SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — It was nearly 150 years ago when a military community called Officer’s Circle was founded in Fort Douglas, just to the east of Salt Lake City. Today, despite the community looking exactly as it did then, the buildings now house undergrads from the University of Utah honing their skills for a new world.

Upon their completion, the buildings were built as duplexes with sandstone bricks from the Red Butte Canyon and lumber from the lush mountains of Utah. These homes, which were designed in a Swiss style of architecture, had once housed the officers of the Fourteenth Infantry and their families.

A faded copy of an article in The Daily Tribune in 1875 called the duplex homes “commodious, elegant, and substantial buildings.”

It was a place for both military officers and the Salt Lake community to gather, complete with a bandstand in the center of its parade field and a giant U.S. flag, which Deseret News claims saw locals gathering in droves to witness its raising in the 1870s.

Fort Douglas itself was established in 1862 for use during several wars — including both World Wars — to train up-and-coming recruits and also served as a POW camp for enemy soldiers. It was eventually disbanded in 1991, passing over 51 acres of land to the University of Utah.

Officer’s Circle remains a historic landmark in the Salt Lake City area. Its steps are virtually identical to when President Rutherford B. Hayes visited, and its memory continues to live on in the community that once cherished the site as its own.