Salt Lake City, Utah has many historic and notable sites within its immediate borders. Although the entire Salt Lake City metropolitan area is often referred to as "Salt Lake City", this article is concerned only with the buildings and sites within the official city limits of Salt Lake City.
Religious, particularly LDS buildings, are prominent in Salt Lake City.
Settled by Brigham Young and 147 other pioneers on July 24, 1847, these Latter-day Saints were fleeing persecution after the death of Joseph Smith. Young originally intended the city and territory to be a religious theocracy. Although the government has long been secular, and even though less than 50% of residents in Salt Lake City are LDS, the city has a large number of religious buildings.[ citation needed ] It is the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Unless noted, all of these buildings are in or around Downtown Salt Lake City.
Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, it is the 117th most populous city in the United States, the city is the core of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which had a population of 1,257,936 at the 2020 census. Salt Lake City is further situated within a larger metropolis known as the Salt Lake City–Ogden–Provo Combined Statistical Area, a corridor of contiguous urban and suburban development stretched along a 120-mile (190 km) segment of the Wasatch Front, comprising a population of 2,746,164, making it the 22nd largest in the nation. It is also the central core of the larger of only two major urban areas located within the Great Basin.
Provo is a city in and the county seat of Utah County, Utah, United States. It is 43 miles (69 km) south of Salt Lake City along the Wasatch Front, and lies between the cities of Orem to the north and Springville to the south. With a population at the 2020 census of 115,162, Provo is the fourth-largest city in Utah and the principal city in the Provo-Orem metropolitan area, which had a population of 526,810 at the 2010 census. It is Utah's second-largest metropolitan area after Salt Lake City.
Temple Square is a 10-acre (4.0 ha) complex, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in the center of Salt Lake City, Utah. The usage of the name has gradually changed to include several other church facilities that are immediately adjacent to Temple Square. Contained within Temple Square are the Salt Lake Temple, Salt Lake Tabernacle, Salt Lake Assembly Hall, the Seagull Monument, and two visitors' centers. The square was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1964, recognizing the Mormon achievement in the settlement of Utah.
William Harrison Folsom was an architect and contractor. He constructed many of the historic buildings in Utah, particularly in Salt Lake City. Many of his most prominent works were commissioned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For a time he was sustained as the Church Architect, a calling in the church.
The Alfred McCune Home is one of the mansions on Capitol Hill in Salt Lake City, Utah, from around the turn of the 20th century. Built for Alfred W. McCune on the inclined south side of Capitol Hill at the northeast corner of 200 North Main Street, the mansion has 21 rooms and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Originally, the Salt Lake Valley was inhabited by the Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute and Ute Native American tribes. At the time of the founding of Salt Lake City the valley was within the territory of the Northwestern Shoshone, who had their seasonal camps along streams within the valley and in adjacent valleys. One of the local Shoshone tribes, the Western Goshute tribe, referred to the Great Salt Lake as Pi'a-pa, meaning "big water", or Ti'tsa-pa, meaning "bad water". The land was treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone was ever recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States. Father Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, a Spanish Franciscan missionary is considered the first European explorer in the area in 1776, but only came as far north as Utah valley (Provo), some 60 miles south of the Salt Lake City area. The first US visitor to see the Salt Lake area was Jim Bridger in 1824. U.S. Army officer John C. Frémont surveyed the Great Salt Lake and the Salt Lake Valley in 1843 and 1845. The Donner Party, a group of ill-fated pioneers, traveled through the Great Salt Lake Valley a year before the Mormon pioneers. This group had spent weeks traversing difficult terrain and brush, cutting a road through the Wasatch Mountains, coming through Emigration canyon into the Salt Lake Valley on August 12, 1846. This same path would be used by the vanguard company of Mormon pioneers, and for many years after that by those following them to Salt Lake.
Downtown is the oldest district in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The grid from which the entire city is laid out originates at Temple Square, the location of the Salt Lake Temple.
The Beehive House was one of the official residences of Brigham Young, the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The Beehive House gets its name from the beehive sculpture atop the house.
Thomas Kearns was an American mining, banking, railroad, and newspaper magnate. He was a US Senator from Utah from 1901 to 1905. Unlike the predominantly Mormon constituents of his state, Senator Kearns was Catholic.
The City Creek Center (CCC) is a mixed-use development with an upscale open-air shopping center, office and residential buildings, fountain, and simulated creek near Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It is an undertaking by Property Reserve, Inc. (PRI), the commercial real estate division of the Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Taubman Centers, Inc. (TCI). The CCC integrates shopping and residential elements, with foliage-lined walkways and streams covering two blocks in the heart of downtown Salt Lake. PRI invested in the housing and parking elements of the mall, while TCI owns and operates the shopping center itself. The CCC opened to the general public on March 22, 2012. This shopping, office, and residential center encompass nearly 20 acres (8.1 ha) of downtown Salt Lake City. The City Creek Center is part of an estimated $5 billion sustainable design project to revitalize downtown Salt Lake City. The CCC project itself has been estimated to cost around $1.5 billion.
The Brigham Young Complex is a collection of buildings historically associated with religious leader Brigham Young on East South Temple in the center of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Joseph Don Carlos Young was an American architect and the Church Architect for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1887 until 1893. In 1893, the office of Church Architect was dissolved, Young thereafter practiced privately with the LDS Church as a frequent client. Young practiced as an architect, landscape architect and designer from 1879 to circa 1935. A preponderance of his work centered on church commissions, or commissions offered him by extended Young family members, or higher echelon church friends.
Avard Tennyson Fairbanks was a 20th-century American sculptor. Over his eighty-year career, he sculpted over 100 public monuments and hundreds of artworks. Fairbanks is known for his religious-themed commissions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints including the Three Witnesses, Tragedy of Winter Quarters, and several Angel Moroni sculptures on LDS temple spires. Additionally, Fairbanks sculpted over a dozen Abraham Lincoln-themed sculptures and busts among which the most well-known reside in the U.S. Supreme Court Building and Ford's Theatre Museum.
The Council House, often called the State House, was the first public building in Utah; being constructed in 1849–50. The building stood in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, on the corner of Main Street and South Temple Street. On June 21, 1883 the building was destroyed when a neighboring wagon depot caught fire and several barrels of gunpowder exploded, spreading the fire to the Council House.
Richard Karl August Kletting was an influential architect in Utah. He designed many well-known buildings, including the Utah State Capitol, the Enos Wall Mansion, the original Salt Palace, and the original Saltair Resort Pavilion. His design for the Utah State Capitol was chosen over 40 competing designs. A number of his buildings survive and are listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places including many in University of Utah Circle and in the Salt Lake City Warehouse District.
Main Street is the most important commercial street in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States though it also extends south into the cities of South Salt Lake, Millcreek, and Murray. Its commercial importance is almost totally derived from the few blocks of the street which are immediately south of Temple Square that have attracted banks, major retailers, and heavy foot traffic throughout Salt Lake City's history; the long southern extension of Main Street south of about 500 and 600 South, in contrast, is always in the shadow of State Street, which is more designed for the long-distance automobile traffic that is common away from downtown.
Lorenzo Snow Young, nicknamed "Bing", was a 20th-century architect in Utah. Young practiced for 40 years in Salt Lake City, Utah and is credited with having designed over 700 buildings.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and a topical guide to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.