The Nettie Gregory Center, or "the Nettie," is a modest, two-story white-brick building easily overlooked by passerby. It is now dwarfed by the tall Bodhi Apartments, constructed in 2017 on the land the Nettie once leased. The field that once echoed with the laughter of children from nearby neighborhoods has been replaced by the demands of population and infrastructure growth. Situated at the epicenter of this development, the Nettie Gregory Center is now shaded by these new apartments and Interstate 15. The center is currently closed but achieved a notable milestone in Summer 2025 when it was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Plans are underway to raise funds to reopen the facility.

The Nettie Gregory Center, originally known as the Salt Lake Community Club, first opened its doors on Nov. 29, 1964. It was later renamed to honor Nettie Gregory, recognizing her unwavering dedication to the Black community and its young people in Salt Lake City. Gregory was a prominent Black woman who actively advocated for the city's youth, particularly Black Americans. She identified a critical need for a safe space that would foster growth for the entire westside community of Salt Lake City. This was especially important because, despite the westside's diverse ethnic makeup in the early to mid-20th century, Black residents in Utah endured discrimination and segregation. Gregory sought to create a secure environment for her community and the area's youth. Tragically, Gregory suffered a stroke and died on July 6, 1964, just five months before the center officially opened to the public.

It took 20 years to build this two-story, brick structure. The Nettie was built by the community; individuals devoted their time to work together and lay brick during their spare time. In an oral history interview with the Utah Historical Society, Marsha Boyd remembers seeing her father working to construct the center. She recalls: “My first involvement was with my father, who worked here. He would come, he was a carpenter. He was probably the first Black carpenter in Utah's Carpenters Union. He would come here every weekend…It just seemed like it took him forever to get it done. But because they had no machinery, the whole building was put together by hand. You know, brick-and-mortar there, mixing the stuff, and doing that. So it took a long time...It was definitely a labor of love.” 

Serving the community from its opening until the mid-1990s, the Nettie Gregory Center was a vital social and recreational hub, particularly for local Black Americans and neighborhood youth. It featured a basketball court and hosted events such as NAACP chapter meetings, cultural celebrations, and gatherings. Leslie Henderson, recalling her early 1970s involvement at the center in an oral history interview with the UHS, emphasized the center's role as a key place for community socialization. She remembers, for both youth and adults, "they would have events," sometimes including "Friday fish fries or sell chicken dinners."

The Nettie Gregory Center held deep significance for Betty Sawyer, serving as a sanctuary where she felt completely comfortable and free to be herself. Arriving in Utah in 1975, Sawyer immediately looked for a sense of community. Betty said during an oral history interview with UHS, “[The Nettie] was beautiful…it was a sense of home and a sense of community…So the pride that came along, when you walked in the door, like, ‘This is our place.’ You know? ‘We belong here.’ We didn't have to pretend or put on that mask. ‘Okay, we gotta go in here. And how are we going to act? How are we looking? How are we...?’ All of these things that go along into entering other spaces. We’d just come in and let your hair down…and be at home, and be relaxed, and knowing that you weren't being judged by everything you said, or what you looked like, and all of that. So it's just like being with family. Being like, I call it that ‘home away from home’ when you step into this space.”

The basketball court was a major draw at the Nettie Gregory Center. Duane Bourdeaux, president of the Nettie Gregory board of directors, recalled in an oral history interview that "the memories [of the Nettie] was just knowing that my older brother [Rick] would always come…My older brother had come over, periodically, when he played basketball here outside. This is where a lot of the community would come and play basketball.”

Rick Bourdeaux confirmed the popularity of the court, but also emphasized the center's greater significance. For him, the Nettie "offered a lot of different things that kids like me growing up didn't have opportunities for…[We] had a place to go and play basketball, right back on this court here. I played basketball here, you know." He described the Nettie as a "great place where we [could] come together as a community, where we're welcome and open." Crucially, he noted, "a lot of places in this area and during that time, we really weren't welcomed. We really weren't, it literally wasn't open to us. There were certain places where we couldn’t go bowling, swimming pools, and different things, right. So the Nettie Gregory was a center where the youth had a place to go.”

Beginning in the 21st century, the Nettie served as a leased space for various nonprofit organizations, hosting after-school and employment programs. Visitation to the Nettie declined beginning in the 2010s, mostly due to other after-school activity programs and spaces, but also due to the building’s declining structure. Due to these issues, the Nettie has been closed to the public for over a decade. Abdikadir Eftin, who began visiting The Nettie while attending Jackson Elementary School, has fond memories of the center. He recalls being invited by his mentor, Karina Villalba, to participate in after-school activities, which included trips to The Nettie. Eftin shared: “We would go to the Nettie Gregory Center and it became like a frequent thing. And it would just be these events that's right here, you know, it's 15 kids, all of us. And it was 15 kids that all looked different. And then they all got along. We all became really good friends. And we would come to the Nettie Gregory Center to play basketball together… It has a lot of good memories in this place.”

Lynn Green's long association with the Nettie Gregory Center began in his youth, attending various events there. Later, he worked for the after-school program Colors of Success in Salt Lake City, which held its activities at the Nettie. In an oral history interview with the UHS, Green recounted his nine years with Colors of Success and their deep involvement with the center. "We had community projects for the kids that came over and we'd clean up," he recalled. Over time, they equipped the center with recreational items: "We ended up with ping pong tables, pool tables, foosball tables, basketball in the back. We had tournaments for the kids to play.”

Karina Villalba, a youth-based school advocate at Jackson Elementary frequented the center for various after-school activities from the early 2000s until 2014. She expressed fond memories of participating in these activities as she combed through photos she brought to share at the Nettie Gregory Community History event. At this point, Abdikadir Eftin, known as Abdi, showed up at the event. Unknown to UHS staff, Abdi was a student involved in many after-school activities that Karina helped manage. An emotional reunion occurred as Karina and Abdi hugged and shared memories of the Nettie, browsing through photos. Abdi expressed in an oral history how Karina was such a great mentor and how important the Nettie was to his childhood. Abdi said, “[The Nettie] makes me very emotional to see how much of it has changed. And some of it is also the same, too. And also to see how much of my life has changed and how much I've grown, you know? So it has a lot of good memories in this place. It's definitely where I've grown. And I've grown to become a better person because of this place.”

From 2023 to 2025, the Utah Historical Society hosted more than 30 Scan-and-Share events across Utah. During these events, community members were invited to digitize their personal photos and share their stories, effectively preserving their individual histories.

To view more digital items from this project, please visit the Peoples of Utah Revisited online collection.