The Salt Lake City and County Building, usually called the "City-County Building", is the seat of government for

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

. The historic landmark formerly housed offices for

Salt Lake County Salt Lake County is located in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 1,185,238, making it the most populous county in Utah. Its county seat and largest city is Salt Lake City, the state capital. The cou ...

government as well, hence the name.

History

The building was originally constructed by free masons between 1891 and 1894 to house offices for the city and county of Salt Lake and replace the

Salt Lake City Council Hall :''Not to be mistaken with the Council House, a building of similar purpose and design in Salt Lake City.'' The Salt Lake City Council Hall is currently home to offices of the Utah Office of Tourism and the Utah Film Commission and is located on ...

and Salt Lake County Courthouse, both erected in the 1860s. Construction of the building was riddled with controversy. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries the City and County Building was the symbol of non-Mormon citizens' open defiance of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Christianity, Christian church that considers itself to be the Restorationism, restoration of the ...

. It was designed to rival the

Salt Lake Temple The Salt Lake Temple is a temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. At , it is the largest Latter-day Saint temple by floor area. Dedicated in 1893, it is the sixth templ ...

as the city's architectural centerpiece. It is even thought that the building's

clock tower Clock towers are a specific type of structure which house a turret clock and have one or more clock faces on the upper exterior walls. Many clock towers are freestanding structures but they can also adjoin or be located on top of another buildi ...

and statues were designed to mimic the temple's spires and statue of the

angel Moroni The Angel Moroni () is an angel whom Joseph Smith reported as having visited him on numerous occasions, beginning on September 21, 1823. According to Smith, the angel was the guardian of the golden plates, buried in the hill Cumorah near Smith's ...

. Ironically, the building was originally the 1880s brainchild of the Church-backed " People's Party." When the non-Mormon "

Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. __TOC__ Active liberal parties This is a li ...

" was campaigning for city government, they deemed the proposed "joint building" an example of the Church's extravagance and wastefulness. In a reversal of stance, the Liberals decided to go ahead with the building when they finally gained power in 1890. Construction began in February on State Street at about 100 South. City-County Building announcement

For nebulous reasons, construction was halted that November after only the foundation had been laid. The mostly non-Mormon city council questioned the buildings plans which had been completed during the People's Party reign, and wavered on how to proceed. The ''

Deseret News The ''Deseret News'' () is the oldest continuously operating publication in the American west. Its multi-platform products feature journalism and commentary across the fields of politics, culture, family life, faith, sports, and entertainment. Th ...

'' complained that the Liberals were wasting taxpayer money. Ultimately, the original plans and site for the building were scrapped and the whole project was moved to the building's current location at Washington Square. The ''Deseret News'' claimed this move served the City Council, which owned property around the site and would profit from increased land values. Nonetheless construction on new plans began by late 1891. The cornerstone was laid July 25, 1892. Mormon president Wilford Woodruff's journals reported his attendance at the building's dedication on Dec, 28 1894. The architectural firm of Monheim, Bird, and Proudfoot designed the

Richardsonian Romanesque Richardsonian Romanesque is a style of Romanesque Revival architecture named after the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). The revival style incorporates 11th and 12th century southern French, Spanish, and Italian Romanes ...

building (Olpin et al., 2005). Henry Monheim (a local architect since the 1870s), George Washington Bird (1854-1950; from

Wichita, Kansas Wichita ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 397,532. The Wichita metro area had a population of 647,610 in 2020. It is located in ...

and William Thomas Proudfoot (1860-1928; also of Wichita) established the firm in 1891 specifically to design the building. Their firm won a building design contest against fourteen other submissions. However, ''The Salt Lake Herald''—another LDS-backed paper—claimed that the competition was a "pretentious fraud." Monheim, a

Prussia Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an e ...

n immigrant, died one year into construction. Bird and Proudfoot moved to

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

and

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

respectively by 1896, so the City-County Building was their firm's only output. The building was monstrously over budget. Estimated by the firm at $350,000, the winning contractor bid $377,978, but by the building's dedication on December 28, 1894, it had cost nearly $900,000. Complicating matters was the

Panic of 1893 The Panic of 1893 was an economic depression in the United States that began in 1893 and ended in 1897. It deeply affected every sector of the economy, and produced political upheaval that led to the political realignment of 1896 and the pres ...

