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

Rainy day... How much is that doggy in the window?

The walk today gave me a chance to take care of an errand, see some history, some Sequoia trees, and a pedestrian staircase. What's better? It was a dark misty northwestern kind of day. Almost as if SLC was picked up and moved to Oregon

For a long time I went to the local chop shop bad haircut place called Great Clips. To be clear I'm not stylish and I only get cuts when the hair gets out of control. For years I concluded there just weren't any old school barbers around. All there was was the fru fru salons for a $50 hair cut and the strip mall chop shop. About a year ago a local barbershop opened a Main Street location which is a really good thing because, well, Main Street is pretty sad. Who knew there are still places that will give you a cut, a shave with a straight razor, a hot towel wrap, and a shoe shine if you want it? I actually like the slow methodical attention to detail of the cuts that I get. No more chop shop for me.

Next I took off on my walk and a door down was a art gallery with a Scotty fog just kicking it in the window. I have an affinity to Scotty dogs because I had one when I was 6. This dog was just watching the people walk by on Main Street. I just had to snap a pic.

One of the things about SLC is the city blocks are huge. Humongous. 4 city blocks would fit in the same area as one in SLC. So what you that amounts to is a lot of wasted, inaccessible space.

Sometimes (not often) though the extra space affords a place for a hidden park. One such place is the Kimball cemetery park. The park is hidden mid block, connected on the west through an alleyway between apartment buildings and a meandering brick path from the east. In this park there are 2 giant sequoias next to large grave marker from one of the early Mormon leaders...

From there I continued east a few hundred feet to the top of the 4th Ave. west staircase. I grew up in the Bay Area so I spent a lot of time in San Francisco. There are several staircases in SLC from a bygone time when people walked more. There are around a dozen sets of staircases in SLC far fewer than the City by the Bay, but it's enough to remind me of one if my favorite cities. (I've been known to walk many miles in SF too). Finally I followed City Creek for a while which has been emptied for winter.