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St George Temple
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ST. GEORGE UTAH LDS TEMPLE
The St. George Utah Temple (St. George Temple) was the first infrastructure ever completed by the LDS in 250 East 400 South, Utah, United States. This was after they were cast out from Nauvoo, Illinois; due to the Mormon war which was within two years of the death of Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism. The St. George Utah Temple is the oldest operating temple of the Church and is the first temple where endowments for the dead were performed. It was built to satisfy the church's immediate need for an appropriate place for temple ceremonies and ordinances. Truman O. Angell, who served many years of Church Architecture for the Latter-day Saints, was the designer of this church and of many other edifices including the Salt Lake Temple, the Lion House, the Beehive House, and the Utah Territorial Statehouse.
The St. George Temple, which is of Castellated Gothic style, currently has three ordinance rooms and 18 sealing rooms, and a total floor area of 110,000 feet (34,000 m). It was originally designed with two large assembly halls like the earlier Kirtland and Nauvoo Temples, and has the exterior furnished Native red sandstone quarried north of the city and plastered white. The lower Assembly Hall was partitioned with curtains to provide the ordinance rooms for the Endowment Ceremony. In 1938 the lower Assembly Hall was rebuilt with permanent walls dividing it into four ordinance rooms. The four ordinance rooms were later changed into the present three rooms, at the time the endowment ceremony was changed from a live endowment to one presented on film.
On November 9, 1871, Brigham Young, popularly known as "American Moses”, announced the temple to be built in St. George. After, Daniel H. Wells dedicated it on the 6–8 April 1877. Young chose a 6-acre site for the temple, but was soon discovered that the location was too swampy. The Saints proposed that the site be moved but Young was insistent on his decision. And so, the Saints created drains to pull out as much water as possible but still, the land was watery. They brought lava rocks to the spot, crushed them, and piled them up together using a pulley system with the help of a cannon that served as a pile driver.
After stabilizing the foundation, work finally began on the structure itself. The walls of the temple were constructed out of the red sandstone common to the area and then carefully plastered for a white finish. The Saints worked tirelessly for over five and a half years to complete the temple. They opened new rock quarries, cut, hauled and planed timber, and donated one day in ten as tithing labor. Some members donated half their wages to the temple, while others gave food, clothing and other goods to aid those who were working full time on the building. Mormon women decorated the hallways with handmade rag carpets and produced fringe for the altars and pulpits from Utah-produced silk. At its completion, it contained a million feet of lumber, which had been hand chopped and hauled between forty and eighty miles. They also used seventeen thousand tons of volcanic rock and sandstone, hand cut and hauled by mule teams.
Young, however, was not completely satisfied with the tower and dome; in his words, it was too "squatty." He suggested having it fixed, but the Saints were so excited to have the temple operational that Young did not push the suggestion. About a year after the dedication, on October 16, 1878, a large storm rolled through St. George and a lightning bolt struck the tower of the temple. Fire broke out; destroying the St. George Utah Temple annex. The St. George Utah Temple was extensively remodeled for over a year from 1937 to 1938. The lower hall was permanently divided into progressive-style muraled endowment rooms. Following a second major renovation project, the St. George Utah Temple nearly doubled its 56,062 square feet. It was opened to the public for an open house and formally rededicated in11–12 November 1975 by Spencer W. Kimball. The progressive-style ordinance rooms, used to present 3 live-acting endowment sessions a day, were replaced with three motion-picture ordinance rooms that presented 14 sessions a day.