dooly building

(Dooly building on the right shown in context with Hotel Ontario to the left. The Inland Architect and News Record, Nov 1891, Vol XVIII, No. 4)

The Dooly building (often called Dooly block) is one of the most significant architectural buildings built in Salt Lake. The building was designed by the Chicago firm of Adler & Sullivan, of which Louis Sullivan, of skyscraper fame, was the designer. This building design played a role in the development of the skyscraper. “And in the extruded arches of the 1890 Dooly Block, Sullivan recessed the spandrels, taking the piers almost straight from top to bottom. From here to the skyscraper was not a giant step.” (Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work, page 292) Designed in beautiful context with the Ontario Hotel, the two were to rise together. Fortunately, when the Ontario Hotel never materialized past the foundations, the Dooly building was actually completed in 1892. Located on 200 South and West Temple, the building met an early and unfortunate demolition in 1965.

Richard Nickel, a photographer from Chicago fought valiantly to save the Dooly building, but ultimately failed. He was, however, successful in documenting both this building and the Ontario hotel foundations in photographs which are in possession of 'The Richard Nickel Committee and Archive'. (They all Fall Down, page 85) As of today, I have been unable to obtain access to any of these images.

“Nickel fought any way he could. To Salt Lake City mayor J. Bracken Lee, Nickel protested plans to tear down Sullivan’s Dooly Block. ‘How many buildings of equal architectural merit do you have in Salt Lake City? Instead of being proud of this building, you ignore it. Instead of offering tax relief to the owner, or cleaning the neighborhood up, the city government is silent.’” (They All Fall Down, page 134)

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. First we need to look at the building from construction through to completion and then to demolition. The book 'Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work' compares the Dooly building design to that of the landmark Wainwright Building of St. Louis. “Wainwright an almost exact contemporary of the Dooly Block in Salt Lake City, in many ways a similar edifice, which Adler & Sullivan completed in December.” (page 286)

Presented below is a newspaper timeline of the Dooly building from the Salt Lake Tribune. From it we learn that Utah architect, Richard Kletting who designed the State Capitol, drew the construction documents for the building after it was designed by Adler & Sullivan. We also learn that the building will be home to a bank, post office, Alta club w/restaurant and fireplace, two elevators, and many offices. If only the images of the building weren't black and white, we would be able to see the beautiful red sandstone used, similar to that of the Wainwright building.


(Special Collections Department, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah)

NEWSPAPER TIMELINE

The Dooly Building
Mr. Dooly expects to break ground for the new post office in a day or two. He is waiting for the completion of the plans of the street grade. (Salt Lake Tribune 13 Aug 1890)

R. Kletting has just completed the drawings and working plans for the Dooly building on Second South and West Temple streets to the order of Adler & Sullivan, the Chicago architects, who deputed him to do this work. The post office and the bank will be on the first floor, while the other five floors will be given over for business offices, about 180 in all. The contract will be given out in a short time. (Salt Lake Tribune 14 Sep 1890)

The Dooly Excavation
Excavating for the Dooly building will be finished within a few days. Work on the foundation has already begun. (Salt Lake Tribune 01 Oct 1890)

Photographs of the Dooly building have been made. They show that it will be a decided ornament to the town. (Salt Lake Tribune 07 Oct 1890)

The bids for the construction of the Dooly Block were opened yesterday. The Probst Construction Company are said to be the successful bidders. (Salt Lake Tribune 16 Apr 1891)

The contract was signed yesterday for the completion of the Dooly building with the Probst Construction Company to be completed in ten months. The building is to be of Diamond Creek stone, six stories high, two elevators and with all modern improvements. (Salt Lake Tribune 21 Apr 1891)

Work is progressing rapidly on the Dooly building. The stone columns for the first story are up and the second-joists will be down in a few days. The big steam derricks are constantly at work, the men are busy and the building will be pushed until []. (Salt Lake Tribune 17 Jun 1891)


(Construction of Dooly Building with Architects and Engineers. Used by permission, Utah State Historical Society, All Rights Reserved. Image #725.2/29963)

The Dooly Block
It is understood that the Papst Construction Company of Chicago have secured the job of finishing up the four lower stories of the Dooly building. The two upper stories will be contracted for later on. The building is the most pretentious in the Territory, and will cost $250,000 when ready for occupancy. (Salt Lake Tribune 23 Sep 1891)

The sixth story of the Dooly building is now going up, so that before snow flies everything will be under cover. (Salt Lake Tribune 30 Sep 1891)

