Nauvoo House
boarding house
The Nauvoo House in Nauvoo, Illinois, is a building that Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his followers began constructing as a boarding house in the 1840s. The boarding house was never completed, but the structure was later converted into a residential home and renamed the Riverside Mansion. The Nauvoo House, as it is referred to today, is part of the Nauvoo Historic District, a National Historic Landmark.
Initial construction
In January 1841, Joseph Smith received a revelation with instructions to construct a house in Nauvoo which would be "a resting-place for the weary traveler." The revelation also instructed that the building should be called the Nauvoo House, and set out detailed instructions about how the building of the house would be financed. George Miller, Lyman Wight, John Snider, and Peter Haws were appointed as the overseers of the project, and they created the Nauvoo House Association on February 23, 1841.
Construction of the Nauvoo House began later in 1841, with Smith placing the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon in the cornerstone of the building. Construction continued until 1844, when resources were pulled away from the Nauvoo House to concentrate on completion of the Nauvoo Temple.
After Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed by a mob in June 1844, their bodies were secretly buried in the cellar of the unfinished building to prevent them from being stolen. They were later removed and buried close to the Homestead, and even later still, relocated to the nearby Smith Family Cemetery.
Conversion to Riverside Mansion
After Smith's death, his widow Emma Smith retained title to the Nauvoo House.
The public source identifies “Nauvoo House” as boarding house. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Nauvoo, House and boarding.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3296997. Authority coordinates are 40.540, -91.391. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1841 and 1844.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nauvoo House” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.