Yalecrest


Yalecrest is a residential neighborhood located on the East Bench of Salt Lake City. It runs south from Sunnyside Avenue to 1300 South and east from 1300 East to 1900 East. Yalecrest is commonly referred to as the "Harvard-Yale area" and several streets are named after Ivy League universities. The earliest Yalecrest homes were built in the 1910s, with the vast majority built during the period of 1920–1940. The remaining homes in the easternmost part of the neighborhood were built during the post war boom; much of this development followed the area's being green-lined for use by upper-class whites during the 1930s. Yalecrest has been on the National Register of Historic Places since November 8, 2007.

Geography and Distinguishing Features

A portion of Red Butte Creek passes through several properties, as well as through Miller Park. The area also encloses three churches belonging to the [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints], three commercial buildings, one school and two parks.
Architecture favors English Cottage, English Tudor, French Norman and Spanish Colonial. One home in the neighborhood, the George Albert Smith home at 1302 Yale Avenue, is listed on the National Register since 1993.

History

The property that is now Yalecrest was distributed by the LDS church authorities by lot for use in raising crops and farming. Dividing the plots for land speculation was discouraged. The earliest identified residents in the Yalecrest area begin to appear in the 1870s. A ten-acre plot belonging to Gutliffe Beck was located near Yalecrest between 1700 and 1800 East. His early 1870s adobe farmstead was located near the intersection of Yalecrest Avenue and 1700 East. The property was later used as a dairy farm. Paul Schettler's farm, situated near the intersection of 1900 East and Herbert Avenue had crops that included silk worms and mulberry orchards. David Lawrence had twenty acres of alfalfa located to the south of the Schettlers. On Sunnyside between 1800 and 1900 East, Jim Carrigan built a house c. 1876 and farmed forty-five acres. A one-legged man named Wheeler lived at what is now 1372 Harvard and got his culinary water from Red Butte Creek. No remnants of these early homes are known to remain.
A number of factors contributed to the Yalecrest area's development in the early twentieth century. The population of Salt Lake City increased rapidly at the turn of the century, almost doubling from 1900 to 1910. After air pollution from coal-burning furnaces as well as early industry in the valley added to the smoke-filled air of Salt Lake City, particularly in the winter, properties on the east bench above the steep grade that flattens at 1300 East above the smoky air of the city began to look attractive for residential development. Land developers began to purchase land on the east bench and early subdivision advertising touted the clean air of the bench, above the smoke of the valley. The first home built in Yalecrest was at 882 South 1400 East in 1912. Transportation options made the Yalecrest area easily accessible to the downtown area. The primary means of transportation in the early part of this era was the streetcar and the line along 1500 East serviced Yalecrest commuters to downtown Salt Lake City. The streetcars serving the Yalecrest area traveled from downtown to 1300 East in front of East High School, south along 900 South to 1500 East, then south to Sugar House and the prison.
The Yalecrest neighborhood almost exactly comprises the green-lined zone "A2" on the U.S. Federal Government Home Owners' Loan Corporation's development map for Salt Lake City, which marks the area as "undeveloped, but potentially a high-class residential section." This designation stimulated disproportionate investment in the principally white, upper-class, and Mormon neighborhood in the near-century that followed.

Notable residents