which cut Salt Lake City and County revenues nearly in half. As a result of this, plans for large

stained glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

windows for the building were discarded. Although now used exclusively by Salt Lake City government, the building originally served many functions. Salt Lake County offices called the structure home until the 1980s when the County elected to build a new complex at 2100 South and State Street. The building served as Utah's Capitol from when statehood was granted in 1896 until the present

Utah State Capitol The Utah State Capitol is the house of government for the U.S. state of Utah. The building houses the chambers and offices of the Utah State Legislature, the offices of the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, the State Auditor a ...

was completed in 1915. The Salt Lake City and County building also housed Salt Lake's first public library and contained courtrooms, including one that condemned organizer Joe Hill to death amid international attention in 1914. From 1973 to 1989 the building was exhaustively renovated and repaired with an eye toward historical accuracy. This was done in concert with a seismic upgrade called

base isolation Seismic base isolation, also known as base isolation, or base isolation system, is one of the most popular means of protecting a structure against earthquake forces. It is a collection of structural elements which should substantially decoup ...

that placed the weak sandstone structure on a foundation of

steel Steel is an alloy made up of iron with added carbon to improve its strength and fracture resistance compared to other forms of iron. Many other elements may be present or added. Stainless steels that are corrosion- and oxidation-resistan ...

and

rubber Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Thailand, Malaysia, and ...

to better protect it from earthquake damage.

Features

The Salt Lake City and County Building's central

is topped with a statue of

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region i ...

and rises 256 feet (78 m) from the ground. The building's primary axis runs north-south, and large entrances mark each

cardinal direction The four cardinal directions, or cardinal points, are the four main compass directions: north, east, south, and west, commonly denoted by their initials N, E, S, and W respectively. Relative to north, the directions east, south, and west are ...

. On the south wing (over the Mayor's office) is a bronze statue of the goddess

Justice Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspective ...

. Originally, the building had statues depicting

Commerce Commerce is the large-scale organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions directly and indirectly related to the exchange (buying and selling) of goods and services among two or more parties within local, regional, natio ...

Liberty Liberty is the ability to do as one pleases, or a right or immunity enjoyed by prescription or by grant (i.e. privilege). It is a synonym for the word freedom. In modern politics, liberty is understood as the state of being free within society fr ...

, Justice, and Columbia, but the others were removed following a 1934 earthquake. Columbia and the other missing statues were replaced on top of the building when it was renovated in 1989. Salt Lake City and County Building

The building's surface is elaborately carved from the gray Utah Kyune

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicat ...

it's made of. To the right of the entrance on the south side is the face of Father DeSmet, a

Jesuit , image = Ihs-logo.svg , image_size = 175px , caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits , abbreviation = SJ , nickname = Jesuits , formation = , founders ...

priest who preached to Native Americans and had contact with the

Latter-day Saint Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into sev ...

s before and after they traveled to Utah. To the left is the Spanish conquistador

García López de Cárdenas García López de Cárdenas y Figueroa was a Spanish conquistador who was the first European to see the Grand Canyon. Life Cárdenas was born in Llerena, Crown of Castile, second son to Alonso de Cárdenas, 1st Count of La Puebla del Maestre, ...

who explored Southern Utah by 1540. Above the

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

columns on the east and west sides of the building are carvings of pioneer women. Between the portal and balcony are portraits of

Chief Joseph ''Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt'' (or ''Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it'' in Americanist orthography), popularly known as Chief Joseph, Young Joseph, or Joseph the Younger (March 3, 1840 – September 21, 1904), was a leader of the Wal-lam-wat-kain (Wallowa ...

and Chief Wakara and

Jim Bridger James Felix "Jim" Bridger (March 17, 1804 – July 17, 1881) was an American mountain man, trapper, Army scout, and wilderness guide who explored and trapped in the Western United States in the first half of the 19th century. He was known as Old ...

. Above the west entrance left-to-right are

R. N. Baskin Robert Newton Baskin (December 20, 1837 – August 26, 1918) was an American politician and lawyer in the state of Utah. Biography R.N. Baskin was born in Hillsboro, Ohio on December 20, 1837. He attended Salem Academy, near Chillicothe, Ohio a ...

mayor of Salt Lake City This is a list of mayors of Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Salt Lake City was incorporated on January 6, 1851. The mayor of Salt Lake City is a non-partisan position. See also * Mayoral elections in Salt Lake City References * Harold Schindler, ...

in 1892-1895,

Jedediah M. Grant Jedediah Morgan Grant (February 21, 1816 – December 1, 1856) was a leader and an apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He was member of the First Council of the Seventy from 1845 to 1854 and served in the ...

