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Historic place

Utah Theatre (Pantages)

144 S Main Street, Salt Lake City, UT

A Pantages vaudeville house that became the Utah Theatre, was split in two in 1968, and was torn down in 2022 despite a chain-in protest.

📅 until 2022🏛️ TheaterDemolished
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The story

B. Marcus Priteca designed the theater for his friend Alexander Pantages, and it opened as the Pantages Theatre for vaudeville and silent films. RKO took it over in 1929 as the RKO Orpheum, and it became the Utah Theatre in 1937. The Sound of Music reportedly ran there for about two years in the mid-1960s. In 1968 the balcony became a second auditorium and much of the original ornament was removed.

It stopped showing movies in 1988, a dance company used it until 1992, and the city's Redevelopment Agency bought the vacant building in 2009. In 2019 the city agreed to sell the property to Hines and LaSalle for $0, in exchange for housing and a public green space. In June 2021 Michael Valentine chained himself to the doors in protest. A judge refused to stop the project, and demolition began April 19, 2022, with plans to reuse the Tiffany skylight.

What's There Now

The theater is gone; as of mid-2023 the planned residential tower had not been built.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

The theatre was documented in a virtual reconstruction and a digital archive at the Marriott Library.
Crews reached it by cutting a channel through the neighboring Kearns Building parking garage.
The city estimated restoration at $30 million or more; supporters disputed the figure.

Nearby history

Crazy Goat Saloon

165 S West Temple · 45 m away
The Dead Goat renamed and reopened as a strip club, which led to a lawsuit with the LDS Church.

Capitol Theatre (Orpheum)

50 W 200 South · 94 m away
Opened as the Orpheum Theatre in 1913, it became the Capitol in 1927 and now hosts Ballet West and Utah Opera.

Kearns Building

132 S Main Street · 104 m away
Thomas Kearns's white terracotta office tower opened in 1911 and housed what was billed as the most beautiful buffet in

Lamb's Grill

169 S Main St · 146 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 Tribune Building (Ezra Thompson Building)

143 S Main St · 153 m away
The Tribune bought this 1924 mining-mayor's tower in 1937 and left in 2005; now it is a university.

Walker Bank Building

175 S Main Street · 159 m away
The Walker brothers' bank headquarters topped the city in 1912 and still carries a rooftop weather beacon.

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Sourceshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Theatre