Ogden Municipal Building

Ogden wears its New Deal well. The Municipal Building of 1939 — the city-and-county seat of government — is reckoned among the finest Art Deco buildings in Utah, one of a trio in Ogden by the architects Hodgson and McClenahan, alongside the Forest Service Building and Ogden High School. Federal Depression-era work money helped raise it. It is Art Deco to the letter: a symmetrical brick mass with terra-cotta trim, side wings stepping down from a taller center, and brick pilasters drawing the eye up. It still houses the city's offices.

What the plaque says

The Ogden/Weber Municipal Building, 1939, together with the U.S. Forest Service Building and the Ogden High School, are exceptionally significant as the best Art Deco Style building in Ogden and the state of Utah. They also represent important works of the architectural firm of Hodgson and McClenahan, and are excellent examples of federal work projects initiated during the Great Depression of the 1930's. The Municipal Building is a warm brick building with glazed terra cotta trim. In many ways it is a "typical" Art Deco example. Symmetrically arranged from a rectangular base, side wings step down gradually from the taller central mass. Metal frame casement windows are separated by brick pilasters which function visually to accent verticality and to modulate the surface lanes. The flat roofs are capped with contrasting glazed terra cotta trim which undulates respectively to the walls and pilasters, activating the roofline and terminating the vertical movement with crisp geo-curvalinear shapes. The Municipal Building is one of Utah's Public Works Administration projects designed to put people to work and create useable structures for the future.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Ogden Union Station — 0.3 mi
  A grand 1924 train depot turned museum complex
• Snowbasin — 5.9 mi
  One of the country's oldest ski areas and a 2002 Olympic downhill venue — world-class terrain that somehow still skis uncrowded.
• Hill Aerospace Museum — 7.1 mi
  Over 90 military aircraft displayed indoors and on the tarmac
• Powder Mountain — 15 mi
  The largest ski resort in the United States by acreage — a famously uncrowded "PowMow" now remaking itself under Netflix's Reed Hastings.

More markers nearby

• Origninal Pioneer Settlers of Weber County Who Arrived with Their Families in 1848 — steps away
• John Henry Weber — steps away
• Jedediah Strong Smith - Ogden — steps away
• Captain James Brown — steps away