, Salt Lake's first mayor in 1851-1857, and

Jacob B. Blair Jacob Beeson Blair (April 11, 1821 – February 12, 1901) was a U.S. Representative from Virginia and from West Virginia, and later a justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court. Life and career Born in Parkersburg, West Virginia (then Virginia), Blai ...

Salt Lake County's probate judge in 1892-1895. The north side features a depiction of the

Domínguez–Escalante expedition The Domínguez–Escalante Expedition was a Spanish journey of exploration conducted in 1776 by two Franciscan priests, Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, to find an overland route from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to their Roman ...

which entered Utah in 1776 and named many of the state's physical features.

Gargoyle In architecture, and specifically Gothic architecture, a gargoyle () is a carved or formed grotesque with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing it from running down masonry wa ...

eagle Eagle is the common name for many large birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Outside this area, j ...

sea monster Sea monsters are beings from folklore believed to dwell in the sea and often imagined to be of immense size. Marine monsters can take many forms, including sea dragons, sea serpents, or tentacled beasts. They can be slimy and scaly and are o ...

beehives A beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species of the subgenus '' Apis'' live and raise their young. Though the word ''beehive'' is commonly used to describe the nest of any bee colony, scientific and professional literature ...

, Masonic icons,

sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

s, and other symbols dot the building's rich exterior. Walter Baird and Oswald Lendi carved most of the building's features. Lendi, a French sculptor, whimsically carved his face between the words "City" and "Hall" above the north entrance. The building has five floors and over one hundred rooms.

Onyx Onyx primarily refers to the parallel banded variety of chalcedony, a silicate mineral. Agate and onyx are both varieties of layered chalcedony that differ only in the form of the bands: agate has curved bands and onyx has parallel bands. The ...

lines the hall of each lavishly decorated floor. The third floor houses the mayor's office in the south wing and the city council chambers in the north. The council meeting room features an 1865 life-sized portrait of

Brigham Young Brigham Young (; June 1, 1801August 29, 1877) was an American religious leader and politician. He was the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), from 1847 until his death in 1877. During his time as chu ...

. Portraits of the city's past mayors up to and including Ross "Rocky" Anderson line the corridor between these offices. The third floor features an exhibit commemorating the

2002 Winter Olympics The 2002 Winter Olympics, officially the XIX Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Salt Lake 2002 ( arp, Niico'ooowu' 2002; Gosiute Shoshoni: ''Tit'-so-pi 2002''; nv, Sooléí 2002; Shoshoni: ''Soónkahni 2002''), was an internationa ...

held in Salt Lake City. Around the time of the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, and for a limited time, an electric display depicting the Olympic rings was allowed to be displayed on four sides of the central tower of the City and County building. The Olympic display has since been removed from the building.

Washington Square

The City-County Building sits between State Street, Second East, Fourth South, and Fifth South in Salt Lake City, a block called "Washington Square." Named for

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...

, the block is the site of the original 1847

Mormon pioneers The Mormon pioneers were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), also known as Latter Day Saints, who migrated beginning in the mid-1840s until the late-1860s across the United States from the Midwest to the ...

' camp in Salt Lake City.

Footnotes

Notes

References

* Goodman, Jack (1995). ''As You Pass By: Architectural Musings on Salt Lake City''. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. * Malouf, Beatrice B. (1991). ''Pioneer buildings of early Utah''. Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers. * McCormick, John S. (2000) ''The Gathering Place: An Illustrated History of Salt Lake City''. Signature Books. * Olpin, R. S., Orton, A. W., & Rugh, T. F. (2005). ''Painters of the Wasatch Mountains''. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, Publisher.

External links

Utah's Constitution was framed in Salt Lake City and County Building
– Utah History To Go

– Utah Geological Survey

– ''

'', June 17, 1995
Salt Lake County listings
a
National Register of Historic Places
* {{HABS , survey=UT-104 , id=ut0168 , title=Salt Lake City & County Building, 451 Washington Square, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, UT , photos=3 , color= , dwgs= , data=15 , cap=1 City and town halls in Utah City and town halls on the National Register of Historic Places in Utah Clock towers in Utah County government buildings in Utah Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Utah Historic American Buildings Survey in Utah National Register of Historic Places in Salt Lake City Office buildings in Salt Lake City Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in Utah Romanesque Revival architecture in Utah