Salt Lake Engineering Works--Bogue Supply Company Building

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OMB No. 1024-0018, NFS Form United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section No. 8 Page 1 Salt Lake Engineering Works/Bogue Supply Company Building Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, UT Narrative Statement of Significance The Salt Lake Engineering Works/Bogue Supply Company Building, built circa 1904, historically significant under criteria A and C. Under Criterion A it is significant for its long association with the twentieth century development of Salt Lake City's railroad and industrial district. It is located in an area of Salt Lake City, which was, in the early settlement period, a neighborhood of residences and small family farms. After the coming of the railroad in 1870, the area was the preferred location for large-scale industries that wanted to access the railroad and expand their manufacturing capacities. The building is also architecturally significant under Criterion C as the shop/warehouse portion of a large complex of buildings constructed for the Salt Lake Engineering Works beginning in 1902. The building is significant primarily because of its unique structural components: turn-of-the-century lightweight steel in a framework of columns, beams, and trusses. The brick walls are decorated with distinctive brick corbelling and pilasters, but have little load-bearing function. Though the building is only one of many early industrial buildings on Salt Lake City's west side, contemporaneous warehouses were constructed of heavy timbers and masonry, and more rarely used iron and steel. The building was sold to the Bogue Supply Company in 1932. Because of the words "Bogue Supply Building" prominently painted on the north elevation (circa 1940s), the building is commonly referred to as the Bogue Building. The building is Salt Lake City's earliest known example of an industrial warehouse entirely supported on a steel frame. The building was rehabilitated in 2002 and is a contributing resource in one of Salt Lake's historic west side neighborhoods. History of the Salt Lake Engineering Works/Bogue Supply Company Building: As the political capital of the State of Utah and the social and economic center for the Intermountain West, Salt Lake City has been one of the nation's major regional centers since its establishment in 1847. The discovery of valuable ores in the canyons near Salt Lake in the early 1860s and the arrival of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, secured the city's place as a major center of mining, smelting and refining. As a result the number of foundries in the city quadrupled by the turn of the nineteenth century. Most of these facilities were located along an industrial corridor along either side of the numerous rail lines between 300 West and 500 West. On December 4, 1903, the Salt Lake Engineering Works purchased a large portion of the Coates & Corums Subdivision between 400 South and Pacific Avenue, at 700 West. 1 Apparently the company had been interested 1 These streets were originally known as Fourth South, Rio Grande Avenue, and Sixth West respectively. The Coates and Corums Subdivision was platted in 1891. Only two of the dozens of Victorian cottages built in neighborhood survived twentieth-century industrial expansion and the construction of Interstate 15.