Salt Lake City Community Reinvestment Agency

More than a century ago, if you walked down Commercial Street after dark, you might hear tapping from the windows above.

Commercial Street was the center of Salt Lake City's red-light district. Women working in its brothels reportedly tapped on upper-story windows to attract the attention of men passing below.

At 165 Commercial Street, the ground floor housed the Leader Cigar Factory.

Upstairs was a brothel.

The building was constructed in 1893, and for more than two decades, women lived and worked in small rooms on the upper floors. Most of their names and stories have disappeared. The building hasn't.

When crews renovated the building in the 1990s, they peeled back layers of its past. They found nine layers of wallpaper, including elaborate Victorian patterns and deep red velvet. Behind boarded-up windows, they discovered old doors with individual locks that once opened from the upstairs rooms onto balconies overlooking Commercial Street.

By the early 1920s, Commercial Street had a new name: Regent Street. Decades later, the RDA helped transform Regent Street again as part of the Eccles Theater development, creating a new pedestrian corridor while incorporating pieces of the street's history into its art and design.

The brothels disappeared. The street changed. Most of the buildings from that era disappeared, too. But 165 Regent remains. A ghost of Commercial Street hiding in plain sight.

So the next time you're walking down Regent Street after dark, look up at those second-story windows.

And if you hear tapping from above...
Keep walking. 👻

Happy Halloween from the CRA. 🎃

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