Then-President Gordon B. Hinckley of the LDS Church said the name came into his mind because "the Lord wanted this building named the Joseph Smith Memorial Building."

Today, the LDS Church maintains restaurants and offices in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Yearly Christmas displays enchant visitors. Banquets may be arranged there, a chapel is available downstairs, and the building's Legacy Theater has regular free showings of the movie "Joseph Smith, the Prophet of the Restoration."

A marble statue of Joseph Smith, more than 9 feet tall, graces the lobby.

As a 1993 Deseret News article reported, "breathtaking," "exquisite" and "inspiring" were breathed when the building was reopened. "Visitors to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building are likely to be touched with nostalgia immediately upon entrance to the lobby," it added. "Efforts were made by architects and artisans to remain as loyal as possible to the Hotel Utah's original interior design."

For a time, while remodeling work was carried out at the LDS Church's Family History Library, 35 N. West Temple, some of the library's resources were shifted to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and patrons roamed the stacks, doing genealogical research.

Photographs from the Deseret News archives, selected by Utah history expert Ronald Fox of North Salt Lake, document the story of the Hotel Utah. Besides those in the print editions, other photos are posted on the newspaper's Web site.

Sources for this article include recollections by several Utahns with long memories, articles in the Deseret News and the paper's Mormon Times, an article by Heidi Swinton in the Utah History Encyclopedia and history-oriented Internet sites.

Anyone with memories of the Hotel Utah is invited to share them on the Deseret News Internet site.