Layton has an indoor basketball legacy

  Layton's "White Chapel," home of the LDS Church's first full-size indoor basketball court.
                                                                      (Heritage Museum of Layton photograph.)

LAYTON has a significant legacy in Utah basketball.
The Layton “White Chapel” of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was built in 1937 at 195 East Gentile Street. It was dedicated by Church President Heber J. Grant. This church replaced a chapel on 1000 North that was destroyed by a lightning caused fire in 1936. This church also featured the first full-size basketball court of any ward in the entire church. (A portion of the old chapel today is used as business offices.)

Three young Layton boys and their horse are shown surveying the extensive damage to the Layton Latter-day Saint Ward Chapel, 367 East 1000 North. Lightning and a fire destroyed the church building on July 24, 1936. This $12,000 brick chapel had been in use since 1908. The ward members had already outgrown the facility and plans had been started a year prior, in 1936, to replace the chapel with a larger one.

The Church was built with primarily donated labor and its church leaders may it priority to add the full-size hoops court. Yet, they used barb wire instead of rebar in the cement for the gymnasium and that structure did not stand the test of time.

-However, three years earlier is the first publicly recorded report an indoor basketball (and volleyball) being played in Layton. A December 7, 1943 story in the Davis County Clipper newspaper states that young men of the LDS Church in Layton were being organized to play the two sports. John Adams and Webster Couch were the two church leaders assigned to the sports program.