Home›Places›Salt Lake City, UT›Salt Lake Theatre
Historic place

Salt Lake Theatre

75 E 100 S, Salt Lake City, UT

Brigham Young called himself designer and general dictator of a 1,500-seat theatre that took months to knock down.

📅 1862–1928🏛️ TheaterDemolished
Open on the mapSlide back to 1862

The story

The Salt Lake Theatre stood at the corner of State and First South. It was built in 1861-62 at a cost of over $100,000, and William H. Folsom was its main architect. Brigham Young pushed it through even though the Salt Lake Temple was not finished, and he called himself designer and general dictator of the whole affair. It seated about 1,500, and the interior was modeled on London's Drury Lane.

Shakespeare, melodrama and touring companies filled the stage, with performers including Sarah Bernhardt, Edwin Booth and Buffalo Bill Cody. Oscar Wilde lectured there, and it hosted party caucuses and conventions. Movies, vaudeville and automobiles cut attendance, and receipts often barely covered costs. LDS president Heber J. Grant announced its closure during the 1920s slump, and it was razed in 1928. Its red-pine timbers were so sturdy that demolition ran months longer than planned.

What's There Now

The Mountain States Telephone Building, built a few years after the demolition.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

Henry Miller called it the cathedral in the desert.
Mountain States Telephone bought the site and built on it.
A plaque on the State Street frontage commemorates the theatre.

Nearby history

Salt Lake Tribune Building (Ezra Thompson Building)

143 S Main St · 145 m away
The Tribune bought this 1924 mining-mayor's tower in 1937 and left in 2005; now it is a university.

Kearns Building

132 S Main Street · 146 m away
Thomas Kearns's white terracotta office tower opened in 1911 and housed what was billed as the most beautiful buffet in

ZCMI Center Mall

15 S Main Street · 187 m away
A Gruen Associates mall on the block bounded by Main, South Temple, State and 100 South; retail closed July 28, 2007.

Lamb's Grill

169 S Main St · 207 m away
Utah's oldest restaurant started in Logan on Washington's birthday, then spent 78 years on Main Street before closing in

Salt Lake City Hall (Council Hall)

120 E 100 S · 232 m away
City hall where Utah woman cast the first woman's vote in 1870, then moved stone by stone in 325 numbered slabs.

Walker Bank Building

175 S Main Street · 235 m away
The Walker brothers' bank headquarters topped the city in 1912 and still carries a rooftop weather beacon.

Know something about Salt Lake Theatre? An old photo, a date, a memory of what stood here before?

Add it on the map
Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Lake_Theatre