This collection is an English drafting tools set that was originally owned and used by Brigham Young to design the streets and building plans for Salt Lake City, Utah. The set was also used by Oliver I. Lay for the creation of a studio commissioned by his father-in-law, Mahonri Mackintosh Young, to create the This is the place monument. Materials dated approximately 1847-1877.

Correspondence, sketchbooks, research files, autobiographical files, scrapbooks, and news clippings. Also includes diaries, address and memorandum books, and financial records. Most letters were exchanged with family members and close friends. Primary correspondents included his son, Mahonri Sharp Young; his first wife, Cecilia Sharp Young; and Mary Lightfoot Tarleton, whom he met in Paris after Cecilia died in 1917. Research files include extensive information on other artists.