 After its sale, the old library building housed a variety of private commercial enterprises, including an antique shop, a restaurant and a kilt manufacturer.After being nominated in 1976 for the recognition by Seattle architect Larry E. Johnson, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.In the late 1860s, when Ballard was a new settlement along the edge of Salmon Bay, a homesteader named Ira Wilcox Utter helped create a freeholders' library.