Salt Lake City and County Building - History

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 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. It was designed to rival the Salt Lake Temple as the city's architectural centerpiece. It is even thought that the building's clock tower and statues were designed to mimic the temple's spires and statue of the angel Moroni. Ironically, the building was originally the 1880s brainchild of the Church-backed "People's Party." When the non-Mormon "Liberal Party" 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.

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 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.

The architectural firm of Monheim, Bird, and Proudfoot designed the Richardsonian Romanesque (Olpin et al., 2005) building. Henry Monheim, a local architect since the 1870s, and George W. Bird and Willis T. Proudfoot of Wichita, Kansas 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 Prussian immigrant, died one year into construction. Bird and Proudfoot moved to Philadelphia and Chicago 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 which cut Salt Lake City and County revenues nearly in half. As a result of this, plans for large stained glass 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 21st South and State Street.

The building served as Utah's Capitol from when statehood was granted in 1896 until the present Utah State Capitol 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 that placed the weak sandstone structure on a foundation of steel and rubber to better protect it from earthquake damage.