Joseph Ridges, designer and builder of the original Salt Lake Tabernacle organ, and William H. Folsom, worked together to draw the plans and superintend the construction.

The interior woodwork, which included a spiral staircase, paneling, and decorative trim, was carved in black walnut by local artists.

[3][4] The Salt Lake Tribune claimed that Ralph Ramsay, a famous Utah woodcarver, did some of the woodwork in the Gardo.

During the last years of his life, Brigham Young perceived a need for a place where he could receive official callers and entertain the dignitaries who traveled great distances to see him.

However, on one occasion, after returning to Salt Lake City from a visit to St. George, he expressed displeasure with the style of the home, calling it his "tabernacle organ.

During probate of his estate, the home was credited to the two women at a value of $120,000, but it was also discovered that Young owed the LDS Church one million dollars.

His counselor George Q. Cannon and other church leaders suggested that Taylor occupy the Gardo House after its completion, but he repeatedly refused.

[21] By the time Taylor had become church president, the Edmunds-Tucker Act was putting intense pressure on him to observe this anti-bigamy law.

[23] Soon after Taylor's death in 1887, the federal government seized the Gardo House, along with other church properties, as part of the escheatment provisions of the Edmunds-Tucker Act.

The government then rented the properties back to the church, and Taylor's successor as president, Wilford Woodruff, used the house as an office, for public and private gatherings, and occasionally spent the night.

[1] The church purchased the mansion back from the Holmes in March 1920,[27] and soon after opened the LDS School of Music and an art gallery in the home.

Thus the claim that the house was built solely for Amelia's pleasure, as an act of favoritism, is a misinterpretation, when it was actually a specific calling for her upon which the family apparently agreed.

His counselor George Q. Cannon and other church leaders suggested that Taylor occupy the Gardo House after its completion, but he repeatedly refused.

[33] In March 1885, soon after John Taylor's final public appearance, federal marshals made a massive raid on the mansion to capture him.

For example, Rachel Emma Woolley Simmons recorded in her journal her personal discontent not with John Taylor moving into the home but citing the "... great expense to furnish it in the style it had to be ...".

In an editorial published the day before the reception, the newspaper wrote, " The favored saints have received an invitation to call upon President John Taylor at the Amelia Palace tomorrow.

... We want the poor Mormons ... to mark the carpets, mirrors, the curtains and the rest, and then to go home and look at the squalor of their own homes, their unkempt wives, their miserable children growing up in despair and ignorance, and then to reflect how much better it would have been for them, instead of working hard for wages ... if they had only started out as did Uncle John, determined to serve God for nothing but hash."

He reminded critics of his initial reluctance to move to the Gardo House and his concern that his occupancy of the mansion would place an intolerable barrier between him and church members.

"[citation needed] Both newspapers were correct in implying that the issue of the Gardo House was much broader than the mere occupation of the mansion by a Mormon leader.

[39] On the other hand, many non-Mormons viewed Taylor's installation in the home as a threat in the continuing struggle for economic and political supremacy.