1 N O . I 8 4 V O L . I U H Q
86 An exterior view of the Cornell (or Vissing) Apartments, located at 101 South 600 East in Salt Lake City, in November 1908. —
Utah State Historical Society
Historic Salt Lake City Apartments of the Early Twentieth Century B Y
L I S A - M I C H E L E
C H U R C H
Salt Lake City contains many beautiful examples of early twentieth-century apartment buildings constructed between 1902 and 1940 to house a growing urban population. With whimsical names such as the Piccadilly, the Peter Pan, and the Waldorf, these buildings beckoned to Utahns who were interested in a new approach to residential life. Apartments became places of beginnings and endings. To young couples starting out their marriage, single women leaving home for the first time,
immigrant families finally finding work in America, and others, an apartment provided the right mix of permanency and impermanency. It felt like a home but not necessarily your home. As one early resident put in, “You move in with a suitcase; you move out with a truck.”1 The city’s apartments were constructed in two 1 Ralph Holding, interview with Lisa-Michele Church, November 15, 2014, in possession of the author.
