Salt Lake City Public Library system

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints oversaw many of the libraries in early Salt Lake City and the rest of the Utah Territory, founded in 1850.

By 1891, the two organizations had acquired a stock of over 10,000 books, but lack of funding forced the two to donate their collections to the newly formed Pioneer Library Association.

[3] By 1898, another group of women called the Ladies Literary Society had successfully promoted a bill in the territorial legislature giving a levy on property tax to public libraries in the state.

Its temporary location was on the top floor of the Salt Lake City and County Building, and the collection consisted mainly of a stockpile of 11,910 books donated by the Pioneer Library Association.

Again the Ladies Literary Society helped out by persuading the mining millionaire John Quackenbos Packard to donate land and money for a new location.

Ground broke at 200 East 500 South (on the same block as the 1964 library) in October 2000, and construction was completed on February 8, 2003.