The big boilers for the Dooly block have been lowered into the basement and they will soon have the furnaces finished around them and be ready for heating the building. Because of the cold weather, work of completing this building goes on much slower than the owners like it to do. (Salt Lake Tribune 24 Jan 1892)

The steam plant in the Dooly building was tested yesterday, so that steam can be turned on most any time this week. (Salt Lake Tribune 14 Feb 1892)

THE GREAT DOOLY BUILDING
It Is Approaching Completion and Is a Very Fine Structure
The great Dooly building is approaching completion, and citizens who have been over it speak highly of the interior arrangements. There are some 185 rooms in the building, with forty-five on the fourth floor and twenty-three on the upper floor where the Alta Club is to have its new home. A noticeable feature of the structure is that all of it is well lighted, including the ground floor apartments, and the rear rooms especially are commodious and well arranged. The Alta Club will have one of the finest dining-rooms in the West when the quarters are ready, one of the features being a great fire place, of the kind now so popular among the clubs of the country. The fittings of the building generally are of oiled oak, with high wainscotings and massive doors, though in part of the lower story marble will be used. The building is equipped with the latest improved elevators, and is steam heated. The plaster work is rough, and in tints of red and drab. When the building is completed it will be one of the finest structures in the entire West. (Salt Lake Tribune 06 May 1892)


(Special Collections Department, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah)

The Dooly building contractor is now laying the iron rods and beams in front of the building so that the sidewalk may be laid at an early date. (Salt Lake Tribune 10 May 1892)

The vestibule of the Dooly building is about finished, and it is a grand affair with its handsome marble tiling floor, marble wainscotting, double sets of doors and the two elevators. (Salt Lake Tribune 03 Jun 1892)

There is much activity around the Dooly building where many lawyers and business people are moving into the building. (Salt Lake Tribune 05 Jun 1892)

It is stated that the elevators in the Dooly building will be in running order early next week. The painter is getting in his work at the new building now, and all the office doors are being handsomely lettered. (Salt Lake Tribune 17 Jun 1892)

The elevators in the Dooly building are making trial trips now. (Salt Lake Tribune 26 Jun 1892)

A number of persons with plenty of leisure time rode in the elevator at the Dooly building yesterday, but in a short time they will both be in first-class shape and will make quick trips. (Salt Lake Tribune 29 Jun 1892)


The building was included in the Historic American Buildings Survey which provides us valuable information. The two images below are the only I was able to find showing the back of the building. This gives us some clues as to the shape of the building plan. Two jogs are shown, giving essentially a 'W' shaped plan. This was most likely done to provide natural daylight to as much of the building interior spaces as possible.


(Demolition of Dooly Building, Jan-Feb 1965. Used by permission, Utah State Historical Society, All Rights Reserved. Dooly/Riser Photo Collection, Mss C 1532)


(Demolition of Dooly Building, Jan-Feb 1965. Used by permission, Utah State Historical Society, All Rights Reserved. Dooly/Riser Photo Collection, Mss C 1532)

Finally we have a 'funeral wake' article from the Salt Lake Tribune on its demolition, published on 30 Aug 1964:

Knell Tolls for Illustrious Dooly Building
By Robert H. Woody
Tribune Staff Writer

Hang down your head, Tom Dooly
Hang down your head and cry
Hang down your head, Tom Dooly
Cause your building’s gone bye and bye.

"A good building merits something more than the routine account when the death knell is sounded. Let’s just call this a wake for the Dooly Building at 109 W. 2nd South.

The designer was Louis Sullivan, famed Chicago architect. His credo – 'Form follows function' bent the direction of American architecture. His pioneering in use of steel for structural systems gave birth to the skyscraper. His apprentice, Frank Lloyd Wright, carried his own architectural torch in the world.

Mr. Sullivan came West in 1890 as the reputation of his firm was spreading nationwide. He had four western buildings on the boards: the Dooly Building – or Dooly Block as it was called; the Hotel Ontario which was to have been built just south of the Dooly Bldg., and then Opera House Blocks in Pueblo and Seattle.

The Hotel was never completed. It is said that Sullivan designed the lower part, which is now part of the Terminal Building. The top was someone else’s idea. Whatever, it also will be razed with the Dooly Building.

The building was named for John E. Dooly, one of the original owners and developers, a banker and livestock and real estate figure.

