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SALT LAKE CITY — Eyesore, decrepit and urban blight are all words used to describe a century-old building that sits at 48 E. Broadway in Salt Lake City.
The hundreds of people who pass this structure every day might not know that behind the boarded up windows and doors, the bleak, false facades and street art stands a once-proud building with a tragic story that changed how the city fought fires.
Beside several stores, historian Steven Lutz says the 1908 building included a restaurant, a hotel and a nearly 2,000-seat theater decked out in ornate ivory and gold.
“There were two balconies,” said Lutz. “You can just imagine the excitement people used to have coming downtown — coming in from out of town.”
First known as the “Colonial Theater” and then “The Pantages,” Utahns watched some of Vaudeville’s top acts from those balconies, including the Marx Brothers, some 10 years before they hit it big.
By then, the theater was known as the Victory, and people filled its seats to watch motion pictures.
Lutz said the theater had the distinction of being the first in Utah to show a talking picture, “The Singing Fool,” starring Al Jolson.
Showing films meant adding a projection room to the lower balcony. And with the new addition came a whole bunch of weight.
“With a big tube type of amplifiers, the transformers, the heavy projectors and equipment — and a concrete floor they put under it to keep down the vibration — it was very heavy,” said Lutz. “The balcony was never designed to hold that sort of weight.”
Maybe it's a tribute in its own way — that it's never really ever been able to succeed as anything because of the history of the loss. But by the same token, it is really kind of sad that very few people walking by the area have any idea what happened there.
–Salt Lake Fire Captain Kyle Lavender
The balcony held the weight until May 19, 1943.
On that day, the Victory was two weeks into a major renovation.
That morning and just minutes into his shift, a man working high above the stage floor smelled what he thought was burning rubber.
Once he got down, he saw several seats on the main floor near the stage were in flames and he pulled the alarm.
Salt Lake fire crews got there within minutes, determined the fire was burning beneath the auditorium floor, and began their attack.
But what they could not see were hidden flames inside decorative columns built around wooden posts that supported the rear of the lower balconies.
Some 45 minutes after the first alarm, it collapsed.
“There were several Salt Lake City fire crews that were underneath the balcony and there were a half-dozen firemen that were trapped. Several of them were able to get out,” said Lutz.
Three men did not escape. The collapse killed Melvin Hatch, Harry Christenson and Theron Johnson.
While the remaining firemen got out, crews on surrounding rooftops and alleys fought to keep the fire from spreading to the neighboring Keith O’Brien and the Paris Millinery Co. stores. They won that battle.
The fire burst through the theater’s roof, and its thunderous collapse sent flames several stories skyward.
It took crews two hours to douse the Victory Theater fire.
“There was nothing like it before, nothing like it since,” said Lutz.
“It was an all hands fire,” said Salt Lake Fire Capt. Kyle Lavender. “Everybody from everywhere sent firefighters. The railroad sent firefighters, the military sent people they had in the camps, police officers helped fight the fire.”
Lavender’s grandfather, Grant Walker, was among the responders. A newspaper photographer captured Walker among a group of firefighters inside the theater’s foyer.
Lavender said on that morning, his grandfather was less than a year into his firefighting career. Twenty-four years later, Walker would become the city’s fire chief.
“I know it left a huge impression on my grandfather,” Lavender said. “He took a very proactive approach. He was obviously very personally touched by the failures of the fire.”
Personally touched, adds Lavender, because his brother-in-law, Theron Johnson, was among the firefighters killed when the balcony came down.
Lavender said his grandfather and great-uncle were working 24 hours on, 24 hours off.
“Vacation was almost non-existent. So they were very overworked, very inexperienced. A lot of new firefighters, not a lot of leadership because of the war,” Lutz said.
Lutz says a political firestorm raged in the aftermath of the fire.
The city commission blamed the firemen’s deaths on “negligence” of their superior officers at the scene.
Mayor Ab Jenkins strongly disagreed and brought in an independent investigator from the West Coast, who Lutz said reached a similar conclusion the fire department did in its own internal investigation.
“They determined nobody could have known that this was going to happen,” Lutz said.
But the damage was done.
Though he was on the scene for only about nine minutes when the balcony collapsed, Lutz said Salt Lake City Fire Chief LaVere Hanson took the blame.
“He [Hanson] was demoted, had a heart attack shortly after that from the stress of everything,” said Lutz. “He felt terribly about it, obviously, to lose his men. He retired shortly after that.”
But Lutz — a former firefighter — says good changes came from the fire.
One was stronger building codes and stronger enforcement of those codes. And a fire department woefully short in firefighters and training since the start of World War II got support from the city.
“They had to give them the tools they needed,” Lutz said. “They had to give them the manpower they needed to do the job. They didn’t have that.”
Another thing the fire department didn’t have, according to Lutz, was a good command structure.
“People were sort of freelancing. They were doing things on their own, not necessarily following orders,” said Lutz.
After the fire, the department added two battalion chiefs. Previous to the fire, there had only been one.
Today, adds Lavender, the agency “has very good training, command and presence.” Lavender calls it a watershed event in the agency’s history.
“I think we learned a lot from this event,” said Lavender.
As for building itself, the theater was demolished that year.
Its footprint and crumbling brick foyer look much the same as it did 70 years ago, minus the graffiti.
The restaurant, stores and hotel in front have long been boarded up and fenced off in hopes of keeping squatters out.
Lutz calls it a tragedy.
“Beneath all this mess here,” he said, “is a beautiful building.”
“Maybe it’s a tribute in its own way — that it’s never really ever been able to succeed as anything because of the history of the loss,” said Lavender. “But by the same token, it is really kind of sad that very few people walking by the area have any idea what happened there.”
