128 South 1000 East
Salt Lake City, UT, USA

National Register of Historic Places -Lewis A. Ramsey House

Statement of Significance:

The Lewis A. Ramsey house, constructed in 1903 is significant under Criterion B, for its association with Lewis A. Ramsey, one of Utah's most prominent artists during the first half of the twentieth century. Mr. Ramsey, although born in Illinois and educated as an artist on the east coast and in France, spent most of his life in Salt Lake City. The house at 128 South 1000 East, where he lived between 1918 and 1934, represents one of the most productive phases of his career. This house served as Mr. Ramsey's primary residence as well as his studio. During the time he lived in the house with his family, he received local and national acclaim, yet like many Utah artists, struggled financially. His works are still exhibited and revered fifty years after his death, especially within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which gave him a number of prominent commissions. Converted to apartments after the Ramseys sold the property in 1935, a 1998 rehabilitation has returned the home to a single-family dwelling. Of the many buildings associated with Lewis A. Ramsey, this home is the best preserved and most closely associated with his career.

The house at 128 South 1000 East was built in 1903 for James B. Keysor and his wife, Louie Felt Keysor. They purchased the property from John M. and Maria Morgan in 1902. The Morgans are not listed in the Salt Lake City directories and may have been out-of-state speculators. James Bernard Keysor was born on January 14, 1859, in Salt Lake City. He studied dentistry in New York, graduating at the age of 23. He returned to Salt Lake City and set up practice. Dr. Keysor was one of Salt Lake's most prominent dentists until his retirement in 1929.5 He died on May 10, 1932.

In 1900, James Keysor married Louie Felt. Louie was born Louise Ellis Felt on August 20, 1876, in Salt Lake City. She was nicknamed "Louie" after one of her father's polygamous wives, Louie Bouton Felt. James and Louie Keysor had four children, Elsa Louise, Judith Bernice, Alma May, and James Bernard Keysor. Alma and James were born after the Keysors moved into their home at 128 South 1000 East. Louie Keysor, along with raising her children, was also a talented artist. She was known locally for portraits of Fisher-Harris and H.L.A. Culmer, another Utah artist. She also painted landscapes of local canyons and illustrations for the Children's Friend magazine. In addition, she sang with the Salt Lake Opera Company.

Louie Keysor died unexpectedly at the age of forty during an operation on September 27, 1916.6 Sometime near the death of his wife, James Keysor took up residence at his office on Main Street. The Keysors' four children were subsequently raised by Louie Bouton Felt, and Mrs. Keysor's sister Vera Felt. The house was sold in the name of the Keysor children to Lewis A. Ramsey on May 19, 1919. The Ramsey family had been living in the house since 1918.
Lewis A. Ramsey was born in Bridgeport, Illinois on March 24, 1873, to George Ramsey and Amanda Ross. His family joined the LDS Church when Lewis was twelve years old and moved to Payson, Utah. Lewis Ramsey showed an early inclination toward art and within a year had moved to the nearby town of Springville, to study under John Hafen, one of Utah's most prominent artists. At sixteen, Lewis was studying at the Brigham Young Academy in Provo, supporting himself by teaching penmanship. In 1895, at the age of twenty-two, he went to Boston to study art. He was awarded a scholarship to study in Paris, however, he had to decline for financial reasons. He returned to Utah briefly before moving to Chicago to study at the Smith Art School. Finally, in 1901, Lewis Ramsey was able to study at the Julien Academy in Paris. He stayed there for two years under the tutelage of Jean-Paul Laurens and Adolphe Bouguereau.

It was during his time at the Julien Academy that Lewis Ramsey began to receive recognition for his work. He was commissioned to paint portraits of several "Parisian luminaries," and Lillian Judge, the fiancee of John W. Young (Brigham's son) who was in Paris at the time. Returning to Utah in 1903, Lewis Ramsey taught art at the Latter-day Saints' University in Salt Lake City for two years. During the same period, he taught private lessons and painted portraits of several local residents. He was appointed by Governor Wells to the governing board of the Utah Art Institute in 1903. Lewis A. Ramsey married Elizabeth Patterson Brown on October 12, 1904. Elizabeth (Bessie) Brown was born on November 15, 1885, in Evanston, Wyoming. Elizabeth had been a model for a Ramsey painting entitled "Mother and Child." Lewis and Elizabeth had six children: Allan, Ralph, Ross, Lewis G., Elizabeth, and Jean. Between 1905 and 1916, he supported his family by painting oil portraits almost exclusively, including eighteen portraits of LDS Church leaders. In 1910, Ramsey painted his most celebrated work, a posthumous portrait of church founder Joseph Smith. It was highly praised by members of the church who had known Joseph Smith. For many years, the Ramsey portrait was considered the "official portrait" of Joseph Smith by the LDS Church.

