Main Street Salt Lake City: Incredible history you won't believe

Downtown Salt Lake City’s Main Street has always had two very distinct halves: The north half is almost all LDS-Church-owned and now the billion-dollar City Creek Center has almost every fashionable Wall Street traded chain store one could hope for. With over five million annual visitors to Salt Lake City’s Temple each year, now we can host them in style.

This shopping complex is just around the corner from the currently-under-renovation Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints headquarters and Temple.

The Church’s for-profit real estate development arm has been on a building binge for the past few years erecting massive residential and office towers all around their properties. The Church’s Bank is known as Zion’s Bank. The Zions Bank and Keybank tower bookend the north side of Main Street.

The South half of Main Street has always had a much more distinct non-conformist flair. Here we find the Walker Bank tower built by money from fortunes gained from mining. This once marked the non-Mormon financial district of Salt Lake. Today, Goldman Sachs recently took up four levels of the 222 high-rises.

But in the middle of the street is the former Utah Theater, despite efforts to save the old building it looks like its fate has been sealed to join the destiny of so much of downtown’s classic architecture — soon it will be rubble razed with a wrecking ball.

But further, down the street where downtown Salt Lake’s former massive Zion’s bookstore once resided, we find a state of disrepair and abandonment.

And while the south side of Main may is not ritzy like the North end, but it’s authentic and unvarnished. And for the first time in the history of Main Street, we now have a bar district on Main Street with 15 bars and restaurants on one single block.

Amongst the bars and bustle, food and nightlife there is a family-owned business that has been around downtown for nearly one hundred years. The shop is known as Utah Book and Magazine.

The Main proprietor is Pete Marshall who operates the store with his sister Hellen. Here they still have an old window display. A feature that once provided most of the character for the shops in downtown around Christmastime, today that tradition has mostly disappeared.


Pete’s memories of downtown make it clear that the city has always been his playground. Streets, Warehouses, and even brothels or cat houses as he calls them were all great places to find antique treasures for his grandfather's shop.

What I’ve found most interesting about Pete’s shop is the amount of Salt Lake City history that Pete personally remembers and has been involved with. Beginning with his building, Peter knows all about the former owners: The Rotisserie Inn, he even has the guy’s wallet.

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