Brigham Young built the Lion House in 1856, two years after the Beehive House. Truman Osborn Angell was involved in the design. It is a Gothic Revival mansion with 20 gables for 20 small bedrooms.
It is named for a statue of a lion, sculpted by William Ward III, above the front entrance. Lion of the Lord was a nickname for Young. It is joined to the Beehive House by a series of rooms that Young used as offices, and it housed many of his wives and children.
Later it held the domestic science department of LDS University in the 1920s and became a social center in the 1930s. It closed in 2020 and is being restored, with reopening expected in spring 2027.