In 1915, Lewis Ramsey received one of his most important commissions: the landscape murals of the Hawaii LDS Temple. Ramsey spent eighteen months in Hawaii. Unfortunately, the dampness of the climate eventually destroyed the murals because, against his recommendations, he was ordered to paint directly on the walls instead of separate panels. After his return from Hawaii, Ramsey painted a number of religious scenes which were hung in various LDS buildings. Between 1904 and 1915, Ramsey was primarily a portrait artist, although during that time he began to paint more landscapes, especially in southern Utah. He was one of the first artists to camp in Zion's National Park and Bryce Canyon. He sold his completed paintings to fellow campers, usually wealthy tourists from out of state. As a result, he was known nationally as a landscape artist rather than a portraitist.

Prior to 1918, Ramsey lived at 255 West 6th North in Salt Lake City. He worked from a studio in the Templeton Building, a popular venue for Utah artists. Both this early home and the Templeton building have been razed. After moving to the home on 128 South 1000 East, the city directories indicate it was Ramsey's only studio for sixteen years. Ramsey's daughter remembers her father painted upstairs in the south room and sold paintings from the parlor.

In 1919, Lewis Ramsey began working on a project close to home, a mural for the Eleventh Ward Chapel directly across the street at 131 South 1000 East. The mural, entitled "The Restoration," is a scene of Joseph Smith receiving the gold plates from the Angel Moroni, and was completed in 1923. Ramsey painted several versions of this painting, one of which is on permanent exhibit at the LDS Church Museum of History and Art. The Eleventh Ward Chapel mural was removed, along with the portion of the wall on which it was painted when the chapel was demolished in 1960. The painting sat in a storage yard for twenty years where it experienced serious deterioration. It was eventually restored and hung in the later Eleventh Ward Chapel in 1982. Interestingly, the pulpit of the new chapel has been placed off-center-a rare design for an LDS meetinghouse-allowing the congregation an unrestricted view of the painting.

As with many of Ramsey's religious paintings, "The Restoration" has been reprinted in countless church publications since 1923. Ramsey's work is found in several LDS meetinghouses, as well as the Salt Lake, Portland, and Chicago temples. His portrait of church president Lorenzo Snow (painted in 1911), and portraits of two church apostles (both painted in 1912) are currently on display at the LDS Church Museum of History and Art.10 As a portrait painter, Ramsey has been dismissed by one Utah

art critic as a painter of "rather stiff portraits."11 However, Richard Oman, an art historian for the LDS Church, considers Ramsey "one of the top five Mormon portraitists in the first one hundred years of the church," and furthermore suggests that Ramsey's techniques create "an interaction between the painting and the viewer [which results] in a quiet peacefulness and a feeling of psychological insight in his portraits, seldom equaled by any other Utah painter."

Until the onset of the Depression, Lewis A. Ramsey was able to support his family through his paintings. However, after 1916 he painted very few portraits choosing rather to concentrate on his landscapes. This change may have been the result of a series of career setbacks. (Not an aggressive personality, Ramsey had the misfortune to both alienate a dissatisfied powerful client and spurn an equally powerful art agent.) Or the career change may simply have been that Ramsey found a measure of success in painting and selling landscapes. He began making annual trips to Zion and Bryce National Parks. Going in on horseback, he was the first professional artist to do a painting of Cedar Breaks National Monument. Ramsey also painted landscapes of the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, and the Tetons. Two of his paintings were purchased by Stephen Mather, known as the father of the national park system. They were hung in his Washington, D.C., office. One of Ramsey's most critically acclaimed pieces is a painting of Bryce Canyon, which is currently on display at the Orton Geological Library of Ohio State University. Also, one of his paintings of Zion National Park was on the cover of the June 6, 1925, edition of The Literary Digest.

