December 1993
A Christmas tree fire tore through the governor's mansion
On the night of December 15, 1993, faulty wiring on the Christmas tree in the mansion's main hall sparked a fire. Governor Mike Leavitt was away that night. His wife, Jackie Leavitt, was home with her staff. She got word to the Salt Lake City Fire Department fast, and their quick response kept the flames from doing even worse damage. Even so, the fire tore through much of the historic interior.
What followed was a long, careful rebuild. Restorers spent $7.8 million putting the mansion back to its 1902 appearance, room by room, while quietly threading in what a modern house needs. Fire sprinklers. New wiring and plumbing. Seismic bracing hidden behind the old walls. The house reopened. It kept Neuhausen's original style. It stands on the same ground where Kearns once entertained a president. It was built to survive the next Christmas tree.
1898 to 1918
A mining fortune bought Keith a mansion and a newspaper
Silver built more than one house on this street. 200 feet away, David Keith Mansion and Carriage House finished his own mansion in 1900. He financed it the same way Kearns did: with mining money from near Park City. Keith used his fortune to buy the Salt Lake Tribune. He also built a house designed by Frederick Albert Hale. He lived in it until 1916, then sold it. He died two years later, in 1918, the same year Kearns died. Neither man held onto his house much past the fortune that paid for it.
1886 to 1893
A refuge for polygamous wives closed within seven years
A women's refuge went up nearby in 1886. It was meant to shelter wives leaving polygamous marriages. It struggled almost from the start. Occupancy stayed low, conflicts piled up, and the home closed its doors by 1893, seven years after it opened. The building did not sit empty. It became the seat of the Utah State Legislature. Then it was a hotel. Then it was officers' quarters during World War II. Then it was a private club. Finally it was torn down in 1985.
1880s to 20th century
A governor's house lost his name to a later one
A house built for one man does not always keep his name. 1,000 feet from the mansion, a house went up in the 1880s for Simon Bamberger House. He was an immigrant who became Utah's fourth governor in 1916. Its style mixed pilasters and a classical entablature. It looked grander than a plain frontier house. Today people mostly call it Gardner Manor. The governor who once owned it is a footnote to the name that replaced his.
The architect of the governor's mansion never lived to see what fire or time would do to either of his buildings.
1909
Neuhausen's cathedral outlasted the mansion he built first
Neuhausen's other Salt Lake City commission still stands two-thirds of a mile southwest. The Cathedral of the Madeleine was finished in 1909. That was seven years after the Kearns Mansion. It remains the only American cathedral under the patronage of Mary Magdalene. Neuhausen built the senator's showpiece and the diocese's mother church within a decade of each other. Both outlived him. Both have had to be looked after by people who never met him.
The mansion at 603 East South Temple still houses Utah's governors, its 1902 rooms rebuilt board by board around wiring nobody sees.
Open this place in Strata
Every person, building and event in this story opens into its own dig in the app — and it will dig the ground you are standing on instead, wherever that is.
Sourced records, high and medium confidence. Era background is marked as such.
Modern
Salt Lake City
Church leaders including George A. Smith, Edward Hunter, and Jedediah M. Grant died in Salt Lake City across the mid-to-late 1800s, part of the founding generation buried around the city.
Era background — not a record of this tile · Wikidata
635 East 100 South
Jonathan and Eliza Royle built one of Salt Lake City's finest Italianate houses in 1875; Jonathan Royle worked as a mining businessman, and the house entered the National Register in 1983.
Simon Bamberger, an immigrant who became Utah's fourth governor in 1916, was the first owner of this transitional Greek Revival-style house built in the 1880s.
The Industrial Christian Home for Polygamous Wives opened in 1886, closed after low occupancy in 1893, later served as Utah's legislature, a hotel, wartime officers' quarters, and a private club, before being demolished in 1985.
Emanuel Kahn, an immigrant from Germany and one of Utah's first Jewish merchants, built this Queen Anne house in 1889, designed by Henry Monheim, one of the first non-Mormon architects in the territory.
First Presbyterian Church, founded in 1871, worshipped in a building at Second South and Second East until it was demolished, then raised its current red sandstone Gothic Revival church between 1903 and 1905.
A 1908 photograph by George Lytle Beam captured a streetcar on South Temple Street beside the newly built Catholic cathedral, a short walk west of here.
Utah's Masonic headquarters, the state's best example of Egyptian Revival architecture, was completed in 1927 within the South Temple Historic District.
South Temple Historic District, 119 acres with 106 contributing buildings including the Governor's Mansion, became Salt Lake City's first local historic district in 1976 before reaching the National Register in 1982.
The material does not describe what stood on the site before David Keith built his mansion between 1898 and 1900.
Who built the David Keith Mansion?
David Keith, a mining and newspaper businessman who financed and published the Salt Lake Tribune, built the mansion between 1898 and 1900, using money from his mining fortune near Park City, the same source that funded his neighbour Thomas Kearns's house.
When did David Keith die?
David Keith died in 1918, two years after selling his mansion in 1916, the same year his neighbour and fellow mining senator Thomas Kearns also died.
What happened at the Kearns Mansion in 1993?
Faulty Christmas tree wiring sparked a fire in the mansion's main hall on the night of December 15, 1993; quick action by the fire department limited the damage, though the fire still tore through much of the historic interior, requiring a $7.8 million restoration.
Who designed the David Keith Mansion?
Frederick Albert Hale designed the David Keith Mansion, a different architect from Carl M. Neuhausen, who designed the nearby Kearns Mansion and the Cathedral of the Madeleine.
Where this came from
1
Wikipedia — The Governor's Mansion started as a mining fortune's trophy house
