Today's checkouts the last for Salt Lake inn

The Inn at Temple Square has housed wedding-night romance, fed the likes of Gladys Knight and Angela Lansbury and given scores of people employment at a job they loved.

When the last guest checks out today, the inn will close forever.

After 75 years at 71 W. South Temple, the inn is set to be the first building demolished as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints makes way for City Creek Center, a mixed-use shopping, retail and office development aimed at revitalizing the blocks currently occupied by the languishing Crossroads Plaza and ZCMI Center.

The inn opened in 1931 as the Hotel Temple Square, but it wasn't until it was renovated 16 years ago and reopened as the Inn at Temple Square that it became popular as a "home away from home," said Neil Wilkinson, director of marketing for Temple Square Hospitality Corp., which runs the inn.

Prior to the renovation, the Hotel Temple Square was "kind of a hostel-hotel," with 200 small rooms that were "easy for a nice, quick stay," Wilkinson said. But the inn, converted into a more Victorian style with only 90 rooms, became more of an experience than just a place to stay.

"It's been a very popular place for a little getaway," he said. "A lot of guests like to go to the inn and feel at home there."

Among the reasons for the inn's popularity is its proximity to the LDS Church's Temple Square and the Salt Lake Temple there. Wilkinson himself regularly stayed at the inn with his wife on their wedding anniversaries, preferring one of the rooms with a view of the temple, where the couple was married 26 years ago.

Brandon Strong and his wife, Sonya, were also married in the Salt Lake Temple in September 2004, and they spent the first two nights of their honeymoon at the inn. The couple now live in Seoul, South Korea, where they teach English.

"Staying at the inn seemed like a nice touch, because it was so close" to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, where the couple had their wedding-night dinner, "and it had class," Brandon Strong wrote in a recent e-mail to the Deseret Morning News. "After dinner, we went on a carriage ride, which ended by taking us to the inn. It was a wonderful way to end a beautiful day."

But the inn isn't just loved by its guests. Dianne Jordison, who has worked at the inn's restaurant Passages for 16 years, planned to retire after clocking out for the last time Friday. "I can't see myself working anywhere else," she said.

Working at Passages, she has fed a variety of celebrities, including musicians Jon Bon Jovi and Gladys Knight and actors Angela Lansbury, John Ritter, Raquel Welch and Karl Malden, not to mention a host of ballet dancers, opera singers and others performing at nearby venues.