Downtown Salt Lake City by the Mormon pioneers. Downtown Salt Lake began to form in 1847 when Brigham Young chose the site of the Salt Lake Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, forming the core of the settlement. Temple Square became the center of the grid system, bounded by South Temple, West Temple, North Temple, and East Temple Streets. Streets are named according to their distance and direction from the southeast corner of Temple Square; for example 200 West is two blocks west of this meridian, while 400 South is four blocks south. East Temple was popularly known as Main
Downtown Salt Lake City crowd, many of the Main Street businesses were saloons, earning the street the nickname "Whiskey Street". For many years, there existed a political and cultural divide in Salt Lake City. Mormons would mostly shop and congregate around the Salt Lake Temple, the Gardens at Temple Square and ZCMI on the north-end of Main Street, and those who were not members of the church, who were mostly prospectors in the early days, would stay south of the predominantly Mormon area. Originally, the business district extended along the west side of Main between South Temple and 100 South. By the 1880s, the