Hundreds of Salt Lakers ventured underground Tuesday, following dedication ceremonies of the Social Hall Memorial and State Street Walkway.
While noon traffic rolled by overhead, dignitaries and guests gathered under State Street, munching refreshments and admiring the wide, airy walkway and artifacts of old Social Hall.President Gordon B. Hinckley, first counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, called the completion of the memorial and walkway a significant event for Salt Lake City.
"This represents faith in the future, while honoring builders of the past," he told a large crowd gathered at the west end of Social Hall Avenue.
The project began more than a year ago as a way to eliminate the hazard of crossing State Street between Social Hall Avenue and the ZCMI Center. Not long after backhoes broke ground, however, the $2 million construction project turned into an archaeological dig: Crews had unearthed the original foundation of Social Hall, the first public building in Utah.
For several weeks, tunnel construction stopped, while state archaeologists exposed the foundation, gathered artifacts and documented observations of how Social Hall was built in 1852 and
See WALKWAY on A2
how it was used.
Project developer Zions Securities Corp., a real estate arm of the LDS Church, returned to the drawing table to come up with a way to house the foundation and artifacts at the Social Hall Avenue end of the walkway.
Zions Securities came up with an open-air, steel-framed, glass enclosure with the same dimensions as the original Social Hall. Inside are large sections of the original foundation along the walls, the ovens used for dinners and social occasions, glass cases of artifacts found during excavation as well as pioneer building and cooking implements, and a scale replica of the original Social Hall.
President Hinckley expressed gratitude for the effort to preserve the foundation, which added $1 million to the project, for the public to enjoy. "It (Social Hall) represented the desire of the pioneers to take in culture while engaged in the difficult labor of making the desert blossom like a rose," he said.
Kent Money, president of Zions Securities, said while the walkway is open to the public, the project is not completed. The block surrounding Social Hall will undergo further development, allowing space for wheelchair access to the memorial and tunnel, he said.
Without specifying when further development would take place, Money said a possible addition would be a plaza south of the memorial from which wheelchairs could enter the memorial and walkway.
The facility will be open during ZCMI Center hours and monitored by the shopping center's security force.