Salt Lake City and County Building

The Salt Lake City and County Building, completed in 1894, is one of the finest examples of Romanesque Revival civic architecture in the American West. It sits in Washington Square, a full city block of parkland on 400 South, and serves as the seat of city government. The building's clock tower rises 237 feet and is visible from much of downtown.

The exterior stonework, turrets, and elaborate decorative details make it well worth a slow walk around the block. The building underwent one of the most ambitious seismic retrofitting projects in US history in the 1980s, lifted entirely off its foundations to install rubber isolation bearings beneath it. The park itself is pleasant for a break from sightseeing, with mature trees providing shade in summer.

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The building narrowly survived demolition in the 1970s when civic authorities argued it was too expensive to maintain. A preservation campaign saved it, and it was subsequently seismically retrofitted through the remarkable technique of base isolation — the entire structure was lifted and set on 443 rubber and steel pads that allow it to move during an earthquake without the building collapsing.