The towers that never got their steel above the ground
A billionaire's 26-acre dream stalled thirty paces from where you stand.
Last reviewed 11 September 2026 · A three-minute read · 1823–2024
The short answer
The Salt Lake Hardware Building, at 155 N 400 West in Salt Lake City, was built in 1909 as a hardware warehouse and converted to offices for Albertsons in 1996. It stands on the National Register of Historic Places, a block from the Triad Center, whose 1982 megaproject of towers, hotels and an ice rink was abandoned after just two phases.
Union School in Salt Lake City, Utah. The building was originally constructed for the Deaf Mute Institute around 1890, and then later used by the normal school at the University of Utah. After the university moved from its downtown campus t — 1903 · Shipler Commercial Photographers · Public domain
1982 to 1985
Khashoggi's towers stalled with the steel already delivered
Essam Khashoggi broke ground on the Triad Center on June 1, 1982. He was chairman of Triad America. The plan was enormous. Ten years of construction. Twenty-six acres of downtown Salt Lake City.
The project would include two 40-story office towers. Three 25-story residential towers. A hotel. A farmers' market. An ice rink. A park. All of it wrapped around the old Devereaux House a short walk from where you stand.
The first piece went up fast. A broadcast house for KSL radio and television opened on July 12, 1984. That was just two years after Khashoggi's shovel hit the dirt. A ten-story office building followed close behind. For a moment, the whole vision looked like it might actually rise.
Then it stalled. Ground broke for the real prize on June 7, 1985. It was a 35-story tower called 1 Triad Center. Crews dug the basement. Steel for the skyscraper arrived at the site. Then the money ran out. Construction stopped. The steel sat there, unused.
Within a year, Triad America canceled the rest of the project. The twin towers, the residential blocks, the ice rink and amphitheater never left the drawing board. What Khashoggi's decade-long plan left behind was three pieces: the broadcast house, the office building, and a parking structure. Had the tower gone up, it would have been Utah's tallest building. Instead the site sat unfinished for years. Its scaled-back buildings stood alone on ground cleared for something much bigger.
The steel for Utah's tallest tower arrived on site and was never touched again.
1893 to 1894
A church university opened downtown and closed within a year
The finished piece of the Triad Center still sits on ground that had already swallowed one grand plan. Brigham Young left money to build three church academies before he died in 1877. Two went up without trouble, in Provo and Logan. The Salt Lake school stalled for years over his estate and absent trustees.
It finally opened in 1893 as the Church University (Salt Lake City). It was meant to be the flagship school of the entire church education system. It shared its downtown building with the church's Deseret Museum. Within a single year, it closed. Church leaders decided to put their weight behind a school in Provo instead, the one that eventually grew into Brigham Young University. The building did not sit empty. It passed to the University of Utah, then to West High School, then became the longtime home of Horace Mann Junior High.
A few blocks away, a different kind of unfinished business ended in a killing.
August 1883
A mob lynched a Black army veteran at State and 100 South
At the corner of State Street and 100 South, a crowd lynched a Black US Army veteran named William Harvey. He had been accused of killing Salt Lake City's police chief, Andrew H. Burt. No trial reached a verdict. The mob decided the case before a court could.
Salt Lake City carried more than one story like this. Fourteen years earlier, a formerly enslaved man named Thomas Coleman was beaten and killed in the city, his death never resolved by prosecution either.
The city never tried William Harvey. A crowd did instead.
1857 to 1980s
Planners built their towers around a finished mansion instead
Long before Khashoggi's steel arrived, the ground near the Triad Center held a much older, finished building. William Staines built the Devereaux House in 1857. William Jennings expanded it decades later. He was later mayor of Salt Lake City. He turned it into a social center. It hosted the city's distinguished visitors. Joseph Angell Young, Brigham Young's son, owned it for a time.
By the 1980s the house had outlived its builders and its purpose. Khashoggi's planners drew their towers around it rather than through it, folding a finished 19th-century mansion into a plan that would itself never finish. The house survived. The towers meant to surround it did not.
