Real Estate in The Avenues

The Avenues sits on the lower slopes of the Wasatch Mountains, just northeast of downtown Salt Lake City, with South Temple Street marking its southern edge and Capitol Hill just across City Creek Canyon to the west. It was the first part of Salt Lake City to break from the city's original ten-acre block grid, platted with smaller blocks and narrower streets starting in the early 1850s.

Before 1907, the area went by "the dry bench," because it had no water lines until pipes reached the lower streets in 1884, with the upper streets waiting until 1908. Streets were renamed Avenues that same year, and much of the neighborhood, including Brigham Young's Grave, now sits inside the Avenues Historic District, added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. That history shows up in the housing stock today, and it is a large part of why buyers looking for an established, walkable, older neighborhood close to downtown end up here instead of somewhere newer.

The Avenues is not one uniform strip. The "lower Avenues," roughly below 11th or 13th Avenue, holds most of the older Victorian-era homes and sits closest to downtown, laid out in a fairly rigid grid of numbered avenues running east to west and lettered streets running north to south. Further up the hillside, that grid loosens into a more winding layout as the streets climb.

Just east of the lower Avenues sits Federal Heights, generally known for larger, more stately homes, and north of that is the more recently developed Arlington Hills. The neighborhood carries a mix of residential streets and a handful of larger institutions woven in, including the LDS Hospital complex between 7th and 9th Avenue, Shriners Hospital for Children on Virginia Street near 11th Avenue, and a small city library branch at 9th Avenue and F Street. The Avenues borders Capitol Hill directly across City Creek Canyon, and both share the same basic appeal: an older, established part of the city within a short drive of downtown. See what's happening in Capitol Hill as well.

The Avenues is home to some of Salt Lake City's most recognizable landmarks. The Utah Governor's Mansion sits at 603 East South Temple, built in 1902 for Senator Thomas Kearns. Jennie Kearns donated it to the state in 1937 on the condition that it house Utah's governor, and it has served that role for most of the time since, aside from a stretch as a state historical museum before it returned to use as the governor's residence in the late 1970s. The same architect, Carl Neuhausen, also designed the Cathedral of the Madeleine, which sits on the neighborhood's edge.

Salt Lake City Cemetery occupies a large stretch of the eastern Avenues, bordered by Lindsey Gardens and 11th Avenue Park as nearby green space, with Popperton Park further north near Virginia Street. The neighborhood's closeness to downtown Salt Lake City and to the Memory Grove and City Creek Canyon recreation area, combined with light commercial development and low through-traffic, is a big part of what keeps longtime owners here even after their original reasons for buying, raising a family, being close to work, have changed. At night, the view from the upper Avenues looks out over the lit-up city below, one of the more consistent reasons Delia hears from clients about why they do not want to leave.