It took a little more than a year, but I completed the Historic Downtown Walking Tour of Salt Lake City.
This week I caught the final 12 stops, Nos. 47 through 58, of the 58-stop tour that begins at the ZCMI facade on Main Street and ends a couple of blocks away at the old Salt Lake High School building in front of Cafe Pierpont on Pierpont Avenue.
The entire tour is only four blocks wide and five blocks long so it doesn't have to take more than a year to complete. You could do it in a day, easy, with a good water bottle. Marion Jones could sprint the whole thing in seven minutes, including reading the plaques.
But I chose to walk the tour in segments, allowing for a few months in between and a more sedate pace for seeing the old city and its buildings, which seemed appropriate. Even now, 155 years since it was first settled, much of Salt Lake City still rests on roots 100 years deep and deeper.
The final dozen stops are on the lower west side, which means a stroll through the architecture of industry. The lone exception is the grand Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Greek Orthodox Church, which sits on the corner of 300 South and 300 West. The cathedral was completed in 1924, when Greeks represented the largest immigrant group in Utah, and the church was built at the edge of a two-block row of businesses that comprised "Greek Town." For almost 80 years, the church has been the scene of big fat Greek weddings too numerous to count.
Most every other structure on this part of the tour has to do with manufacturing or commerce or agriculture, including the old Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. Building, the Crane Building, the Sweet Candy Co. Building, the Patrick Dry Goods Co. Building and the crown jewel of the whole genre, the Henderson Block Building on the corner of 400 West and 200 South.
A wholesale grocer named Wilber S. Henderson built his produce warehouse next to the railroad tracks in 1899 and even all these years later you can tell Wilber did not scrimp on construction. The Henderson Block is made out of rusticated sandstone with four Roman arches and an elaborate tin cornice.
They don't build warehouses like that any more. And as the three historic walking tour buildings due east of the Henderson Block testify, they didn't build them like that even right after the Henderson Block was built. One of these buildings was built for a plumbing company (the Crane Building), another for a candy company (the Sweet Candy Building) and another for a dry goods company (the Patrick Dry Goods Building). They are all truly ugly buildings, vying for Ugliest Old Building in Salt Lake with the Odd Fellows Hall building on Market Street, visited in an earlier Walking Tour segment.
But they were built well. Give them that. Each building is closing in on its 100th birthday with no sign of crumbling.
The strongest reminder that the more the city changes the more it remains the same is at stop No. 51, where the Dakota Lofts stand tall. These upper-story lofts were built in 1923 and are now condominiums — another way to say loft — that still offer downtown living near the heart of the city. The sports bar at the bottom is "Natalie's," owned by local sports hero Natalie Williams. The sign out front advertised a toga party, starting at 9 p.m. Wear a toga and get in free. And while you're at it, remember that Greek Town is only a block — and half a century — away.
Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527.