The old Hotel Utah has long, storied history in Salt Lake

For thousands of visitors throughout most of the 20th century, the Hotel Utah was an ultimate haven for guests, an elegant white wedding cake of a building with restaurants serving savory dishes, comfortable rooms and a great chandelier, plush lobby and mezzanine.

The 10-story structure at the northeast corner of Main and South Temple streets dates back to 1911, making it among the oldest surviving commercial buildings downtown.

As one of the world's grand hotels, it was a temporary home-away-from-home to U.S. presidents and movie stars, performers, Supreme Court justices and at least one astronaut. Three presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints lived there: Presidents David O. McKay, Spencer W. Kimball and Ezra Taft Benson.

Fond recollections remain in the hearts of many who stayed in the hotel, visited it or worked there.

In the 1960s, a young woman was first exposed to that strange pink soup, cold borscht made from beets with a dollop of sour cream, in the downstairs restaurant. Visiting dignitaries met reporters for interviews in that restaurant, including Russell Peterson, former governor of Delaware and then-chief of the National Audubon Society. In the restaurant, an aquarium large enough to house a pod of killer whales fascinated diners.

A rooftop restaurant offered spectacular views of downtown, Temple Square and the Salt Lake Valley, while concerts were performed downstairs.

Thousands of couples spent their honeymoon in the venerable inn. It was a place where young people worked and interviewed for jobs or dropped in just to lounge in the plush easy chairs and watch the bustle of visitors going in and out through the lobby's revolving glass doors. Waiting to check out, or just relaxing, guests read newspapers in the great entrance room. College students waited tables or washed dishes in the restaurants.

In years past, a circular counter served soup and salad to downtown office workers who popped in for lunch.

Throughout its long history, Hotel Utah hosted a plethora of formal banquets, with many an important speech delivered in the mezzanine meeting rooms.

Some Utahns, however, remember it as a bastion of segregation that allowed black employees but no black guests. Even famed perfomers in town to present programs to huge audiences were barred from the hotel's elevator. That racism was overcome decades ago and the hotel was fully integrated.

A remodeling project about 35 years ago added a ballroom and two new wings.

In 1987 it was decommissioned as a hotel and a great surge of renovating and updating began. Reopening in 1993, the structure began a new life as the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.