During the 1920s, Ramsey gained national recognition as a landscape artist. Upon seeing two of Ramsey's paintings at a prestigious 1924 exhibition in Chicago, a Parisian art critic wrote in La Revue Moderne:
We consider him [Ramsey] above all, a landscape painter, although he has to his credit a number of fine portraits, some of which did much to contribute to his well-merited success. But it is in his landscape that we should seek to know, understand, and love him... The artist expresses himself with intense emotion and vibrating sincerity. He reveals his sensitive soul which seems to be open to the beauties of the earth. He also reveals the virtuosity of his technique and the surety of his science.

Recent art historians have praised his landscapes for exhibiting a "fluid brush, bold color, and sparkling light." Ramsey's use of light in a work entitled "The Vision," is particularly praised by Richard Oman, who cites it as "a good example of impressionism as the premiere artistic tradition dealing with light."15 It is a painting of Joseph Smith and his heavenly visitors within a grove of trees and illustrates Ramsey's proficiency as both a portraitist (painting using classical realism) and as a landscapist (employing an impressionistic technique). One of Ramsey's most interesting projects was a series of paintings of landscapes and pre-historic animal life for a text on geology to be published jointly with Dr. Frederick Pack of the University of Utah. Unfortunately, Dr. Pack died before the book could be published. Ramsey never received payment for these paintings, which were donated by Mrs. Pack in her husband's name to the university's geology department.

By the late 1920s, the Utah art market had dried up completely and Lewis Ramsey was struggling financially. Although with his landscapes he may have been doing better than most Utah artists of the period, he was unable to support his family without supplementing his income by teaching at Jordan Junior High School. He was prominently featured in the October 1928 edition of the Utah Educational Revue. Ramsey must have been fairly discouraged. The last year his name appears in the Salt Lake City directories, he lists his occupation simply as a teacher. Lewis and Elizabeth Ramsey moved to the Los Angeles area in 1934. Ramsey found work overseeing a 1936 WPA art project for the Southwest Museum, contributing a diorama. He continued to paint landscapes and an occasional portrait of a civic leader until his death on May 11, 1941. He was interred in Los Angeles.

Ironically, the artistic achievements of Lewis A. Ramsey were probably better known during his lifetime than in the almost sixty years since his death. While known and loved as a teacher - one student eulogized him as "a gentle and patient [teacher who] did miraculous things with colors" - Ramsey was among only a handful of Utahans who managed to make a living as a professional artist. Richard Oman notes:

Because almost his entire productive career was spent as a full-time painter, rather than a teacher, his life tells us much about not only the local Utah art market but also some of the ways that a Utah artist could paint in Utah and still tap into a national market for his paintings.16
Ramsey could be considered a significant Utah artist on the basis of his LDS Church commissions alone, however, he left a legacy of hundreds of completed oil paintings. What is particularly remarkable is that he was able to raise and educate his family as an artist. During his productive life, especially during the period he lived at 128 South 1000 East, Lewis A. Ramsey was also known as a loving husband and father, and a devoted church member. His family has remained fiercely loyal to him. Until her death in Los Angeles on July 13, 1970, Elizabeth Ramsey worked vigorously to preserve her husband's paintings, defend his reputation, and protect his copyrights.

In July 1935, the house was taken over by the Wasatch Corporation, and from 1935-1947, it was used as a rental unit and converted into at least two apartments. It was purchased by the Guild family in 1946. Ed and Mabel Guild lived in one of the apartments between 1938 and 1947. Ed Guild was a real estate dealer. In 1948, the house was converted to use as "Mrs. Geis' Day Nursery." Idella May Geis ran the nursery but lived at 1169 Milton Avenue with her husband Nephi Geis, an electrical contractor. The Idella and Nephi Geis family purchased the house in 1955. It was used as a day nursery until 1959 when it was converted back to apartments. Joseph Inman Geis, who briefly lived in the home with his wife Gwen, acquired the property in 1976. The house had three to four units through the 1970s and 1980s.

Allan Ainsworth, who lived in the home as a student in the early 1980s, purchased the property in 1986. Ainsworth began the process of converting the home back into a single-family dwelling. The current owner, Barry Nielsen, a surgeon, purchased the property on April 4, 1993. Dr. Nielsen has spent the past few years rehabilitating the upper floor of the home, Lewis A. Ramsey's former studio, which had been divided into two apartments. The rooms still remain, but period detail work has been retained along with new work that replicates the period details.