2014

We listed the home of the 25th mayor of Salt Lake City (1944-1956), Earl J. Glade. He was elected to run our capitol city a year before WWII ended. In researching the man I found that he was born in Odgen and worked as a teenager in the mines in Park City as a ‘mud-hen’. He went to college back east, became head of the business program at BYU and subsequently a professor at the U of U. What I find fascinating is that the home in Sugar House is where the very first KSL radio broadcasts were sent from, in an office on the main floor of the home. The telltale evidence is an outlet in the floor about 5″ X 5″ in size and old photos of him in the main floor bedroom/office/broadcasting studio.

The home was built on land deeded to Brigham Young in the 1860’s from the U.S. Government and was turned over in his will to “all the surviving mothers and children of 21 years of age”. According to the web, at the time of his death he had been married or been sealed to 56 women. The 160 acres just south of the now I-15 overpass was cut up and sold off over the years to famous names around Sugar House like William McIntyre, LeGrand Young and Henry Dinwoody. None of the owners back then had any idea that within a few blocks of this land there would later be a Belgian waffle house, dollar movies, brew pups, a state liquor store and a bike lane east to the Shoreline trail and north to the University of Utah and neighboring Westminster College. KSL was originally known as KZN and was the radio arm of the Deseret News paper. The first broadcast was on May 6th, 1922 and was a fireside chat with the LDS Church president Heber Grant. Earl J. Glade joined the station in 1925 and ran operations for 14 years. He was instrumental in creating ‘Music and the Spoken Word’, the longest running radio program on the U.S. airwaves.

Who listens to the radio any more unless it’s Satellite Radio in your car or Pandora on your phone? Back in the 1920’s radio was the only entertainment and news medium in the world apart from newspapers, telegraph and live stage shows. According to early radio history a literal ‘broadcasting boom swept the United States in 1922 and within a year there were 500 stations coast to coast. Many thought it a passing fad and the early radio receivers were too expensive for the average person to afford. Plus, many of the radio consoles were the size of small refrigerators. Now just in Utah we have over 100 radio stations and an unknown amount of pod casts.

My how times have changed since the 1920’s although many of the issues of the capitol city remain the same. Two of Mayor Glade’s biggest campaign issues and projects that he worked on while in office were 1) to get more parking in downtown Salt Lake City and 2) to encourage developers to build more affordable housing.