Its husky foundations were laid pyramid fashion. Red Butte sandstone cut from the hills behind Ft. Douglas was used for the façade. Inside a structural steel skeleton – a first for its time – supported the wooden floor joists. Sandwiched between the lower floors was cinder aggregate to serve both as fire protection and as sound barrier.

The Sullivan touch was throughout the building. Pier and lintel, and Roman arch and richly decorated cornice were uniquely his, whether in Chicago or Salt Lake City. Each column was hollow. This was for a flue for the potbellied stoves that kept tenants warm against January’s winds.

Distinguished tenants included the U.S. post office (on the bottom floor) and Alta Club (on the sixth floor).

The Architects who created the II Century Plan for downtown Salt Lake City put the building on their list as one worthy of preservation. Credit to the designer: It’s a sound building yet. But is it a great building? Will there be pickets bearing 'Save the Dooly Building' signs? It’s doubtful. It’s a good building, but not the most distinguished of Sullivan’s works. The identity with Sullivan is its most redeeming value.

Owner R. Verne McCullough spent $87,000 putting in a new elevator five years ago and $22,000 in a new heating system two years ago. But tenancy had dropped markedly since the heyday. Operations loss now ran between $15,000 and $25,000 yearly, said Mr. McCullough. The building had to go.

It’s just one of those sad facts of life."


(Demolition. Used by permission, Utah State Historical Society, All Rights Reserved. Image #725.2/5476)

If only Robert Woody, author of that last Tribune article, could see what is standing on the block in its place today...


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Present-day view of site: Shilo Inn Hotel instead of Dooly Building

ontario hotel

(Perspective of Ontario Hotel. From The Inland Architect and News Record, Nov 1891, Vol XVIII, No. 4)

"The new Hotel Ontario is the talk of the town. There are a few doubting Thomases, but the solidity of the names in the list of the incorporators make of the scheme an assured success. There is great wealth behind these incorporators, and a hotel is to go up corner of West Temple and Pierpont streets that will be an ornament, an honor and a convenience to the entire west. The promoters aver that there is to be no fooling over this thing; they are in for keeps, and that building is going up as soon as arrangements can be made to start." (Salt Lake Tribune 26 Dec 1889)


(Perspective of Ontario Hotel. From Salt Lake Tribune 01 Jan 1891)

The Hotel Ontario
A View of the Finest Hostelry in the Mountains

It Will Be Six Stories High and Will Have Every Modern Convenience and Comfort – A Strong Company Putting It Up

"Salt Lake City has been wisely termed the Mecca of the West. Her unlimited resources, but proximity to the great lake, added to the endless attractions and uplifting efforts of her people to please, she has attained a position in the galaxy of modern and flourishing cities that permits of no secondary comparisons.

The perspective view of the Hotel Ontario – the illustration of the most costly and magnificent structure of the kind ever designed for these intermountain regions – will clearly show to the intelligent [] the great work the West Side Hotel Company have before them.

The plans were drawn by those skilled architects of Auditorium fame, Adler and Sullivan of Chicago. Mr. H. Probst, the well known builder of Chicago and Kansas City, has been given the contract to mold and mature the foundation to completion.

The summer of 1890, marked by the influx of immigration and the subsequent marvelous growth of the city and environs, proved conclusively to the minds of our enterprising citizens that our present hotel facilities, large as they were, were inadequate to meet the demands of the traveling public. A stock company wasn’t once organized, and the beautiful plat adjoining the Dooly block on the corner of West Temple and Second South streets was purchased for a good round []. The work of excavating for the foundation commenced during the month of September, and at this writing is nearly completed. The estimated cost of which is about 350,000, a princely sum, sufficient to build a creditable and worthy block, without draining its own coffer.

The superstructure or building proper will furnish work and food for a small army of men for the next eighteen months to come. Here is an undertaking that demands far more than a passing glance to give it the credit which the promoters so richly merit.