1908 to now
A railroad depot became a hotel lobby generations later
Union Pacific built its Salt Lake City depot in 1908 and 1909, at the peak of American railroad travel. Trains once filled the tracks behind its street-facing façade. Rail traffic faded through the 20th century, and the building's original purpose faded with it.
The depot found new life late. In 2024 it reopened as the lobby and public rooms of a hotel, part of the larger Gateway retail district built up around it. A building raised for one era's certainty about the future ended up serving a use nobody who built it could have guessed.
The parking structure and the broadcast house still stand on ground cleared for towers that never rose.
Open this place in Strata
Every person, building and event in this story opens into its own dig in the app — and it will dig the ground you are standing on instead, wherever that is.
Sourced records, high and medium confidence. Era background is marked as such.
Modern
Triad Center, Salt Lake City
Planned as a sprawling complex that would have included Utah's tallest buildings, Triad Center was canceled after only two phases and now houses BYU-Pathway Worldwide and Ensign College.
The valley's first burials, beginning eighteen days after the 1847 pioneer arrival, filled a small cemetery on Block 49 that was built over and forgotten until construction workers found it again in 1986.
Set aside as a public square in the original 1847 survey of Salt Lake City, the block was used through the 1850s as a campground for newly arrived Mormon pioneers before becoming home to the University of Utah and West High School.
Built in 1857 for William Staines and later expanded by mayor William Jennings, the Devereaux House became the social center of Salt Lake City, hosting distinguished visitors, with Brigham Young's son Joseph Angell Young briefly its owner.
Between 1863 and 1867 at least 80 indigent or unidentified people were laid in blankets or cheap coffins in plot D-7-1 of Salt Lake City Cemetery, with no markers to say exactly where.
Founded in 1882 by the LDS Relief Society, Deseret Hospital gave pioneer women doctors including Romania B. Pratt, Ellis Reynolds Shipp, and Martha Hughes Cannon a place to practice medicine before it closed in 1893 for lack of money.
William Harvey, a 35-year-old Black army veteran, was hanged by a mob at State Street and 100 South after being accused of killing the city's police chief.
Built in 1908-09 during the peak of American railroad travel, the Union Pacific Depot was reborn in 2024 as the lobby and restaurants of the Asher Adams hotel.
Built in 1909 as a hardware warehouse, the building was converted to offices for Albertsons in 1996 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Workers digging under the Salt Lake Tabernacle for equipment storage in 2005 uncovered remains of Fremont people, who had lived in the valley long before Mormon settlement; unable to confirm a tribal affiliation, officials re-interred them in a concrete vault.
The ground held the Devereaux House, a mansion built in 1857 for William Staines and later expanded by mayor William Jennings into the social center of Salt Lake City, hosting the city's distinguished visitors.
What happened to the Triad Center project?
Essam Khashoggi broke ground in 1982 on a 26-acre plan for twin 40-story towers, three residential towers, a hotel, farmers' market and ice rink. A broadcast house and office building opened by 1985, but when a 35-story tower's steel arrived on site the money ran out, construction stopped, and the rest of the project was canceled.
When was the Salt Lake Hardware Building built?
It was built in 1909 as a hardware warehouse and later converted to offices for Albertsons in 1996, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
What was the Church University that opened nearby?
It was meant to be the flagship school of the LDS church education system, opening in 1893 in a downtown building shared with the Deseret Museum, but it closed within a year after church leaders backed a school in Provo instead.
What happened at State Street and 100 South in 1883?
A mob lynched William Harvey, a Black US Army veteran, after he was accused of killing Salt Lake City's police chief, Andrew H. Burt, with no trial reaching a verdict first.
What became of the Union Pacific depot near this area?
Built in 1908 and 1909 at the height of American railroad travel, the depot's rail purpose faded through the 20th century, and in 2024 it reopened as the lobby and public rooms of a hotel within the Gateway district.
