Wide granite streets face the Wasatch Range, and the courthouse SLC Punk! used for its Market Street scenes stands a few blocks from Temple Square.
What Downtown Salt Lake City looks like
Salt Lake City's street grid radiates from the southeast corner of , and 400 South sits four blocks south of the temple. The streets run 132 feet wide, eight rods across, with twenty feet on each side for sidewalks. Looking north on Main Street or State Street, the grid runs straight to the mountains rising behind the Church Office Building.
Temple Square sits behind its own perimeter wall at the center of the grid, the Salt Lake Temple's granite spires visible above it from several blocks away. A few blocks south on Main Street, the is faced in the same grey granite over five storeys, fluted columns lining its base. The on State Street is carved from grey Kyune sandstone under a clock tower.
Above the two and three storey storefronts, glass and stone office towers rise well past the roofline. The 's white fluted tower stands north of Temple Square against the mountains, and the 's glass face rises twenty four storeys at 299 South Main. Newer towers cluster around , where the historic ZCMI cast iron front is kept as a street level facade.
Older stone and terracotta storefronts still line Main Street, including the Eagle Emporium's white terracotta corner and the McIntyre Building's narrow stone front a block over. A UTA TRAX line runs at street level past a glass skybridge at City Creek Center, red and white cars crossing under the office towers.
Shot in Downtown Salt Lake City
SLC Punk! shot its downtown exteriors on the real streets it is set on. Heroin Bob's funeral was filmed at the . The production also used Market Street, the block beside the Frank E. Moss Courthouse, for several exterior scenes.
SLC Punk!
The cathedral and the courthouse block sit a few minutes apart on foot. Both played themselves for the film's own Salt Lake City setting, with no dressing to hide.
SLC Punk!, 1998
Cathedral of the Madeleine
Heroin Bob's funeral was filmed at the cathedral on South Temple, its twin sandstone spires and rose window facing the street. The scene plays out on the front steps, so the exterior a camera finds there today is the one the production used.
SLC Punk!, 1998
Market Street at the Frank E. Moss Courthouse
Several downtown exterior scenes were shot on Market Street, the block beside the granite Frank E. Moss Courthouse on Main Street. The courthouse's own corner, columns and carved inscription are what a camera finds on that block today.
What Downtown Salt Lake City can double for
Civic Center in Denver, Colorado
Denver's Civic Center holds the same mix of granite and limestone government buildings on an unusually wide grid, with the Rockies rising at the end of 16th Street the way the Wasatch Range does here. Denver's mountains sit further off, so a longer lens compresses them into frame the way Salt Lake's do on their own. Try searching granite government buildings now.
Stephen Avenue in Calgary, Alberta
Stephen Avenue's sandstone Victorian storefronts under newer office towers are close to the scale of Main Street here, and the Rockies are visible west down the avenue on a clear day. Calgary's streets run narrower than Salt Lake's, so a wide shot needs a longer lens to hold the same proportions. Try searching sandstone Victorian storefronts now.
Federal Triangle's limestone and granite government buildings share the same institutional scale as the courthouse and county building here, without needing a mountain backdrop in frame. Federal Triangle's streets curve and narrow where Salt Lake's stay on a strict grid, so tighter framing holds the illusion better than a wide shot. Try searching limestone government buildings now.
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