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Historic place

Walker Bank Building

175 S Main Street, Salt Lake City, UT

The Walker brothers' bank headquarters topped the city in 1912 and still carries a rooftop weather beacon.

📅 1912–1981🏛️ BankRepurposed
Open on the mapSlide back to 1912

The story

Walker Bank was founded in 1859 by the Walker brothers, and its headquarters opened December 9, 1912, after a little over a year of construction. St. Louis architects Eames and Young designed it in the Chicago school style. The basement held the vault and several shops, the main floor was the bank, and the upper floors were offices. From 1912 to 1916 it was the tallest building in Salt Lake City.

Walker Bank stayed until a 1981 merger with First Interstate Bancorp, which later merged with Wells Fargo in 1996. The building, now called Walker Center, is mixed-use office space and joined the National Register in 2006. On the roof is a 64-foot weather tower: solid blue means clear, flashing blue clouds, solid red rain, and flashing red snow. A local radio station installed it in the 1940s, it was removed in the 1980s under a city ordinance, and it was replaced in 2008.

What's There Now

It is Walker Center, a mixed-use office building.

Everything that was here

Did you know?

A 2021 LED upgrade lets the tower display any color and animations for holidays.
The weather tower is 64 feet tall.
Walker Bank dates to 1859, decades before this building.

Nearby history

Lamb's Grill

169 S Main St · 29 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 · 90 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 · 128 m away
Thomas Kearns's white terracotta office tower opened in 1911 and housed what was billed as the most beautiful buffet in

Capitol Theatre (Orpheum)

50 W 200 South · 143 m away
Opened as the Orpheum Theatre in 1913, it became the Capitol in 1927 and now hosts Ballet West and Utah Opera.

Utah Theatre (Pantages)

144 S Main Street · 159 m away
A Pantages vaudeville house that became the Utah Theatre, was split in two in 1968, and was torn down in 2022 despite a

Keith-O'Brien Building

242 S Main Street · 170 m away
A department store building from 1902 that David Keith had built still stands on Main Street, behind a TRAX station.

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