When Ann Poore wrote about Clubhouse on South Temple for 15 Bytes in early 2017, the ink was barely dry on the deed. Dave Brewer and Jessie Jude Gilmore, co-owners of Photo Collective Studios, had purchased the historic Ladies’ Literary Club building at 850 East South Temple from Preservation Utah less than a year earlier, and were still in the early work of figuring out what they had on their hands. What they had, it turned out, was one of Salt Lake City’s more consequential cultural spaces—and a responsibility that has only deepened with time.

This Saturday, May 23, Clubhouse marks ten years of stewardship with what they’re calling a House Party: not a gala or benefit dinner, but music through every room, dancing, projections, a historic photo and video exhibition, building tours, drinks, friends, and what the organizers describe as “memories from the last decade inside these walls.” “The idea of a ‘house party’ is very intentional,” he says. “On one level, it’s literally a party for the house itself—a celebration of ten years of preservation work, restoration projects, repairs, community effort, and the ongoing reality of caring for a 113-year-old building.” But the format also reflects how Clubhouse functions: various rooms, conversations, and energies happening simultaneously. “We wanted people to fully wander and experience the building as a living cultural house rather than a formal event venue.”

The building itself predates any of this by more than a century. The Ladies’ Literary Club—founded in 1877, the oldest women’s club west of the Mississippi—commissioned the Prairie School structure from architects Ware and Treganza, and it was constructed between 1911 and 1913. The design carries the hallmarks of the style: geometric stained-glass windows, heavy rooflines, an emphasis on horizontal line, elegant detail over excessive ornament. For a hundred years it served the club’s vision of Salt Lake City as a place capable of genuine cultural life. The club organized the push for the city’s first free public library in 1898. They funded art education in public schools. They brought literature, music, drama, and civic ambition under one roof on South Temple.

By 2013, reduced membership and the costs of maintaining a century-old building led the Ladies to gift the property to Preservation Utah, with the hope that it would continue to serve cultural and educational purposes. Preservation Utah ran it for two years before listing it for sale. Brewer and Gilmore, whose Photo Collective Studios occupied a warehouse in Old Greektown, found it in 2016.

Poore’s 2017 article captured the excitement of that early moment: a January show by Mo Lynn Glazier that wove jazz, dance, and film; photography exhibitions upstairs; plans for a membership platform; the playful ambition to give “the Alta Club some fresh competition.” Brewer traces the thinking back to an early Ladies’ Literary Club quote that stayed with him: “In the beginning, we were a most precocious infant.” They had imagined that one day they might grow into “a library association with perhaps a picture gallery attached.” That vision—part educational, part artistic, part social—became, he says, a real foundation for how they thought about Clubhouse from the start.

What they couldn’t fully anticipate was how the building would do some of the teaching itself. “Very quickly, specific communities naturally began forming around the building,” Brewer says. “Dancers needed space to move. Musicians needed places to rehearse and perform. Figure drawing groups wanted beautiful natural light and atmosphere. Photographers were looking for both resources and inspiring spaces to create work.” Rather than simply renting the building out, they began building recurring weekly programming—a reliable home base, not unlike, Brewer notes, the original purpose of the Ladies’ Literary Club itself. “Over time, the building really taught us what it wanted to be.”

What it wanted to be is visible now in the weekly programme that runs through the house. Sundays bring Ecstatic Dance—live DJs, immersive sound, free-form movement, yoga and breathwork in the opening hour, a closing circle and sound bath, substance-free and open to all ages. Mondays are Figure Drawing, run by the Salt Lake Drawing Club, three hours with live models and optional peer review. Tuesdays are Stage Presence, an open mic that reaches past music into poetry, philosophy, storytelling, improv, and comedy. Wednesdays bring Open Studio from Photo Collective Studios. Running alongside all of it, by appointment, is the only public darkroom in Salt Lake City.

The programme has a distinct character: participatory, body-present, oriented toward making and performing rather than passive consumption. It describes a community that wants to be in a room together, doing something, rather than watching something be done.

The May 23 party is also a fundraiser. The building’s commercial kitchen—added in 1926, when the original small basement kitchen with its dumbwaiter for ferrying tea and coffee through the house had long since become inadequate for the organization’s needs—turns 100 this year. Nearly a century later, it still serves the building, but is in major need of modernization. For Brewer, the renovation is about more than catering logistics. “It’s about creating a more active and welcoming public life for the building itself—more food and beverage programming, more daytime gathering, more artist hospitality, more community dinners, and more opportunities for neighbors and visitors to casually spend time inside the House.”

That vision of the building as a neighborhood living room is also the animating idea behind Off the Record, a summer café partnership with Sound Brew launching on the weekend of May 30. The question Brewer says they’ve fielded for years is simple: “Does Clubhouse have coffee?” Sound Brew, which specializes in specialty coffee and hi-fi listening experiences, turned out to be a natural fit. “Music has always been one of the central heartbeats of Clubhouse,” Brewer says. “There are speakers in nearly every room of the building. Music constantly drifts through the House.” Off the Record—the name carrying a double meaning, both the secretive lean-in of shared confidence and the analog warmth of a record played on good speakers—will open weekends this summer with coffee service, workshops, tastings, and music listening events built around high-quality sound systems. The South Temple-facing patio will be activated as part of it: a place to stop in, linger, work for an afternoon, meet a friend.

What has kept all of this alive for ten years, Brewer says, is “perseverance, community support, and a growing ecosystem of artists, organizers, performers, educators, and returning clients who genuinely care about the building” — people who don’t just attend events but contribute through performances, rentals, volunteering, and continued belief in what a space like this can mean for a city. Independent cultural spaces are under enormous pressure, and Clubhouse has not been exempt from that. But Brewer believes the craving for what such spaces offer remains real. “People still deeply crave places that feel human, locally owned, creatively open, and socially connected.”

The next decade, he says, is really about sustainability: preserving the spirit and accessibility of the house while continuing to strengthen the infrastructure that allows it to survive as a living public space. The women who built it in 1913 wanted it to remain open, useful, and alive to culture. Brewer and Gilmore have spent ten years trying to honor that. Saturday is when the building throws itself a party.

The Clubhouse 10 Year Anniversary House Party is Saturday, May 23, 6pm–midnight, at 850 East South Temple. Tickets are $40 at clubhouseslc.com. All proceeds support renovation of the historic kitchen.

All photos courtesy of Clubhouse SLC.

Shawn Rossiter

The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.