SALT LAKE CITY — If you’ve ever searched through old Utah buildings or skimmed through Utah newspapers from the 19th century, there’s a chance you probably noticed businesses that have since disappeared from Utah.

Some of these businesses lasted as long as 100 years but just were unable to keep up with times. Nevertheless, many of these businesses still played important roles in the everyday lives of those living in Utah’s early cities.

These businesses serviced residents with various things such as groceries, clothing and manufacturing and much more.

Here are some of the bigger businesses that once played an important role in Utah that have since vanished.

Auerbach’s

The story of Auerbach’s, one of two department store that once held an important place in Salt Lake business, began when Frederick, Samuel and Theodore Auerbach immigrated to the U.S. from Prussia in the 1850s, according to an article by Jack Goodman for “The Peoples of Utah” chronicling the famous Jewish settlers in Utah.

The Auerbach brothers opened tent and wood shack stores in California during a gold rush in 1859 and later in Nevada before Frederick set his sights on Salt Lake City in 1864. He received an agreement from Brigham Young, which allowed him to open “The People’s Store” and sell the merchandise he brought along with him. Similar stores were set up in Ogden and Wyoming, according to Goodman.

Goodman notes the store had immediate success until it was rivaled by the creation of ZCMI, a department store which was owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in 1868. For a brief time, Goodman said the Auerbachs and other non-LDS business owners struggled as a part of a short-lived “ideological-economic war” with a predominantly LDS territory.

Nevertheless, Auerbach’s survived and eventually expanded to a location on State Street and 300 South. A store directory detailed how vast the department store was. Shoppers could find bargain clothing all the way to sporting goods and everything in between from the basement to the fifth floor of the building.

It lasted there until the business closed in 1979. While the business no longer exists, it was clear how much of an impact Frederick Auerbach meant to Utah. A notice of his death was reported in a Sept. 2, 1896 edition of the Deseret News, where it stated he died suddenly while on a trip to New York City.

“The news of the death of Frederick H. Auerbach comes as a shock to the people of this State, who realize a severe loss in the sudden taking away of one of the foremost men among them,” the newspaper wrote. “For over 30 years, Mr. Auerbach has been a well-known merchant in this state, and during the entire time his name has been a synonym for business capacity and honor.”

ZCMI

While Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI) no longer exists, the facade of the original building still stands in its same place to this day as the centerpiece of City Creek in downtown Salt Lake.

Founded by Brigham Young in 1868, ZCMI was marketed much like Auerbach’s as “The People’s Store” when it opened because it practically was.

Young had gathered business and community leaders to plan a community-owned merchandising system to sell at a low-cost store, which the profits would be “divided among the people at large,” wrote Martha Bradley for “Utah History Encyclopedia.”

It immediately became a go-to department store for those living in Utah and outside it. As noted by Bradley, the department store garnered more than $1.25 million in sales in its first year. In comparison, Goodman points out some of its competitors slipped from $60,000 per month in sales to $5,000 per month after ZCMI opened.

It sold clothing, wagons, all sorts of machinery and by 1870, the store manufactured 83,000 pairs of boots and shoes, Bradley wrote. ZCMI went on to expand in the 1960s to other areas in the state, opening branches at various malls in Salt Lake and Utah counties, as well as locations in Logan and Ogden.

The business, however, met its demise in 1999, when it was sold off Meier & Frank, a subsidiary of The May Company, which later became Macy’s. The only change to the heading on the building facade is the update to the time it existed, 1868 to 1999.

Walker Brothers Bank

The Walker brothers, Samuel, Joseph, David and Matthew, came to U.S. in 1850 and later to Utah in 1852 after their family converted to the LDS Church. In 1859, after getting into the merchandising industry, the opened their first store, Joseph R. Walker and Bros., based in Fairfield, according to Brian Hahn in an article for Utah History Encyclopedia.

They kept gold and other valuables in a banking section of the store, where Matthew, 14 at the time, became the business’s first teller, Hahn noted. An advertisement in a December 1860 edition of the Deseret News notes they sold everything from clothing to groceries and gold jewelry.

However, as business picked up, acquiring assets from Camp Floyd in 1861 to increase merchandise stock, a rift began to form between the brothers and Brigham Young, including over the LDS Church’s 10 percent tithing. The feud led to the brothers requesting to leave the faith and getting excommunicated, Hahn wrote. Young also encouraged LDS members to avoid the brothers’ business.

The business survived and remained in Utah, as the brothers focused more on the banking and mining businesses. By 1885, it became Union National Bank of Salt Lake City and later Walker Brothers Bank in 1903 and helped finance Utah and Idaho’s sugar industry.

The last of the brothers, Matthew, died in 1916 but the bank remained in existence led by Matthew’s son-in-law, John Wallace. In 1956, Wallace oversaw the bank get purchased by TransAmerica in 1956 and the name Walker Brothers Bank later switched to First Interstate Bank in 1981.

Much like how the ZCMI facade remains intact, the old Walker Brothers Bank building stands out in Salt Lake’s skyline with the Walker Center, which opened in 1912.

Solomon Brothers

Alfred Solomon was born in England and began in the shoemaking trade under the tutelage of his father when he was just 13 years old. Five years later, he joined the LDS church and, in 1857, began making his near six-month trek to Utah, according to Orson Ferguson Whitney in his book “History of Utah.”

Solomon did everything from serving as an officer to being an artilleryman in a militia to being one of the original Salt Lake Fire Department members until he and his brothers, William and James, formed a partnership manufacturing boots and shoes in 1870.

The company sold its shoes wholesale to ZCMI before ZCMI began to manufacture its own shoes, so Solomon Brothers began selling retail. The business lasted into the 20th century before ending.

Alfred Solomon died in 1921, but wasn’t just a shoemaker. He was elected Salt Lake’s marshal and police chief in 1896 to 1900, according to a notice of his death in an April 18, 1921 edition of the Deseret News.

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