| Salt Lake City, 1884 (2) |
| Temple
Block City layout |
At the very first, one square of the city was set apart, as the "Temple Block," for holy use. This was intended to be not only the spiritual but the geographical centre of the city (for in spite of their present claims the founders certainly had no idea that so great a town as this would ever arise here), and all the streets are named from this point out—First South, First West, and so on, oddly reversing the ordinary style of designation. | Harper's,
August 1884 Temple and Tabernacle image (L) (S) |
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| Endowment
House Tabernacle Temple foundation |
On this ten-acre lot the Mormons held [393] their first worship; here was built the small building now known as the Endowment House; here, later on, the combined voluntary labor of the members of the Church erected the first Tabernacle; and here were laid the foundations of the Temple, wherein (it is promised) Jesus Christ shall appear bodily to the faithful as soon as it is completed. | |||
| Temple
stone Now railway extension |
This Temple is to be a tall, many-turreted building of white granite, brought from Little Cottonwood Canon—famous as the locality of the Emma Mine —where it is split from enormous detached fragments that have fallen from the cliffs. It is almost as white and crystalline as marble, and unexcelled as material for an imposing structure. Until the very recent extension of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway into the cañon, all this stone was brought to the city by bullock teams, but now the railway tracks run from the quarries into the Temple yard. | |||
| Temple design | The Temple was contrived and sketched out by Brigham Young. The style is one unknown to architectural schools, I think, but more nearly resembles the Gothic than any other. The structure is of Cyclopean strength; its base, far below the surface, is sixteen feet in thickness, decreasing to nine feet in thickness at the surface. One course of the basement stones stands in the shape of a series of solid reversed arches. Above, the walls rise nearly seven feet in thickness to the present height of eighty feet, which is nearly to where the roof begins. | |||
| Temple fortress | There is no hollowness, or "filling" or brick-work-nothing, but solid chiselled granite through and through, not only the outer walls, but in the partitions, the ceilings, and the stairways. The window openings are like the embrasures of a fort, and the heavily walled compartments of the basement suggest the direst dungeons. | |||
| Symbols Regional maps of the world |
All the externals of the building have a religious significance. For instance, near the ground are a series of great bosses, upon which are to be carved maps of various regions of the world—and there will be room for a full atlas. | |||
| Moons, suns, stars | Between the windows of the first and second stories similar bosses express eight phases of the moon, while a row of great stone suns is placed between the windows of the second and third tiers, and a star is chiselled upon the key-stone of every arch. When by-and-by the New-Zealander visits the ruins of Salt Lake City, he will be justified, I should say, in concluding the Mormons to have been sun-worshippers or astrologers, or both. | |||
| Bult to last a thousand years | President Taylor told me Brigham Young's intention was that the building should last a thousand years. | John Taylor image (L) (S) | ||
| Temple for ordinances | This enormous Temple is not intended as a place of worship, but as a sacred edifice within which various ceremonies of consecration, marriage, etc., shall be performed that are now celebrated in the Endowment House. For this purpose the whole building is cut up into little cloister-like rooms. | |||
| Tabernacle Assembly Hall meetings |
The houses for public worship are the Tabernacle, and a handsome granite building, more civic than ecclesiastical in appearance, occupies one corner of the Temple Square. In the interior this building arranged with galleries, tiers of pulpits, and organs just like the Tabernacle, but in a much finer style, and it is used for, Quorum meetings, evening sessions, and winter services. | Tabernacle interior image (L) (S) | ||
| Rumors
authorities lining pockets Two million spent on temple, one million more to complete Massive and genuine |
What has been the cost of the Temple, which during thirty years has been rearing before the eyes of the towns-people, is a subject of natural curiosity, and one hears many rumors of how many millions supposed to have been expended upon it have really gone into the pockets of a few dignitaries of the Church. These rumors arise, no doubt, from the difficulty of understanding how men formerly poor are now rich. Although they have been engaged in none of the ordinary methods of acquiring even a competence. I have the word of President Taylor, however, that the total cost has been in round numbers, two millions of dollars, nine-tenths of which is accounted for as cash. It is supposed that three years more time and another million dollars will complete it. It is doubtful whether there is in the United States another public building so massive and genuine. | |||
| Brigham
Young's block Tithing storehouse Lion House Beehive House Stables |
Across the street, just east of the Temple block, Brigham Young took possession of another whole square for himself, erecting at the end nearest the Temple a series [395] of store-houses for the reception of tithing levied upon all members of the Church. At the other end were his residences—the "Lion" and "Bee-hive" houses, where he guarded his wives terrestrial and celestial; and behind them the vast stables and corrals where he kept his hundreds of horses and mules, and the sires of his flocks and herds. | |||
| Church offices | Here too were the Church offices—the sanctum sanctorum of the Prophet of the Church on Earth of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the head-quarters of the military, and civil ruler of the community, the Court of the High Judge of Zion, beyond whom there was no appeal, and the counting-house of the divinely appointed leader. | |||
| Mud
and cobble-stone fences Forts of mud Only remnants of city wall remain |
Mud and cobble-stones were cheaper than fence timber; the Canaanitish tribes, viz., Pah-Utes, Shoshones, Uintahs, etc., were thievish and belligerent, and, worst of all, unrighteous dwellers in Babylon were beginning to approach and inquire curiously into the ways and means of Mormondom. So walls sprang up in every direction. Not low picturesque stone fences with angular shadows and many-colored slabs and an embroidery of vines and lichens trailing pleasantly across them, but hideous forts of mud around every lot—walls ten to twenty feet high, supported by round bulging bastions at the corners, and guarded by prison-like gates at the entrances. Brigham Young's property in particular looked like a Moorish fortress. Not content with this, the President commanded the building of a general fortification around the whole, young city—a "Spanish" wall of mud, which has now disappeared, saving a few remnants. Similarly the high walls have been, replaced by fences, except that one which still protects the Temple and Young's house. | |||
