Pub. 2 2021-2022 Issue 1

16 REFLEXION | 2021-22 | AIA Utah A Little Tale of One City: The Salisbury Building and The Lens of Clifton Bray and The Salt Lake Telegram BY GREG WALZ, RESEARCH CENTER MANAGER FOR THE UTAH DIVISION OF STATE HISTORY BLOG H ow might one analyze older photographs of Utah — downtown Salt Lake City in particular — to gain some knowledge about little moments in life as they were lived in another era? Is it even possible to ascertain such a thing with any detail by examining, studying, and researching what is captured in one or two old black and white photographic images or surviving local primary sources like newspapers? Two key questions that one should pose are the following: when, precisely, were the photographs taken, and what do they most prominently depict or capture? For example, let us consider and analyze two superbly detailed photographs of Salt Lake City’s Main Street, both conveniently and precisely dated October 4, 1938, and both part of the Utah State Historical Society’s Clifford Bray Photograph collection, Mss C-321, Bray numbers 1307 and 1307-A. A copy print is also part of the Classified Photograph Collection, under S.L.C — Main Street-II p.156 No.26350 — but that one lacks the clarity of the original negatives. One Bray image, 1307, was photographed about eight minutes before the other one, 1307-A. How can this level of detail be ascertained? The outdoor multi-clock apparatus or cupola in photo #1307 has the west-facing clock hands pointing to 5:57 p.m. (see the image above), and that same clock apparatus in photo #1307-A has the clock pointing to almost exactly 6:05 This is image #1307-A with the clock (below the “… and Trust Co” sign) indicating 6:05 p.m. p.m. Unless the clock mechanisms stopped working, the times the hands indicate should be accurate. Unfortunately, this curiosity of clocks no longer exists on the exterior of this building. And what day of the week was this? It was a Tuesday, according to the perpetual calendar. The time is almost close to dusk, and the two moments captured in the two photographs were about an hour before that time. As an example, moving closer to the present day, on October 4, 2019, sunset in Utah was approximately 7:03 p.m. Looking more precisely at the centerpiece building in the images, and its early history, is one way to approach the images with a more detailed focus. The tall building in the right foreground is quite prominent in the image, but the two-to-three-story-looking-one in the center is the one most prominently captured, or the focal point. Indeed, frommy perspective, the centerpiece of both images is almost precisely in the center — a then-new commercial building that housed a Walgreen Drugs store: the Salisbury building. The Salisbury Building was on the intersection’s southeast corner. The other major building captured in the images is the Continental National Bank and Trust Company building, on the southwest corner of the intersection 200 South and Main Street. It still exists as the Hotel Monaco. These two exterior images were taken just over a year and a half after the Salisbury Building witnessed its own grand opening to the public with much publicity and fanfare. Old Utah newspapers, especially those that were published in Salt Lake City, are the best sources to resurrect the details of this building’s initial or early history, when it was brand new and a powerful symbol of consumerism to the local metropolitan populace. Indeed, a somewhat forgotten local newspaper, the Salt Lake Telegram, provides a great deal of detail about the then-new Salisbury Building as it wandered on its path to construction and a grand opening in late February 1936. The old Kenyon Hotel, built in the early 1900s, and a prominent Salt Lake City building landmark, was demolished in 1935 to make way for the new building. Our Utah State Historical Society image collections contain a few dozen exterior and interior photographs of that hotel. A May 13, 1935 article notes that the new building was supposed to be ready for occupation by January 1, 1936 — in only about ten months — and that the Kenyon Hotel had already begun to be demolished. The target date for opening ended up being late by only about a month and a half. The Salisbury Building was part of a major increase in spending on new building construction in the city during 1935. Local