Personal Blog 2- Trolley Square

Trolley Square is a part of downtown Salt Lake City that most native Utahns would point to as one of the most significant areas in the city. Trolley Square has a long and interesting history. When it was first built in 1908, it was designed as just a few buildings meant to house streetcars. This area quickly became a center of business however, as many major trolley and train lines ran right through it. In 1972 the two-story shopping center that most people now associate with being the center of Trolley Square was built, and filled with small businesses. The original intention of the builders was surely to attract the many people passing through the square in their travels to other places downtown. For awhile Trolley Square was fairly popular, although limited because of architectural designs which I will discuss in a moment. It was a great blow to the historic building however when it became the location for a stain on Utah’s history as five people were murdered there by an armed gunman in the famous Trolley Square shootings. After this event, business in the area drastically decreased, likely due to the fear that the event had caused among consumers. In the past few years it seems that business has begun to pick up, but Trolley Square seems to have lost any luck it may once have had in the area of economics. Just as memories of the shootings at the square had begun to fade away, the economic recession hit, making business even scarcer for any shopping center. These hard times have had a drastic impact on Trolley Square, as one can easily see when wandering through it today. Many of the buildings are open and available for lease, empty because the previous tenants were not able to attract enough business to remain there. The center itself is often empty also, dotted with only a few people wandering among the shops.

The structure of the Trolley Square itself was quite visually appealing when it was first built, although construction and renovation has begun to modify some of its beautiful architecture now. There are many large windows that look into the center of the shopping structure, which is very spaciously and attractively designed. The inside is characterized with fountains, thin balconies overlooking the lower levels, and long winding hallways that lead from one store to the next. Outside the main shopping center, it is quite nicely decorated also. Trees, lights, and more fountains surround the entrance to the building. A couple of old trolley squares once existed in the parking lot which had been converted into bars or small shops, although some have been taken away now. There is also of course the well known Trolley Square water tower, the symbol that the center is most known for. It is large and red and marks out the location of the square to visitors. At one point it was used to forecast the predicted weather for shoppers, with flashing blue and red lights meant to convey messages about the severity of the weather, although now it simply serves as a visual symbol for the square. One last prominent feature of Trolley Square is the sky bridge, a glass bridge which stretches from one of the center’s major parking lots, over a major street- 600 south, to the top floor of the square. In the center of the bridge are lights that create the image of a trolley car that can be seen by passersby on the street or in cars.

It is clear to most people that pay attention to the square that it is quite elegantly designed. There was one time that I visited when photographers were shooting a scene with a model in the beautiful square entryway. The effort that the architects put in to make the structure so appealing however comes at a price, one that has made it so that Trolley Square has always had to struggle to attract consumers. The issue with the design of the Trolley Square shopping center comes in the size of the individual stores. When the square was originally created, a large number of smaller sized rooms were made to allow for a large number of different kinds of businesses. Beautiful walkways and balconies and little nooks were then created between the stores to enhance the appearance of the center. The problem the square has now run into however is that, particularly in modern times, the major attraction for customers to shopping districts is the large retail stores like Macy’s or Target. These very large, often multi-story stores are built into shopping centers first. They then become surrounded with smaller shops, which receive business by consumers happening by whose original intention is most often to visit the larger stores. Big stores that carry large amounts of products like these however cannot fit into Trolley Square. There is simply no room for them without tearing apart large amounts of the carefully designed architecture of the building.

What has formed in Trolley Square as a result of this problem is a very unique kind of large shopping center that one does not often see. Instead of large retail stores and little shops with smaller things at cheap prices, the Trolley Square shopping center has become a type of very specialized high-end boutique center. The shops that make up the center are small, but all cater to a very specific type of customer, and create products that are difficult to find in the common low priced discount stores. Most of the items in these stores are very well made, but are also very expensive. Some of the types of boutiques that fill the shopping center are shops like “American Apparel” which sells dance clothing like leotards, skirts, or special dance shoes, “Pottery Barn” which contains high end home furnishings, and “Williams Sonoma” which is known for its expensive but high quality kitchenware.

Recent construction at Trolley Square is changing the design of the building in some ways. Space is being made to put in a Whole Foods store which many hope will bring in new business to the square. It is an interesting speculation to wonder what will happen to the square over time. It would be a shame to destroy the beautiful design of the shopping center in order to make way for large businesses, but might be necessary to keep Trolley Square alive. On the other hand, it has survived for a great deal of time with the small and expensive boutiques that characterize it. The addition of new big retail stores or of smaller discount stores might help bring in customers, but it might drive out the quite expensive high end boutiques if they are no longer able to compete for business. The next few years will likely determine what will occur with Trolley Square. For now it is a building in transition, part of it remaining the historic and beautiful building that it once was for decades, part of it reforming to attempt to bring in a new generation of consumers accustomed to large name-brand stores.