Classic Salt Lake City.

[Comrade]

A giant parking lot.

YAY FOR US!

[shakman]

Originally Posted by Comrade Reynolds

A giant parking lot.

YAY FOR US!

That my friends is called progress!!!

[utahboozer]

Originally Posted by Comrade Reynolds

You can see that campus next to the Temple here.



Also notice how dirty the LDS Temple is from the the smoke, since many buildings downtown had chimneys during this time.

The loss of the campus kind of makes me sick. It looks pretty awesome.

Damn. Is that the temple in the back on the right? It's incredibly black from soot. Can anyone orient me in this pic? Which direction is the picture being taken?

[Future Mayor]

I think that would be looking east and slightly south. She looks to be standing were the building were the entrance to the temple is located now. So the block behind her would be the COB block.

[Skyscrapers4Me]

I was looking for more Temple Square Campus pics and stumbled on this photo on the Shipler Collection. I hope this is on subject ( Classic Salt Lake )

[Skyscrapers4Me]

And this:



Take THAT, 222 South Main

[SLC Projects]

Originally Posted by Comrade Reynolds

What a waste.

[DMTower]

Regarding the pollution stains... I wish the technology had been around sooner to remove pollution stains from some of these old buildings downtown... So many of them now have paint covering what was beautiful stone work. Hopefully some of them can be restored with a sand blaster or something.

[Skyscrapers4Me]

It's sad, but the truth is...these gorgeous old buildings are purchased to be used as places of business, and ultimately, the bottom line is all that matters to the majority of owners. Fortunately, there are laws and committees that oversee historic structures, nowadays, and a lot has been preserved that would've been torn down more recently than you'd think.

Believe it or not, several local government officials supported demolition and replacement of the City and County Building in 1983 !!! Even THAT came under the financial microscope because of tax dollars, and ultimately it was determined that it was INDEED cost-effective to restore the building. The final cost was just over $31,000,000. Can you imagine the Olympics alone without the C&C Building?

I worked in the City & County Building from 1979 to 1983, and the interior restoration is fantastic. When I worked there, most of the interior lighting was via fluorescent tubes. Over 100 of the original chandeliers had been thrown out by past administrations. Ceilings had been lowered, paint schemes changed...all on a whim, depending on who had been elected or appointed. And I was STILL disgusted that someone would consider tearing down that building ( as anyone should be ). I can't even fathom the thought process ( or lack thereof ) ...

Also, on the sand-blasting, it CAN be used occasionally, but can weaken the rock. For example, the C&C Building is made of Kiyune sandstone, which was chosen because it is easily cut and carved. It also easily falls apart, especially by sand-blasting. Many of the old Europeans castles were damaged in the 1960's and '70's by well-intentioned sand-blasting.

Most of these older buildings are made of unreinforced masonry. I remember the battle about just how much unseen steel could be used to reinforce the C&C, and the difficulty in attaching the steel without damaging the original stone.

I could go on and on, but I'm already rambling...but we need to keep up the fight...lol

[Comrade]

Salt Lake City lucked out.

I know we look at our gems of past and say how badly urban renewal raped our downtown, but compared to many other cities, we don't even compare. There are cities where complete blocks were demolished in favor of grass, parking, freeways and newer housing. Hell, places like Chicago and Detroit were gutted because of it.

Salt Lake? We saw some gems go, but we've been lucky to keep most of our major older towers. We still have the Kearns Building and the Walker Center. The Deseret Building failed to go under the wrecking ball (with a lot of effort), the City-County Building remains, even though it was close to being demolished. The Exchange Place is still there, though not entirely, older, smaller buildings still litter Main Street. All those buildings could have been demolished and probably at one point were probably going to be demolished, but somehow were saved.

Of course, it doesn't make it any easier, because there were truly some amazing stuff lost throughout the years. But it could have been worse. We could have seen Exchange Place totally gutted, along with many older Main Street buildings.

[Skyscrapers4Me]

Side-note: If you ever want to impress your girl, take her up to the cupola on the City and County Building to watch the fireworks ( and make your own ) on the 4th and 24th of July. I did...and we've been married 27 happy years now

[TANGELD_SLC]

I didn't even know you could go up there. That's cool!

[Comrade]

[Skyscrapers4Me]

Well, I understand the tours take you up there. I went up there "back in the day" ( roughly 1980-81 ). I worked downstairs in the Data Processing dept for the county, tending the mainframe computer on weekends and holidays. There was only the guard and me there.

One of the guards was a nice old guy, I only knew his last name ( Butler ). We'd sit and shoot the bull all the time. I asked him if he'd been up in the tower, he said, "Yeah, you wanna see it?"...I thought, "No, I don't want to take your Ferrari for a testdrive"...haha...

So he unlocked a small door on one of the top floors, there were stairs, then the tower itself had stairs lining the walls, sort of like "Vertigo", if my memory serves correct. It was VERY dusty and "plywoody". The bell and gears are HUGE, the cupola is tiny. It was kind of funny...my first time up there was in the daytime. You have to understand that Washington Square was one of the places the homeless loved to sleep before the building was restored, sort of like Pioneer Park. And the view was fantastic. Basically 360 degrees, unobstructed, almost vertical below you. It was unique. And all these bodies were lying on the lawn. It looked like some sort of post-nuclear apocalypse...lol.

Anyhow, Butler let me take a girlfriend up there a couple of times and we watched fireworks all over the valley. That was the icing on the cake.

Poor guy, he died in about 1981, if I remember. One of the nicest guys I've ever met...RIP, Mr Butler

[jmonkey]

Check with the Utah Heritage Foundation (533-0858 or on the web) for information on tours of the City & County Building; the last published information had free tours taking place every Tuesday, from June through August.

The city also has a great write up on the building on-line at:
http://www.slcgov.com/info/ccbuilding

I toured the building from base-isolators to clock-tower during it's centennial celebration. Too bad I didn't take any photos. It was an awesome experience. The building is my favorite in the city--literally a work of art.

The building also served at the state capitol for two decades.

Does anyone have any good shots of the building during the years that the clock tower was covered by scaffolding?

[Comrade]

This is the best i could find in my collection:

[cololi]

Not one with the scaffolding, but image looking east of old library block

[Future Mayor]

I have to say, nothing that was torn down on that block was a loss that any of us will be angry about in 10-20 years.

Think about how angry or bothered many of us are about the many buildings we have lost over the years. Can you just imagine how much more intense that would be if we had lost the City and County building? WOW

[shakman]

WOW... Great find!!!

[Comrade]

Originally Posted by cololi

Not one with the scaffolding, but image looking east of old library block

That looks like the square right before everything was demolished.

So, 1999ish?

You can see Rice-Eccles, so you know the photo was taken after 1998.