Trolley Square is located in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah. Converted into a festival marketplace in 1972, Trolley Square is the home of tenants unique to Salt Lake City. It was once the center of a Trolley System in Salt Lake City.
The trolley barns deteriorated for decades until being saved from demolition in 1972. A local family purchased the property, adapting it for retail use. Wally Wright was the architect for the project, still well known today for his work on the historic property. Wright’s vision for Trolley Square was inspired by Ghirardelli Square—the San Francisco chocolate factory refinished as a shopping center. It was Wright’s idea to remodel and restore the trolley barns into Utah’s first festival marketplace.
Wright not only preserved the barns, but he also incorporated parts of historical buildings, including facades of Salt Lake’s demolished Culmer and Dinwoody mansion and fragments of Tooele’s Anaconda Mine. The vertical supports for the shopping center’s banisters are curved like the cowcatchers of the early trolleys. “There are all kinds of historic treasures hidden here,” says Michael DeGroote.
Because of Wright’s thoughtful remodel, Trolley Square was more than a shopping center, attracting tourists. Its collection of boutiques, pubs, and entertainment centers prospered through the 1980s and 1990s. The first store to open at Trolley Square was the Trolley Gas Station. The Old Spaghetti Factory, The Pub, and Payne Anthony—still open today at Trolley Square—were some of the other original businesses. Additional early restaurants and retailers include: Chalk Garden, Wm. B. Woods, Haroon’s, The Ice Cream Store, Corn Dog Trolley, Trolley Games, The Granary Pizza Loft, Casa Del Sol, La Bathtique, and Trolley Theatres.
Trolley Square quickly became one of Utah’s most popular attractions—offering unique shopping, dining, and entertainment in a charming, historic atmosphere. Trolley Square was registered as a historic site by the state of Utah in 1973, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
