When I lived in the 9th & 9th neighborhood during the pandemic, behind
the Dolcetti
I mentioned yesterday, I walked past the Tower Theatre nearly every day. The marquee stayed dark, the brickwork grew more weathered, and the whole building held that peculiar stillness the city carried in 2020. Even so, the corner near Liberty Park still felt like a point where Salt Lake history pooled.
Revolution 9th & 9th
900 South and 900 East — known locally as “9th & 9th” — grew out of early streetcar suburbs and farmland into one of Salt Lake’s most walkable residential districts. Much of the surrounding housing stock dates from before 1940, with a mix of Victorian, Tudor, Prairie, and Craftsman homes.
The business district along 900 South developed into a cluster of independent shops, restaurants, and cafés — what some writers once described as an “anti-mall.” The roundabout at 900 S and 1100 E is home to Out of the Blue, a 23-foot humpback whale sculpture that became a neighborhood landmark almost overnight.
The Tower Theatre
The Tower Theatre opened around January 1928 at 876 E 900 S, one of the earliest purpose-built neighborhood cinemas in the valley. It originally featured two small masonry towers on either side of the entrance — a facade modeled loosely on fortress architecture, possibly even the Tower of London according to early promotional descriptions.
By the 1950s, the towers and much of that ornate facade were removed or covered during mid-century “modernization” efforts; Carter Williams at
KSL
says: “Its current facade dates back to the 1950s, when the building underwent a major renovation to keep up with the industry.” Over its long life the Tower has been a single-screen movie house, an art-house venue, and eventually a key site for the Salt Lake Film Society, which took over operations in the early 2000s. It is one of the oldest cinema spaces in Salt Lake City still intended for film exhibition, even as renovation plans continue to move through approvals.
999 Magic
When I lived in that apartment during the pandemic, one of the few social things that never really stopped was the 999 bike ride — this loose, late-night Thursday swarm of cyclists that always managed to gather at 9th & 9th no matter how strange the world felt.
It was this oddly steady pulse of life in a year when almost everything else had shut down. We’d drift downtown, sliding through empty parking garages and echoing stairwells, the whole group lit by bike lights and someone’s portable speaker bouncing around the concrete. It was loose and a little chaotic, but it was one of the few things that made the city feel alive.
The Tower as a Symbol
In tarot, The Tower card (XVI) represents rupture — structures breaking apart, assumptions falling away, and the moment when something old can no longer support what has been built on top of it. The actual Tower Theatre carries a milder, architectural version of that symbolism: built with confidence and ornament, stripped of its towers mid-century, and now in the process of another reinvention.
The neighborhood around it has shifted too, from a quiet streetcar corridor to a lively strip of shops, galleries, filmgoers, festivals, and public art. The Tower’s name, once literal, now feels symbolic in a different way: a reminder that Salt Lake City’s cultural spaces don’t stay static — sometimes they erode, sometimes they’re restored, sometimes they return as something new.