A Home of Her Own: The Beehive and Lion Houses

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Length:	1 hour, 13 minutes.
Released:	November 29th, 1999
Available in:	VHS

To outside observers, the Beehive and Lion Houses were monuments to a strange and isolated world of profound secrecy -- the subject of editorials and satire. The curious would be left unsatisfied, however. No observer was admitted into the inner sanctum of Brigham Young's intimate family life. Its symbolic importance surpassed its practical function.

KUED invites viewers to take a tour through Utah's most famous dwelling.

A Home of Her Own: The Beehive and Lion Houses is the story of America's most dramatic and controversial 19th century family, of two homes in one and of the lives of those who called it home.

Told through the eyes of two of Young's daughters, Clarissa Young Spencer and Susa Young Gates, A Home of Her Own offers an intimate, human perspective on Utah's first family. "We want not only to highlight the structure, its antiques, and its beauty, but also the lives of women and children who lived for years within its walls," says the documentary's creator Sally Shaum. "The documentary has a very warm and personal side."

Jefferey O. Johnson, Utah State Archives Director, reminds viewers of the varied personalities living under the same roof. "Each of them had dreams, they had trials, they had issues they had to deal with. They had illnesses, they had conflicts, and they had things that they wanted to achieve. All of them were different and we need to look at them as individuals," he says.

Today, the Beehive and Lion Houses are dwarfed by towering offices and apartment complexes, but in its day, the complex was known as "The Grandest Home in the City."

Named to symbolize hard work and industry, the Beehive House sheltered the Mormon patriarch and only one senior-ranking wife and her children. Spacious and elegant, it served the purpose of entertaining the many officials and dignitaries who visited Young. The adjoining building, the Lion House, would be designed to house the many wives and children of Brigham Young, eventually housing 44 children and 19 wives.

"How did wives of a single man live together? It was certainly more of a boarding house-type existence than your typical family life," says Carol Cornwall Madsen, a Brigham Young University historian who is featured in the film. "But it reflected one way of dealing with a rather unique family lifestyle."

A Home of Her Own is made possible by the George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation and the C. Comstock Clayton Foundation.