For the first time, take in ‘the best spot in the city’ atop a historic SLC skyscraper​on August 4, 2025 at 12:00 pm

The last waning light of a summer sunset bleeds away above Antelope Island and into the diminishing waters of the Great Salt Lake in the distance.

​Todd Tanner, a Utahn and lover of travel and history, is behind a brand-new rooftop tour of the Walker Center.  

The last waning light of a summer sunset bleeds away above Antelope Island and into the diminishing waters of the Great Salt Lake in the distance.

In another direction, the soft summer breeze carries jazz music from the Gallivan Center to the rooftop more than 15 floors above; below, couples dance the evening away to live music from the Crescent Super Band.

On foot, Salt Lake City can seem small, navigable to seasoned Salt Lakers, but from the top of the Walker Center, it almost seems never-ending. Up here, the Salt Lake Valley spreads out in every direction like paint spilled on a canvas.

The soundtrack of the city plays without hesitation — a firetruck siren fades away while car engines rev. Glittering lights beckon all around, from nearby office towers to traffic on the streets.

These are the sights and sounds that guests experience on Todd Tanner’s new rooftop tour of the historic skyscraper at 175 S. Main. For the first time in its 113-year life, the rooftop is open to the public, offering a front-row seat to this brand-new, century-old view of the city.

And it’s all because of Tanner.

“People in the city, most of them, have never been inside the building because they didn’t have a reason to go,” he said. “Then when you get up on top, you’re 200 feet above Main Street, and you’re truly in the center of the city with new and old all around you.”

The Walker Center, built in 1912, was previously known as the Walker Brothers Bank Building and was advertised as the tallest office building between Chicago and San Francisco at the time it opened. Now, it hosts a variety of office tenants.

As a history buff, Tanner knows every detail about the building: what makes it magical and who has left their mark on it over the years.

“Sometimes the history that grabs people’s attention more are the side stories about people that were not necessarily famous,” he said, “but lived interesting lives, or an event that happened and was sort of lost to time.”

Tanner can speak about how a family’s journey to Utah led to prosperity and, later, the creation of the skyscraper. He can tell you how Harry Houdini, the famous 20th-century escape artist, broke out of a straitjacket while dangling from the exterior in 1915.

He can paint a picture so vivid, it transports you back in time.

A lifelong love of being a tour guide

Tanner, now 53, was born and raised in Utah and said his affinity for history stems fromreading the Sunday print edition of The Salt Lake Tribune — particularly the “Cityview” columns from Jack Goodman, who wrote about a different building in Utah’s capital every week from the mid-1980s to early 2000s.

“You kind of got to learn about the people and the building,” Tanner recalls. He also looked forward to Goodman’s hand-drawn sketches that were printed alongside his pieces.

Hosting the Walker Center tour is not Tanner’s first stint as a guide. In his 20s, he led trips in Park City for the Park City Silver Mine Adventure, which took guests 1,500 feet underground into a silver mine.

As he got older, Tanner drifted toward a job in television news with FOX 13, where he spent two decades of his career. Working as a reporter, he grew familiar with the Walker Center.

“It seems like every five years or so there would be a reason to end up at the building, whether it was because [it] was turning 100 years old, or I would call and ask if I could do a feature story about the weather signals,” he said, referring to the tower’s 64-foot-tall radio transmitter.

To this day, a sign on the transmitter lights up as a beacon for Utahns, alerting them of weather conditions: solid red for snow, flashing red for rain, flashing blue for overcast and solid blue for clear skies.

The first time Tanner viewed the tower’s top was in 2002. It has stuck with him ever since.

“When I first saw the roof, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is incredible,” he said. “This is the best spot in the city and almost no one can access it.’”

Since then, Tanner said, he was drawn to the building as a place for a “fantastic and genuine tourist experience.”

Launching the tour

Tanner left FOX 13 in 2021. Through the years, he would look back at his work as a tour guide as the most fun job he had. Eventually, he found himself back in the tour business working for Tauck Tours, where he did weeklong outings in Yellowstone and New Orleans.

“In the back of my mind,” he said, “I was like, ‘Wait a minute, Salt Lake City is home, and I like telling stories about Salt Lake City, and that’s what’s most natural to me.”

Tanner pitched the idea of a Walker Center tour to building management, which embraced it. Tours launched in mid-March, with each trip lasting about two hours. They are available daily, except Sundays.

He said he keeps his groups small — around six people — so visitors can get the most out of the experience. The size also helps him customize the tour, catering to his guests’ interests.

Even though he puts on this tour several times a week, he brings a fresh energy to each outing. Tanner takes photos of his guests, knowing the correct angles and exactly where to squat and stand. He points out small details, like how the roof’s large and looming terra-cotta eagles have black speckled paint on them to make them look like granite.

For the most part, Tanner said, his audience is made up of “culture seekers” — young, new Salt Lake City residents and people who are playing “in their own backyard and loving their own city.”

“That’s what we love about old places: all the things that have transpired there over the years,” Tanner tells members of his tour group, before leading them to a room where they can leave their own mark on the Walker Center.

In the tower control room, a drawer full of permanent markers beckons guests. The walls around it are covered in signatures and messages from past tour groups. Many thank Tanner, while most sign their names. A family tree here, a love letter to Salt Lake City there.

“We are all part of the history of this great, complicated city,” one message says.

Tanner said the Walker Center rooftop tour will run until November, when he expects the weather to turn. He also hopes to host more history tours in the future.

Tours can be booked at slcrooftoptours.com.