Abstract
This paper is the final research paper for the course, and discusses the Salt Lake Temple – one of the list of suggested topics. Research was undertaken using extensive searches of internet and library resources, in order to locate information on the size and location of the temple, the timeframe of its construction, the civilization and culture responsible for its creation and existence, and just how it was built (methods of construction, materials, tools and equipment) and the composition of the workforce responsible. The final section of the paper discusses how the temple might be built differently if it was being built today instead of in the 19th century. The research revealed that the building of this magnificent temple located in Salt Lake City took 40 years from start to finish, interrupted by the Utah War and sometimes hampered by lack of funds and a largely volunteer workforce using mainly hand tools, who in many cases existed at subsistence level in order to participate in the building project as a demonstration of the strength of their faith, following widespread religious persecution in their former home in Illinois, which had led to their mass flight to Utah.
The Salt Lake Temple
Introduction
This research paper discusses the Salt Lake Temple, located in modern day Salt Lake City, Utah, and built by and for the Mormons – who are otherwise known as the “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).” (Salt Lake Temple, May 2013). The included research covers the size and location of the temple, its date of construction, and details of the culture and civilization responsible for its construction. Also included are details of exactly how it was built; i.e. the materials used in its construction, the building methods, tools & equipment used and the labor force engaged in the construction. Finally, the paper includes this writer’s view of how the same building would be constructed if it were to be built today (using modern methods, materials, and construction techniques, etc).
Salt Lake City Temple (© 2006, Scott Cannon. All rights reserved).
The Temple address is 50 West North Temple Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84150-0701 (Salt Lake Temple, May 2013). A shallow stream named City Creek forks here and flows around the site on two sides.
According to Cowan (2011), the location was chosen by President Brigham Young on 24 July 1847 while he was walking there, declaring “Here will be the Temple of our God.” A stake was driven into the ground by Wilford Woodruff to mark the spot.
Farnes (July 2013), states that the temple site was originally planned by Brigham Young to encompass forty acres. However, he subsequently reduced the size of the site to ten acres, in line with the proposed city blocks of that size. He also specified the outline design of the building itself in a sketch drawn on a slate in the office of the assigned architect, Truman O. Angell.
As described by Farnes, those instructions were as follows:
There will be three towers on the east, representing the President and his two counselors; also three similar towers on the west representing the Presiding Bishop and his two counselors; the towers on the east the Melchisedek priesthood, those on the west the Aaronic priesthood. The center towers will be higher than those on the sides, and the west towers a little lower than those on the east end. The body of the building will be between these. (Farnes, July 2013).
The completed temple has a total floor area of 253,000 square feet, and is the largest temple of the LDS Church with overall dimensions of 117 feet long by 184 feet wide, and has external walls that are nine feet thick at ground level, reducing to six feet at the top (Salt Lake Temple, n.d.).
Some other dimensions, giving a good indication of the massive scale of the temple are as follows: the foundation walls are 16 feet in width and eight feet in depth; basement walls are eight feet in thickness; the building’s side walls are 107 feet high and the tallest (east center) tower is 210 feet in height (McAllister, 1912).
Construction Timeframe
In total, construction of the temple spanned a 40-year period in the 19th century. Following Brigham Young’s marking of the spot in July of 1847, construction of the 14 feet high wall around the site (now called Temple Square) started in 1852 (Farnes, July 2013). In the meantime Truman Angell had traveled to Europe, studying cathedrals there. Dedication of the temple site took place on 14 February 1853, when Brigham Young performed the groundbreaking ceremony. Compatible with the construction methods of the time and the workforce availability (see later in this paper), construction proceeded slowly.
In 1858 work came to a complete standstill when the Mormons felt threatened by the approach of Federal forces during the Utah War (1857-58). A militia of LDS Church members (the Nauvoo Legion) acted to defend themselves, perceived as necessary self-preservation (Fleek, 2006).
