Browsing Posts From: Local History

On March 10, 2006, the Shupe Williams Candy Factory caught fire and burned to the ground.  We live just a few blocks from the site and when we heard what was happening, I grabbed our camcorder and caught the sad demise of this Ogden landmark: Even after all this time, the site is still vacant today.  Hopefully the future will bring new life to this part of Ogden City.  

  Ogden continues to be a city in metamorphosis.  Here are a few photos that illustrate the ever increasing investment in Ogden’s Downtown neighborhoods: This victorian home located on the 26th block of Madison Ave. was converted into an unseemly triplex many decades ago. Fortunately, a new owner renovated the property and restored it back to single family use.  Quite a remarkable difference!   I listed and sold this property last year to an investor who wanted to restore this 1880s Victorian building.  The building was abandoned and configured into […]

Recently, the Union Station Foundation reached out and invited me on a tour of the Union Station building.  The building is the cap to Historic 25th Street and since I have been there many times, I didn’t think there was too much to see that I hadn’t seen already.  Well, on this trip they had a special surprise.   As a quick review, the current Union Station building was rebuilt quickly after the Victorian version burned in 1923.  Reconstruction began in April 1924 and the building was opened in November […]

For the past several years, I have managed a small and cute rental cottage located at 553 16th Street in Ogden, Utah.  Recently, the owner asked me to organize a major renovation to the building to prepare it for sale.  The transformation was remarkable.  For about $11,000, we were able to take the house from being a tired edifice to a sparkling home. For those of you interested in some of the improvements here are some specifics.  We used the Eddie Bauer color selection at lows.  The exterior was painted […]

While visiting a client’s home this recently, I walked to their back yard to check out the property lines.  They shared a long common driveway with their neighbor that ran to the back of the lot.  As we walked to the back this strange building came into view.  It was tucked away in the back of the neighbors yard. I asked my client about this oddity and I discovered that this was an old astronomical observatory that was once used by Weber State University.  Looking at the cinder block construction, […]