The block, when completed, will cover 251 feet of ground on Pierpont avenue and 183 feet frontage on West Temple street. The foundation is solidly built of red sandstone – taken from the inexhaustible quarries that are being mined in the neighboring mountains. The superstructure will undoubtedly be built mainly of Kyune stone – a handsome and durable building stone taken from the great quarries at Kyune, []. Mountains of this stone can be found there, and the supply is said to be sufficient to meet the demands of the West for generations. These quarries are owned and operated by a syndicate of Salt Lake capitalists; another star in the horizon of Salt Lake enterprise. The sanitary conditions of the building will be as perfect as human ingenuity can make them, and the sanitary ordinances of the city will be strictly complied with. The hotel will have its own apparatus for laundry work, and a splendidly equipped plant with [] for making its own electric light. A complete system of fire escapes will be put in, and a double service passenger elevator, manned by the ever festive boy, whose sole delight is in spinning miraculous tales of escapage and elevator decorum, will be at your service. The dining room will be on the first floor at the southwest corner of the block. The ceiling will be twenty five feet in height, ornamented by costly stucco work. The main parlor, ordinaries, promenades and dining room will be finished with the finest of hard wood enameled Bathrooms and closets will form a convenient feature of a majority of the rooms. A system of electric alarm bells, with both call and return wires will be in vogue, with speaking tubes in all the main apartments. The specifications call for 200[] Incandescent and twenty six are lamps.

The better part of three-quarters of a million of dollars will be expended before the hotel will be ready for occupancy, and suffice it to say that it will be the most elegant, costly and finest equipped hotel plant between Chicago and the Pacific Coast." (Salt Lake Tribune 01 Jan 1891)


(Perspective of Ontario Hotel, first version, 1890. From 'Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work', page 253)

“Another project in May 1890 was the $300,000 Ontario Hotel for Salt Lake City, which, like the Cold Storage Exchange, consisted of two parallel blocks, here six stories high and seven bays long, under a broadly eaved hip roof. The major axes were connected by four-story arcades with two floors of open galleries (later reduced to one) over a triple-arched entry (one door, two windows) at the street, reminiscent of an Italian Renaissance palazzo. The galleries continued into the main masses as slightly bowed balconies in each of three open arches (later filled in), rising from the third to the fifth floor. The long façade around the corner featured two broad oriels turning into open porches under the eaves, and a rectangular reception canopy stretching across the sidewalk. With its red stone base flowing up the corners as quoins (removed in the second version), then crossing under the attic sill to frame the lightly tinted façade, and with handsome enfoliated trim on oriels, galleries, and attic, the Ontario Hotel was another example of Sullivan’s increasing mastery of surface organization. Whether hotel, warehouse, religious edifice, or office block, he had learned by 1890 to treat each situation individually, to find a mode of expression suitable to the nature of the particular case, to the solution of the particular problem. The horizontal, elongated, and harmoniously integrated Ontario Hotel was, like several of his recent buildings, almost pure in form, with simple shapes elegantly handled. Sullivan could now state the essence of the project in richly embellished but fundamentally reductionist terms.” (page 252-254, 'Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work,' by Robert Twombly, Viking, New York, 1986)


Frank Lloyd Wright apprenticed under Louis Sullivan during the design of the Ontario Hotel. Although I have found no plan or elevation drawings, they were apparently drawn by Wright, under the direction of Sullivan. In his autobiography, Wright stated, “The Auditorium finished, soon other work came on – Pueblo Opera House (since down), Salt Lake City Hotel, foundations laid, but never built – one of the office tragedies. I worked hard on the plans with the firm.” (page 125, 'An Autobiography: Frank Lloyd Wright', Horizon Press, New York, 1977)

Construction stopped for unknown reasons after the foundations of the hotel were laid. The hole in the ground sat for many years, until finally in 1897, a proposal was made for a new railroad building to be built on the existing foundations.


(Elevation of Oregon Short Line Railroad Building, built on foundation of Ontario Hotel in 1897. From Salt Lake Tribune, 06 Mar 1897)

"When the Short Line officers were looking around for suitable headquarters, the three gentlemen named quietly decided to erect a building on the foundation and walls of the projected Ontario hotel on West Temple street, just at the rear of the Dooly Block. They made their plans and submitted the proposition to the officers of the road, offering to arrange the second floor according to the requirements of the railroad people, at a rental which was placed low enough to make it a desirable offer.

The lease was signed yesterday, with other contracts and Mr. Mackintosh stated last evening that the building contracts would be let immediately and work started as soon as the full set of plans were accepted.

SIZE OF THE BUILDING
The structure will be known as the Oregon Short Line Railroad building. For the present it will be two stories high, but so built that it can be added to as occasion demands. Its frontage on West Temple street will be 132 feet and its depth 135 feet. The building in its ground plan is like the letter E facing west, the area-ways affording light for offices in each wing. Downstairs the space will occupied by store rooms for commercial purposes, but the entire upper floor, reached by a stairway from the main entrance, will be given over to the general offices of the railroad." (Salt Lake Tribune 06 Mar 1897)

Present-day: Shilo Inn parking garage instead of Hotel Ontario

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