specifically to design the building. Their firm won a building design contest against fourteen other submissions. However, The Salt Lake Herald—another LDS-backed paper—claimed that the competition was a "pretentious fraud." Monheim, a Prussian immigrant, died one year into construction. Bird and Proudfoot moved to Philadelphia and Chicago respectively by 1896, so the City-County Building was their firm's only output. The building was monstrously over budget. Estimated by the firm at $350,000, the winning contractor bid $377,978, but by the building's dedication on December 28, 1894, it had cost nearly $900,000. Complicating matters was the Panic of 1893 which cut Salt Lake City and County revenues nearly in half. As a result of this, plans for large stained glass windows for the building were discarded. Although now used exclusively by Salt Lake City government, the building originally served many functions. Salt Lake County offices called the structure home until the 1980s when the County elected to build a new complex at 2100 South and State Street. The building served as Utah's Capitol from when statehood was granted in 1896 until the present Utah State Capitol was completed in 1915. The Salt Lake City and County building also housed Salt Lake's first public library and contained courtrooms, including one that condemned organizer Joe Hill to death amid international attention in 1914. From 1973 to 1989 the building was exhaustively renovated and repaired with an eye toward historical accuracy. This was done in concert with a seismic upgrade called base isolation that placed the weak sandstone structure on a foundation of steel and rubber to better protect it from earthquake damage. Features The Salt Lake City and County Building's central clock tower is topped with a statue of Columbia and rises 256 feet (78 m) from the ground. The building's primary axis runs north-south, and large entrances mark each cardinal direction. On the south wing (over the Mayor's office) is a bronze statue of the goddess Justice. Originally, the building had statues depicting Commerce, Liberty, Justice, and Columbia, but the others were removed following a 1934 earthquake. Columbia and the other missing statues were replaced on top of the building when it was renovated in 1989. The building's surface is elaborately carved from the gray Utah Kyune sandstone it's made of. To the right of the entrance on the south side is the face of Father DeSmet, a Jesuit priest who preached to