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Show United States Department of the Interior National Park Service OMB No. 1024-0018, NPS Form National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section No. 8 Page 1 ZCMI General Warehouse Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, UT Narrative Statement of Significance The ZCMI General Warehouse, built in 1905 with a two-story brick addition built in 1926, is historically significant under Criterion A for its long association with the Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution, commonly known as ZCMI. Labeled "America's first department store" by most Utah historians, ZCMI was founded in 1868 by Brigham Young, and within a few years, spawned a regional system of local co-operatives. In Salt Lake City, the ZCMI department store was one of the most successful retail establishments in the city's first 150 years. The ZCMI General Warehouse provided a vital link between Salt Lake's railroad district and the ZCMI store on Main Street in the heart of the downtown business. The warehouse was also significant as a wholesale processing center for merchandise bound for ZCMI branches throughout the Great Basin and the Intermountain West. The warehouse reflects the twentieth-century development of Salt Lake City's railroad and warehouse district. The building is also significant under Criterion C as both a representative and an innovative warehouse. Though the building is one of many early industrial and warehouse buildings remaining on Salt Lake City's west side, it is one of only two known turn-of-the-twentieth-century industrial buildings to incorporate an interior dock for loading and unloading rail cars. The warehouse also features an innovative interior layout that facilitated the movement and storage of goods. The ZCMI General Warehouse is being nominated under the Salt Lake City Business District Multiple Resource Area context. The building will be rehabilitated as an adaptive reuse project in 2005-2006 and remains a contributing resource in one of Salt Lake's historic west side neighborhoods. History of ZCMI and the ZCMI General Warehouse: The Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution was organized in December 1868 under the direction of Brigham Young, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon Church). Since the initial settlement in 1847, the Mormon pioneers had lived for the most part as an isolated community. The discovery of valuable ores in the canyons near Salt Lake City in the early 1860s and the arrival of the transcontinental railroad were perceived as a threat to the peace and prosperity of the Mormon settlers. Despite a number of self-sufficiency polices, such as encouraging "home manufactures," the number of non-Mormon merchants grew. By the 1860s, most merchandizing was in the hands of non-Mormons because of the stigma attached to "profiteering Saints" and the inability of Mormon merchants to refuse credit or collect debt from fellow Mormons. Following the example of successful cooperatives in Brigham City and other settlements, Brigham Young and a group of church leaders organized the ZCMI in order "to bring goods here and sell them as low as they can possibly be sold and let the profits be divided with the people at large."4 o 3 Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1900, (Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1958, reprint 1993), 294-295. 4 Ibid, 299. |
