Historic Salt Lake City Apartments of the Early Twentieth Century

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

BY LISA-MICHELE CHURCH

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 general phases, with one boom lasting from 1904 through World War I and another flurry occurring from the early 1920s until World War II. Members of Salt Lake City’s middle class were generally the occupants of the apartments in those decades, and the buildings offered them modern luxuries they may not have been able to afford previously. 2 Such amenities included Murphy “disappearing beds,” Frigidaire refrigerators, electric ranges, and laundry facilities. The building interiors were also upscale, with their French doors, balconies, chandeliers, and mosaic tile foyers. 3 As an advertisement from the newly built Woodruff Apartments boasted in 1908, “the building will be steam heated, you will have hot water ready at all times of day or night, as well as free janitor and night watchman service, telephone and gas range. . . . The amount you will save on coal bills, water, telephone, street car fares and other incidentals, will reduce your cost of living, and you will have all the comforts besides.” 4 Salt Lake City apartment buildings of this era were designed either as a walk-up, with one or two entrances on each landing, or as a double-loaded corridor, with multiple entrances along a central hall. Each style featured decorative brick or stone exteriors and ornate front doorways.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, interest in downtown living was growing. A 1902 Salt Lake Tribune article noted that “most of the available sites for houses within convenient distance of the business center are already occupied, and the constant demand of renters for apartments close in has resulted in stimulating the erection of terraces or flats.” 5 The population of Salt Lake City had increased dramatically from 20,000 residents in the late nineteenth century to more than 92,000 by 1910. 6 By 1940, it had jumped again to 140,000. This was a time of civic improvements in the inner city, including installing streetcar lines, paving sidewalks, and creating grass medians in the middle of the wide streets. 7 Urban apartments offered the advantages of convenience, comfort, and proximity to jobs.

After the first apartment-building phase of the early century, another boom occurred in the 1920s. Then during the Great Depression, funding for new construction evaporated. After the Second World War, Utahns demanded cozy bungalows in the suburbs, which had become more affordable because of federally subsidized loans. Downtown apartment construction declined further, and the patterns of occupancy changed dramatically as well. The buildings became expensive to maintain. The clientele became more transient and less middle class.

Today, most of these grand old buildings provide low-income housing or are used as condominiums and lofts. Some remain beautifully preserved, their owners taking care to maintain the distinctive architectural features. There are at least seventy-three of these downtown apartment buildings listed in the National Register of Historic Places. 8 In 2014, Salt Lake City adopted Design Guidelines for Historic Apartment buildings, emphasizing the charm of these structures, as well as their “distinctive urban scale and presence.” 9 The buildings still in use today are a vivid demonstration of the boldness and style with which Salt Lake City entered the twentieth century.

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WEB EXTRA

Visit history.utah.gov/slcapts for an extended essay with contemporary color photographs of these buildings and vignettes about their past occupants, as well as a walking-tour brochure, all by Lisa-Michele Church.

1 Ralph Holding, interview with Lisa-Michele Church, November 15, 2014, in possession of the author.

2 Roger Roper, “Homemakers in Transition: Women in Salt Lake City Apartments, 1910–1940,” Utah Historical Quarterly 67, no. 4 (1999): 349–66.

3 “Design Guidelines for Historic Apartment and Multifamily Buildings in Salt Lake City,” Draft, 4:4, accessed November 23, 2015, http://www.slcdocs.com/ Planning/blog/MFDGsMar14.pdf; Thomas Carter and Peter Goss, Utah’s Historic Architecture, 1847–1940 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, 1988).

4 Goodwin’s Weekly (Salt Lake City), September 5, 1908, 1.

5 Salt Lake Tribune, July 27, 1902.

6 “Historic Resources of Salt Lake City” MPDF / “Urban Expansion into the Early Twentieth Century, 1890s–1930s” (urban apartment study), available at Utah State Historic Preservation Office, Salt Lake City, Utah.

7 Ibid.; “Design Guidelines.”8 Urban apartment study.9 Ibid.; “Design Guidelines.”