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Show t 1 t v i - i V.,l A. O. Smoot He built first Sugar factory. me ft - 4 s, i V 11 ' 4 (, ' y - " s feist fymm 'nfmm FEBH S. To Fern Smoot Hansen, Sugar House business woman, will go the honor of making the first purchase pur-chase in Keith O'Brien's modernistic modern-istic new store that opens in SugarHouse Wednesday. Mrs. Hansen's "purchase." a beautiful woman's handbag for a nickel, will be made on Tuesday, prior to a preview tour of the store by members of the Sugar House chamber of commerce, W. P. Dunn, KOB president, said. The new store will open to the public following ceremonies Wednesday Wed-nesday at 12 noon. Mrs. Hansen's participation in the store opening recalls for Sugar Su-gar House oldtimers a colorful history of the site now occupied by the four-level department r.t.e. The site is really the heart of Sugar House, since there in the . lS50's was built the original plant for the manufacture of sugar. Sugar Su-gar House records indicate that the builder of the plant was Pioneer Pio-neer A. O. Smoot, Mrs. Hansen's great grandfather. A.O. Smoot's wife, Margaret T. McMeans Smoot, affectionately tailed "Ma" Smoot, is generally credited with giving Sugar House its name. On April 23, 1834, LBS Church officials called a meeting to organize an ecclesiastical ward in the community. At the meeting, Mrs. Smoot arose and suggested ' "Sugar House" as the name, after the factory then under construe-, tion. Mrs. Smoot's choice became the name of the ward and later the title plate of the community, -which today is the center of residential resi-dential Salt Lake City. The adobe, gable-roofed sugar -factory, designed -by the pioneer architect, Truman O. Angell, actually ac-tually never did produce sugar. Attempts at sugar making yielded MARGARET McMEANS SMOOT She named Sugar House. Utahns advised of big Civil War developments. Sugar House's original mill served serv-ed as a paper plant until the ' 1880's, when a paper mill was : built at the mouth of Big Cotton-i Cotton-i wood canyon. The adobe sugar ; factory building remained, how-i how-i ever, until 1928. At the time it : was used as. headquarters for a i coal company. In that year, just ; before the big stock market crash, . the building was razed by the Mc- - Intyre Estate interests. A one-, one-, story building was erected at the t site. An ice cream parlor became - the tenant on 21st South street. r Then early this year, the wrecking wreck-ing bars moved in again, and the t ground was cleared for building e the modernistic four-level struc-I, struc-I, ture which next week becomes the i home of the Keith O'Brien Sugar . House store. t Sugar House businessmen and n residents have a deep affection a for the southeast corner of 21st it South and 11th East streets. only black molasses. Meanwnne Angell, also architect for the Salt Xake Temple, studied' sugar-making in Great Britain, and eventually eventu-ally Utah became a" leader in sugar su-gar manufacturing. But the storied career of the sugar factory building was only "beginning In 186p, the year before the Civil War broke out, Brigham Young purchased a papermaking machine in Philadelphia. It was tugged across the plains by ox team. The machine was set up ir the sugar mill building on Big Kanyonfnow, Parley's) Creek Meanwhile, Edward Hunter, pre siding bishop of the LDS Church sent out an appeal for "worn ou wagon covers, and every descrip tion of cotton and linen rags foi paoer making. Mountains of rags for the plan were gathered by a wiry littli Englishman, George G o d d a r d whom Brigham Young had callei on a "mission" to do the jot Sometimes the paper produced a Sugar House was as blue as a: alpine sky or purple-pink as springtime hyacinth. But it kep |