Features
The Salt Lake City and County Building's central clock tower is topped with a statue of Columbia and rises 256 feet (78 m) from the ground. The building's primary axis runs north-south, and large entrances mark each cardinal direction. On the south wing (over the Mayor's office) is a bronze statue of the goddess Justice. Originally, the building had statues depicting Commerce, Liberty, 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.
The building's surface is elaborately carved from the gray Utah Kyune sandstone it's made of. To the right of the entrance on the south side is the face of Father DeSmet, a Jesuit Priest who preached to Native Americans and had contact with the Latter-day Saints before and after they traveled to Utah. To the left is Captain Garcia Lopez de Cardenas who explored Southern Utah by 1540. Above the granite 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 and Chief Wakara and Jim Bridger. Above the west entrance left-to-right are R. N. Baskin, Salt Lake City mayor circa 1894, Jedediah M. Grant, Salt Lake's first mayor, and Jacob B. Blair, federal judge. The north side features a depiction of the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition which entered Utah in 1776 and named many of the state's physical features. Gargoyles, eagles, sea monsters, beehives, Masonic icons, suns, and other symbols dot the building's rich exterior.
Walter Baird and Oswald Lendi carved most of the building's features. Lindi, 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 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. 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 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.
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Famous quotes containing the word features:
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)