Salt Lake Temple Foundations
(Extracted from: “Presidents of the Church Student Manual – Religion 345: Chapter 2 – Brigham Young – Second President of the Church”)
When peace was restored, the earth covering was removed once again from the foundations, which were up to a depth of 32 feet in some places. Because cracks were then discovered in the sandstone blocks, Brigham Young ordered the sandstone foundations to be entirely replaced by granite, which had to be quarried and transported to the site from some 20 miles away, restarting work that had so far taken five years (McMurdle, July 2009).
Initially, the granite blocks had to be hauled on wagons pulled by teams of oxen, but when the railroad came to the area in 1869, transport time of blocks was reduced to just one day, speeding up construction considerably, although the external construction of the temple was not completed until 1892, and the interior was (remarkably) finished just a year afterwards, (“Salt Lake Temple”, n.d.).
The actual completion date – when church president Wilford Woodruff dedicated the temple – was April 6 1893, precisely forty years to the day after the first stone was laid (Farnes, July 2013).
Culture and Civilization Background
The Salt Lake Temple (among others) was built by and for the Church of the Latter Day Saints (LDS Church), otherwise known as the Mormons, following their mass flight from persecution in their former home of Nauvoo, Illinois, as described by Hicks (2010).
In “Mormon Trail”, Hicks reports that the route of over 1300 miles – from Nauvoo Illinois to Salt Lake City in Utah – was traversed by some 70,000 Mormons between 1840 and 1869, fleeing from religious persecution.
Sites Along The Mormon Trail
(Extracted from: “Mormon Trail” Wikipedia, 2013).
According to “Why the Mormons moved to the West” (2013), the reasons they were persecuted by the non-Mormons or “Gentiles” as the Mormons called them, were that:
- This new religion (started in 1830) was regarded as “contemptible gibberish”
- The Mormon belief in polygamy was disliked
- Mormons tended to isolate themselves from others
- A Mormon group called “Danites” attacked and robbed Gentiles
- The growing numbers of Mormons caused fear among ordinary people, who believed they might take over the courts and the government
- Mormons were viewed as being of low social class
- Mormons were disliked for their support of freed slaves.
After experiencing mounting anti-Mormon sentiment and persecution including violence and house burning, the Mormons departed from Nauvoo (originally called Commerce), heading west towards Utah. Beginning in February of 1846 Brigham Young’s followers embarked on a journey expected to take around 4-6 weeks, but which actually took circa 16 weeks of travel due to poor roads and bad weather (Hicks, 2010). She reports that by 14 June those pioneers had reached the junction of the Missouri and Platte Rivers, where they settled in communities established on either side of the river, moving on again in a more organized fashion in April 1847, reaching Salt Lake valley in the July. More and more Mormons followed the trail west, many by wagon or pulling handcarts, until the coming of the railroad in 1869 made the journey much easier and faster.
How the Temple Was Built
Following Brigham Young’s decision to replace the sandstone foundations with new blocks of granite, only the existing sandstone and adobe wall around the site was retained. Almost all other building stone had to be quarried from the granite deposits in Little Cottonwood Canyon in the mountains, some 20 miles southeast from the temple, then hauled by ox teams on wagons to the temple site (Cowan, 2011). Only the cornerstones, laid on April 6 1853 and measuring two feet by three feet by five feet, were not granite, but were of firestone, quarried in Red Butte Canyon.
Using hammers and chisels and other hand tools, stonemasons cut out from the walls of the canyon huge blocks of granite weighing between 2,500 and 5,600 pounds, then maneuvered them onto ox-drawn wagons for the hazardous 20-mile journey to the temple site (“Granite and Faith: The Story of the Salt Lake Temple.”, 2013). Once there, experts in stone cutting finished the shaping of each block so that it fitted perfectly with its neighbor. According to the article, many of these workers had come to Utah from as far afield as the United Kingdom and Scandivania, bringing their tools and expertise to the project. The building process was not without hitches; apart from replacing the foundations, at one point many blocks already placed in position had to be removed because the workers had “diluted” the mortar with granite chips to keep costs down, but Brigham Young had intervened, cautioning the workers to “Build not for today nor tomorrow, but for all eternity.”
