Utah Book & Magazine
Address: 327 South Main Street
Telephone: 801-359-4391
Website:
District: Downtown
“I was eight years old when I started working,” said Peter Marshall, owner of Utah Book and Magazine. “Got five bucks a week. That was good money.” He dropped out of school just two weeks into the eighth grade. “Told my dad and grandpa I’d rather work with them. And I never looked back.” At no time has Peter stepped away - not once in sixty-two years.
“I’ve probably got a million books, and I’ve never read one in my life.” Peter let that line hang in the air with a smirk, as though he knew just how implausible it sounded coming from a man who has spent most of his life surrounded by floor-to-ceiling shelves of stories.
Utah Book & Magazine is a Salt Lake City institution - quirky, dusty, and as layered as the man who has been in the business almost his entire life. Peter opened his own shop when he was just seventeen. His first wife, sixteen at the time, stood by his side as they launched a business that would span generations. “I bought my first house at seventeen, too. Didn’t want my father to co-sign.” He shrugged, as if owning property, getting married and starting a business as a teenager were ordinary milestones.
But to understand the store, one must step even further back in time. In 1916, Peter’s grandfather, Earl L. Marshall Sr., opened Utah Coin & Antique just down the street, near the old police and fire departments. “He was a bootlegger, too - made damn good whiskey. Put plug tobacco in it for color,” Peter added with a grin. During the Depression, when most people were scraping by, Earl pulled up in a brand-new Packard. “That might tell you something.”
Peter’s father, Earl Jr., worked alongside his own father for decades, running shops in various spots across a few downtown blocks. “At one point, we had three stores going,” Peter recalled. There were coins, books, antiques, knickknacks, furniture, tools, jewelry, and an ever-growing collection of curios. “We sold everything.”
By the time he was ten, Peter was running the store alone while his father, grandfather, and older brothers were clearing out Plum Alley - Salt Lake’s Chinatown, where the tong mafia had been forced to vacate. “The mayor told my family to take whatever they wanted,” Peter said. “And they did.” The family hauled out carved humidors, opium pipes, robes, ornate furniture, and solid wood secretaries. Soon after, the mayor gave them access to the city’s flop houses - run-down hotels with rooms full of forgotten treasures. “We bought up ninety percent of what was there,” Peter said. “Everything from brass beds and pitchers to wardrobes and washstands. We cleaned ‘em out.”
Peter and his younger brother Thomas later built Utah Book & Magazine from the ground up. Their father joined them in the shop and worked alongside Peter until his passing in 1986. “We advertised in the Tribune and Deseret News from the start, all the way through the ‘90s. Every single day. And then the papers went under. Since then, it’s been word of mouth - and the internet, which I want nothing to do with.”
Today, according to Peter, the store holds an estimated half a million used books upstairs, and another half million still boxed in the basement, some untouched since his grandfather packed them away in the early twentieth century. “I got stuff down there from 1916,” Peter said. “Paperback trades my grandfather did for old folks - three for one. After a few years, you end up with a lot of books.”
People show up every day with things to sell - books, magazines, old trinkets. “Some of it I’ll take. Some I won’t. I know what moves.” Fiction is sorted by author. There are sections for horror, sci-fi, and vampire novels. Magazines make up about twenty percent of the inventory. “This ain’t Barnes & Noble,” Peter said. “But it’s organized.” That includes the horror section, which is watched over by a collection of hanging monster figurines, some of which Peter has been collecting since the ‘70s.
Peter’s passions are tucked into every corner, as well as in his home. “I’ve got Planet of the Apes figures, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer collectibles, all kinds of weird stuff. My wife, Terry - she’s got a killer Barbie collection at home, mostly originals from the ‘60s.”
The décor? Untouched since the day they moved in. Shelves from the old Skaggs Home Center, a carved mahogany humidor from the 1890s, and the original cash register and adding machine - still used daily. “That adding machine’s been in use since 1914,” Peter said. “And yes, I still use it.”
And then there is the mannequin in the front window, wearing a gown fashioned from the Capitol Theatre’s old drapes. “She’s been standing there for some five plus decades,” Peter’s sister Helen said quietly, “looking out to infinity.”
Helen, who still helps in the shop, is part of the tapestry too - just like Peter’s brothers, his wives, and now his grandchildren. “My grandson is eleven and tells everyone he’s taking over the store when I’m gone. I said, ‘Can you wait till Papa’s dead?’” He chuckled. “But he loves it here.”
Peter’s passion is not the inventory - he will be the first to admit that. “I like people. That’s what I like. I talk to ‘em. Help them find what they’re after. Sometimes I even help them with projects - collages, research, whatever.” Movie studios have discovered the shop too. A few scenes in Gentlemen Broncos were filmed there. “They liked the atmosphere,” Peter said, still amused by the idea. “Nothing’s changed since day one.”
And the ghosts? “Oh yeah,” he added, offhandedly. “We’ve got special guests in the basement. People want to go down there; I tell them they’re not alone.”
Peter has no website. No cell phone. No digital inventory. But he has customers who have returned for decades. Judges, lawyers, flight attendants, tourists, and loyal regulars who have been coming back for forty or fifty years. “They’ll buy a book, come back years later, and still remember exactly where they found it on the shelf.”
And while most people are still asleep, Peter is already at work. “I come in at two in the morning. Clean the place, open at seven. Seven days a week. That’s just how I’ve always done it.”
Utah Book & Magazine is less a store and more a museum of lived history. A place where time stands still, where stories pile on top of each other - sometimes literally - and where the past breathes through every creaky floorboard.
“I’m an open book,” Peter said. “Been down here sixty-two years - I’ll be seventy at the end of 2025.” He paused. “Many refer to me as the governor of Main Street.” And when asked if he would do it all again, Peter replied, “Yeah, and I’d do it the same.”
