Thomas H. Austin, a wealthy livestock rancher, built this elaborate home in 1901, at a cost of $4,000.

According to the house’s nomination form for the National Register of Historic Places on which it was placed on July 22, 1982, “The house draws its significance from its association with Austin and as the best example in Lehi of Victorian domestic architecture. At a time when eclecticism and irregularity in house design was at a premium, the Austin House projects an asymmetry of massing and mixing of historical details which is truly exceptional.”

When the house was built, it was fashionable to mix and match architectural practices, including the Queen Anne, Eastlake and Stick styles. This led to “a preoccupation with visual complexity … with architects freely choosing among many diverse historical periods for suitable elements of composition and decoration.”

It appears a pattern book was used as a starting point for the home, “however, the irregularity of massing and unusual combination of various motifs indicate that it is more than likely a unique composition.”

The nomination form goes on to say, “The Austin House seemingly takes both main facets of the [Victorian] design model to their extremes: the floor plan and roof outline of the house are self-consciously asymmetrical and complex (there are few straight lines left intact for the eye to follow), while the mixing of Classical and Queen Anne exterior motifs is both unusual and invigorating. Only the use of masonry walls prevents the attainment of the third architectural principle the texturing of wall surfaces. In all, the Thomas Austin House in Lehi is a fine extant example of Victorian architecture in Utah.”

Austin was born in 1864 in England and came to Lehi in 1868 with his parents after they joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By the mid-1890s, Austin was a successful rancher of Lehi sheep and cattle. In 1896, Austin employed 35 men to shear an estimated 5000-6000 area sheep in his corrals west of Lehi. The following year, 40,000 sheep were sheared between the Austin and Webb corrals. It was estimated the endeavor brought more than $60,000 into the area, “and many people around here [had] wool money to show.”

In 1914, Austin Brothers and his brothers purchased the Saratoga Springs/Saratoga Resort area with the intent to develop the resort’s surrounding property into lake frontage lots for “residential purposes at fancy prices.” The idea never materialized.

Austin married Lehi native Mary Eleanor Thomas on Sept. 2, 1887. When the couple built the home, they had seven children with three more to come. The home stayed in the family until 1927.

After the death of Thomas Austin in 1923, the home was sold to Charles and Geneve Mercer who owned the property until 1948. Arlin and Elaine Fowler owned the home next and turned it into four apartments. They stayed until 1965. It changed hands three more times before it reached its current owners.

Today

C. Wesley and Geraldine Dalley purchased the home in 1975. At the time, the structure had been converted into a four-apartment building. For 20 years, the Dalleys worked to restore the home to its current beauty.

They spent countless hours removing partitions, exterior paint and coverings over the transom windows. They removed lowered ceilings and scraped old paint and wallpaper off the walls. 

They purchased and replaced a bird’s eye wood fireplace mantle for the library room. For the formal living room, they purchased a $1,200 handcarved, cherry-wood mantle at an auction in Salt Lake City to replace one that had been removed.

On the upper level, they removed partitions and two kitchens to make way for four bedrooms and two dressing rooms. They also purchased and replaced a fireplace mantle in the master bedroom.

They tracked down the stained-glass windows that had been sold to a local shop and repurchased them. They installed new door and window casings, made by local craftsman Don Hansen, suitable for the era of the home. Hansen also helped them hang a stained-glass window in the library to provide a skylight.

The Dalleys installed new furnaces, new plumbing, new bathrooms and so forth. Outside work included planting 100 blue haven trees and laying 20,000 red bricks to form a patio and two driveways. The labor of love was finally finished with the installation of new hardwood floors and floral red carpet.

The Dalleys also restored the Harry B. Merrihew Drugstore Building at 98 W. Main St., and secured it a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.