Richard (March 2011) describes that journey of the quarried granite blocks between the quarry in the mountain canyon and the temple site in Salt Lake City in more detail, commenting that for the teamsters it was typically a challenging round trip of four days.
Some examples of the hardships endured by those Mormon devotees who participated in the creation of this magnificent temple are provided in “Stories of Sacrifice and Devotion: The People Who Built and Loved a Temple” (n.d.). These were people motivated by their faith, rather than by the attraction of material reward. One example was a man who attended the ceremony of the groundbreaking on 14 February 1853 – an icy day. Wearing all the clothes he had, comprising thin pants, a shirt of calico and a straw hat and feet bound with rags, he “went through frozen mud and slush” to attend, writing that “It was go that way or stay home I was not alone in poverty; there were many who were fixed as badly as I was.” Charles Rockwood, another of the Mormon pioneers reported that in 1856 after bran supplies were exhausted, they went for three weeks “without bread, meat or milk”, subsisting on a meager diet of food foraged from fields, “consisting principally of cat tails, roots, thistles, pig weeds and other greens.” The article reports that between 30 and 40 men were based in a permanent camp established at the granite quarry, working for 10 hours each day, with just one day of rest each week, splitting these massive stones from boulders which could weigh up to almost 4,000 tons.
Cutting the Granite Stones in the Quarry
(Extracted from: McMurdle, Greg. (July 2009). “Salt Lake Temple Foundation Stones.”)
Once the stones were cut, they were loaded onto wagons drawn by up to “four yoke of oxen” along the poor road through the canyon to the temple. According to the article that road was “riddled with hills and gullies, streams and sandpits” and became littered with the broken wagons and the stones that had fallen from them and could not be recovered. Once at the temple site, the stones then had to be dressed, described as an arduous task that could take weeks in some cases, according to James Moyle, one of the quarry workers.
“Stories of Sacrifice and Devotion: The People Who Built and Loved a Temple” (n.d.) also relates how women were also actively involved. During the latter years of the construction of the temple, one Margaret Shelton Kinsey – a teenager at the time – collected sheep wool caught on branches and barbed-wire fences, formed the wool into balls and sold those, contributing the monies earned to the funds for building of the temple. Many of the workers’ wives and other female relatives contributed, too. John Nicoll worked for two years in the quarry, paid only in the form of food for the family, so there was a need to provide for other essential items. His wife made gloves from buckskin and sold them to the stonecutters, as well as making butter and cheese from her two cows and selling the products to the Church. There was also the account from the journal of one Lucy Flake, who together with her husband traveled by team in March of 1893 all the way from Arizona – a long and hazardous trip – so that they could be in Salt Lake City for the scheduled dedication of the temple. She described the journey as “a cold hard trip, through snow and mud.” These are just some of the examples of the strength of the faith that drove these Mormon followers to provide the massive and largely unpaid workforce that constructed the Salt Lake Temple.
What If the Temple Were to be Built Today?
If the Salt Lake Temple were to be built in 2013, how different would be the approach to such a project? As regards the overall design (the external appearance), it would very probably be much the same as the original. Brigham Young had sent his architect to Europe to study the design of the classic cathedrals, and they have not changed, so his “models” would in all probability still stand.
But what of the construction methods utilized? Unquestionably, modern techniques and tools would play a significant part in the building of the temple today.
Beginning with the acquisition of the stones from a quarry, modern quarrying techniques would be used to increase efficiency and accuracy of cutting the stones from the rock face. Whereas handsaws were formerly used, today’s quarries utilize methods including “diamond wire saws, hydraulic drilling equipment and water jets” (“Vermont Mining: Granite”, n.d.). Similarly, mechanization of the dressing and polishing stages of the granite blocks would save enormous amounts of time and manpower, drastically reducing the overall construction time of the temple structure.
