Mid Block Adventures

Salt Lake City blocks down town are huge. 10 acres square in fact by comparison 4 city blocks in San Francisco and Portland could fit inside one SLC block. Further the streets are huge 120 feet wide or as anyone from around here will tell you large enough for a 10 ox cart to be turned around...

Anyway on to the pics:

This is one of the buildings at Exchange place. I absolutely love the different exterior materials, and the painted tile beutiful building. Exchange place was initially set up at the south end of Main Street by all the non-Mormon local business owners to give balance and be as far apart from the power center of Temple Square.

Not crazy about this picture. Seems really washed out for some reason... oh well it is just a phone cam. I took this pic to show the roof top bar complete with fake palm trees. Behind it is a building that for the longest time thought should just be torn down, but instead the outside was cleaned up and the interior renovated. I'm glad its still here as it is one of the only examples of midcentury modern left downtown.

 Another washed out image... kind of remindsmeof how downtown looks during a pollution inversion. I absolutely love the City County Building, truly an architectural treasure that was saved from the wrecking ball and restored in teh late 1980s. I've been on the tour of the building up to the clock tower and in the basement. The Utah Heritage foundation offers tours during the summer that take you through the entire building... well worth the price of admission (free). back in 2001 someone climbed to the highest point and mounted a large pumpkin on Columbia's torch. It took months for it to rot away.

Today was the launch day for the 3rd year of the green bike program. I haven't rented a bike yet because I prefer walking, but I did use a similar program in Chicago last year, and will again when I go to Chicago again this year. I really liked using the bike share in Chicago and think its better than a privater bike under a lot of different circumstances.

Looks like there are now 17 bike stations. Chicago had dozens. SLC needs a few more, Trolley Square, Liberty Park, City Creek Park and 9th and 9th.

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300 East Between 100 South and 300 South (Broadway) is a corridor of historic apartment buildings built during the teens and 20s of the 20th Century. Easily a dozens of historic buildings similar to this one located throughout the city.

  Found this strange monumant behind one of the apartment buildings.No idea what it is or why its there the other side has a bunch of little cubbies to display things... curious.

In the interior of another nearby  block is this building which could possibly be a repurposed carriage house. the brick indicates the structure is very old but the add ons and display windows are very strange.

This one of the display windows for a child size chair.

 And this is the entrance with a very ornate and very heavy door. teh 1960s was an interesting time architecturally.

I propose we set some of these up on the 400 South viaduct that I visited yesterday.

One of the apartment buildings has encourages street art to decorate their old parking structures.

I found two new pedestrian staircases today. These aren't really public in the sense of the other staircases in SLC but still hidden and cool nonetheless. Following this staircase up takes one to the original parking structure for the surrounding apartments.

And look one of the garages leads to a second staircase.

Which leads to this path...

Which leads to this side garden.

Which leads to South Temple and the first and original pedestrian staircase that I found in SLC.

This is the Meredeth Steps that connect South Temple to First Avenue.

By this time I need to get moving so I walked down through City Creek Mall and on to Regent Street and took the following picture of the construction of 111 S Main and the Essles Performing Arts Center.

The scale of this project is huge. Not often that the rear side of the Walker Building is exposed.

Day 3 total: 3.4 miles

Heading West

Decided to head West today. There is an urban wasteland island that I have been looking to explore. The island is located between the railroad racks and I-15 with only a couple of dead end streets.

First pic today is the Capitol Theater and the new practice facility next to the historic theater.

The next 3 pictures are from some mid-block post apocalyptic walkways that are terribly under utilized. These are representative of many 1970s and early 80s downtown makeovers.

Years ago (my hell! it's been 10 years) we went on trip to Los Angeles and stayed downtown for 7 days. Downtown LA were filled with tons of these pedestrian plazas specifically the Westin Bonaventure and the Paul Hastings plaza. Just seems there should be a higher use than deserted concrete,

I cut across the mid-block crosswalk to the Federal Courthouse BORG cube and noticed that they built a crater next to is to serve as a park, The crater is about 50 feet across and about 5 feet deep in the form of a perfect circle. Undoubtedly as a marker for when the mother cube come to  assimilate its    

From the cusp of the crater I turn around to realized the crater is on the site of the old odd-fellows hall that used to sit where I am currently standing.

So this building was jacked up and moved 180 degrees, Pretty awesome feat IMO.

Video of the building moving.

Fish hook Light fixture... This BORG cube is assimilating people by sucking them through the fish hook brain vacuum thingy.

I really liked this image. All of the shadows being illuminated from reflections, The lighting gradients are fascinating. It felt like I was walking through a solar power generation array. 

I like this very symmetric building along 400 South but what intrigued me most was the HUGE bird of paradise on the 3rd floor. The tree is likely 10 feet across and just as tall and simply huge.

Next I walk the 400 South viaduct that goes to the urban island. I've walked hundreds of miles in SLC but I've never walked across this bridge and I soon find out that I won't be in any hurry to do it again.

One complaint I have about SLC is the sorry state of park space on the West Side. This park was built 20 years ago and looks like crap. Something like this would never fly east of State Street.

I've driven this road hundreds of times but what I have never known before now is that this is a highly populated (er, poopulated) overflow area for homeless people. Every single light post is decorated with a pile of human feces and urine. There were a few folks sleeping all along the bridge as well. It seems that when the old viaduct was demolished they got rid of the places where the homeless used to sleep and the homeless just moved up to the top. There was evidence of dozens of people sleeping along the 3 block structure. I'll bet very few even know how many people are sleeping mere feet where thousands of cars pass daily.

  

A warehouse with ancient automobiles in the back.

Salt Lake Central Hub... Connect to Front Runner train to go to either Provo or Ogden or Blue Line light rail. In the future there will a street car from this station to City Creek and then to 900 East. The street car seems redundant.

  I saw this huge warehouse from the freeway a couple of weeks ago that I had never seen before. I'm a big fan of UrbEx and Ic ouldn't believe that I had never noticed this building before. It's hundreds of feet long and has been around for a long time. I've looked at it from the other side because it runs the entire length of the Front Runner platform, but doesn't look nearly as interesting from the east side. The building is now apparently owned by UTA.

Interior shot of the factory through defenestration. I might have to do some research and see what they used to make here...

3.3 miles in 56 minutes...

Heading North

After a much too long hiatus I'm going to try and get this thing started again. This spring and Winter for that matter in SLC has been crazy. Hard to believe Spring is springing in March.

Today's walk took me to the Marmalade or Capitol Hill, which everyou want to call it. Captitol Hill is one of SLC's oldest hoods with a ton of late 19th century houses and multifamily dwellings.

I really dig these old apartment buildings. It's hard to imagine sometimes how many thousands of people lived in these buildings ever the decades.

 Probably one of the most photographed buildings in Utah outside of Temple Square.

A rare Magnolia in Utah. I could smell this tree a block away. I really need to get one of these for my yard.

I'm going to go out on a limb and conclude that the home owner matched their paint to their magnolia tree. 

This is one set of the 3 sets of pedestrian staircases located in the north foothills of SLC

Kitties can't read. 

Absolutely love the attention to detail on these old houses. Look at the intricate cast plaster relief. Beautiful. 

Alleyway leading to one of my favorite coffee shops...Well a second location for my favorite from my old hood in Liberty Wells. Alchemy Coffee is awesome, I had no idea they opened a second location

Looking down Main Street