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Old Tabernacle |
The first Tabernacle was built by contributions of manual labor for the most part, and was early completed. It had a general resemblance to the present structure, and was of great size. Interiorly it is said to have been exceedingly plain, but to have held a very fine organ. Only a few years elapsed, however, before the construction of the present larger edifice was begun. | |||
| Tabernacle
shape |
The form of the Tabernacle is elliptical, and its roof an elliptical dome arching everywhere from the eaves to the ridge, and supported upon a series of heavy stone piers, the shortest span between which is 172 feet. As their height is only about twenty feet, and the height of the arched roof much less than a hundred feet, the Tabernacle from without gives you the impression of an enormous building, more than half buried. From the general level of the city it is almost impossible to obtain the smallest glimpse of it, either because of the trees or of the great wall behind which it is hid, and in order to get any notion of its size, you must climb to some eminence like the northern bench, where you can look down upon its huge fungus-like form. Elevate it, sixty feet, or set it on a hill, and, perfectly fitting Utah scenery in its severely simple outlines, it would be as grand its place as the Parthenon at Athens. | |||
| Sunday
services All Saints gather Women in the center, men on sides Seats 13,000+ Gallery, choir Crimson-cushioned pulpits for 20 speakers |
Service in the Tabernacle is held on Sundays at two o'clock in the afternoon. The Saints assemble not only from the city, but from all the country round, and many vehicles of all sorts are left standing in the neighborhood. The centre of the church fills rapidly with women, while men predominate in the side rows of seats. There are seats for thirteen thousand persons in the amphitheatre and gallery, and many more crowd in at some of the great conferences. A broad gallery closes around at the front, where the choir sit[s] in two wings, facing each other, the men on one side and the women opposite. The space between is filled by three long crimson-cushioned pulpit desks, in each of which twenty speakers or so can sit at once, each rank overlooking the heads of the one beneath. The highest was designed for the president and his two counsellors; the second one for the twelve apostles, and the lowest for the bishops, but I believe the order is not very rigidly observed. | |||
| Acoustics Electricity Evergreen and floral arrangements of tissue paper |
The acoustic properties of the house are almost perfect. A former deficiency of light has been overcome by the use of electricity; and the chilling bareness of the huge whitewashed vault is relieved by hangings of evergreen and flowers made of tissue-paper, the effect of which is very good indeed. | |||
| Sacrament Bishops at table Visitors seated in front Water cask at each door Girls circulate water pails |
Every Sunday the sacrament is administered, the table loaded with the baskets of bread and tankards of water occupying a dais at the foot of the pulpits. Gradually a number of bishops take their places behind this table, and watch the congregation gather, people coming in through the dozen or more side doors as though the Tabernacle was a huge sponge absorbing the population of the Territory. Mingling with the rest come many strangers, bringing the latest tailoring and millinery, and these strangers are always conducted to seats down in front, where they can be addressed effectively in a body. At one door stands a huge cask of cold water, with several tin cups handy, and nearly all stop to drink as they come in. Later you will see tin pails holding a quart or more, and having handles on both sides, circulating through the audience, and refilled from time to time by small Ganymedes running about in chip hats and well-starched pinafores. | Ganymede
1. Gr. Myth. a beautiful youth carried off by Zeus to be the cupbearer
to the gods. chip —n. 3. wood, palm leaf, or straw split and woven into bonnets, hats, etc. |
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Organ plays at 2:00 |
Precisely at two o'clock the great organ sends forth its melodious summons, and the noise of busy voices—the hum of the veritable honey-bees of Deseret in their home hive—is hushed. A hymn is announced (by some brother in a business coat whom you will meet in trade to-morrow, perhaps), and sung by the choir, for though the tune may be one of the old familiar ones, the audience does not join in the singing. | |||
| Music
very good Organ played with great skill |
The music of the Tabernacle has a great reputation in the West, and it would hardly be fair to decry it because it does not come up to a New York performance. It is conspicuously good for the material at hand and the locality. The organ, a handsome instrument, nearly as large as the great organ in the Boston Music Hall, is not so readily discounted, however, and is played with much skill, to the constant delight of the people. | |||
| Long
prayer, hymn Bishops prepare sacrament Bible reading and comments during the sacrament George Q. Cannon preeminent |
After the singing comes a long prayer by some layman-priest, and a hymn, during the singing of which eight bishops break the slices of bread into morsels. Then, while the bread is being passed through the audience to the communicants—everybody, old and young, partaking—President Taylor or some other dignitary reads a chapter from the Bible, usually from Revelation, and makes extempore remarks upon it. Sometimes the Hon. George Q. Cannon, the most eminent of the Mormon leaders, occupies the pulpit. | George Q. Cannon image (L) (S) | ||
| Two-hour
meeting Many immigrants Peasant class |
It is three o'clock before the bread and water have been partaken of by all, and fully four by the time the preacher has ceased, the bishop pronounced the benediction, and the congregation is dismissed. As the people scatter about the great dusty yard, picking their way among the blocks of stone awaiting their place in the Temple, one sees how largely foreigners they are, the predominant nationalities being British and Scandinavian. Their peasantry, too, is unmistakably stamped upon their faces, though they have exchanged their foreign characteristics for a rusticity of the American type. | |||
| Prominent apostles Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith | Among the most prominent of the Mormon apostles are Orson Pratt, the most distinguished scholar and writer in the sect, and Joseph F. Smith, a nephew of the original Prophet and founder of Mormonism. | Orson
Pratt image (L)
(S) Joseph F. Smith image (L) (S) |
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