Transport today is much improved and faster, and a further improvement would be seen by the use of modern cranes to lift the blocks into place faster and more accurately than was possible 150 years ago.
Because the Mormons value their temples so highly as sacred places, it is likely that the temple would today still be constructed using granite blocks, as opposed to designing a steel-framed structure with stone cladding applied, for example. However, it is possible that certain features of modern design would be deemed advisable, such as driving numerous steel piles deep into the ground to stabilize the temple’s foundations, obviating the need for such a massive amount of stone footings to support the temple structure.
It is also probable that structural engineers could design a more efficient – less weighty but equally strong – structure, using granite for the external surfaces of the walls, but with a core of a lighter but strong material.
During the construction, modern scaffolding would make for a safer environment for the workforce, and health & safety regulations such as all workers on site wearing hard hats would also assist in that regard.
Building could also progress faster using computer software that would schedule materials to be on site “just in time” – i.e. when they are needed but neither sooner nor later than needed. Materials arriving too soon could present on-site storage problems or even theft or vandalism, whilst materials arriving late could introduce delays.
As regards the interior of the temple, there could well be changes to the original layout and finishes, following the examples of LDS Church temples built since the Salt Lake City Temple. As with the exterior structure, it is likely that more modern materials could be used if and where appropriate, whilst maintaining the quality and overall image required by the original designers.
In summary, modern methods and techniques would be used for greater efficiency and safety, but would not be used to sacrifice quality for a building that LDS Church members regard as such a special and sacred place. That is especially the case for the Salt Lake Temple – the headquarters location of the LDS Church.
Conclusions
The Salt Lake City Temple was a remarkable project, not just for the vision and determination and unwavering high standards of Brigham Young, but for the persistence and devotion of the workforce, who were largely unpaid or paid “in kind” and lived in many cases in extreme poverty so that they could actively participate in the project. Modern tools and techniques could shorten the overall timeframe of construction, but the project is nonetheless hugely impressive. If it were to be built today, even the advantages of modern methods and techniques would not prevent it from being astronomically expensive, as it would no doubt not be possible to use a largely unpaid workforce.
Works Cited:
Cowan, Richard, O. (2011). “The Design, Construction, and Role of the Salt Lake Temple.” Religious Studies Center. Web. 10 October 2013.
Farnes, Chad. (July 18, 2013). “Salt Lake LDS Temple.” Web. 10 October 2013.
Fleek, Sherman, L. (2006). “The Church and the Utah War, 1857–58,” in Nineteenth-Century Saints at War, ed. Robert C. Freeman (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2006), 81–106.
“Granite and Faith: The Story of the Salt Lake Temple.” (2013). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Web. 11 October 2013.
Hicks, Jeanne. (2010). “Mormon Trail.” Web. 11 October 2013.
McAllister, Duncan, M. (1912). “A Description of the Great Temple Salt Lake City, and a Statement Concerning the Purpose for Which It Has Been Built.” Salt Lake City, Utah, Bureau of Information.
McMurdle, Greg. (July 2009). “Salt Lake Temple Foundation Stones.” Believe All Things. Web. 11 October 2013.
“Mormon Trail.” (updated Aug 2013). Wikipedia. Web. 11 October 2013.
“Presidents of the Church Student Manual – Religion 345: Chapter 2 – Brigham Young – Second President of the Church.” (n.d.). Web. 11 October 2013.
Richard. (March 2011). “A History of the Salt Lake Mormon Temple.” Web. 11 October 2013.
“Salt Lake Temple.” (May 2013). Watkins Books. Web. 10 October 2013.
“Salt Lake Temple.” (n.d.). Utah Travel Industry. Web. 11 October 2013.
“Stories of Sacrifice and Devotion: The People Who Built and Loved a Temple” (n.d.). The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Web. 12 October 2013.
“Vermont Mining: Granite.” (n.d.). University of Vermont. Web. 12 October 2013.
“Why the Mormons moved to the West.” (2013). BBC. Web. 11 October 2013.
