Located a block south from the Spring City Chapel, this house was constructed in 1876. It's been dubbed "endowment house" because of some Church records that list "O. Hyde's Office" in Spring City as a location where temple ordinances were performed. It's still unclear whether or not it was actually used for that purpose.
When I visited, it looked as though it was being used for storage. It really is a lovely building, though.
This building was built as a relief society building and sold about a year later and was known as the Allred school. No one knows where the endowment house story came from. LDS church archives show a journal entry that Orson Hyde may have performed an endowment somewhere but there is no mention of exactly where. The LDS church does have journal evidence of marriages performed in his office however. There is no evidence he ever used the school building as his office. His stone house is across the street from the original church building and family journal entries mention him conducting church business there.
ReplyDeleteThe building in your photo is owned by Randall and Suzan Lake. They have owned it for over thirty years and Randall uses it as an artist studio not just as storage. They just did an exterior restoration that is very nice.
Thanks for the information, Bonnie! It sounds like this building's use has been muddled a bit by folklore.
DeleteI agree, the exterior restoration was very well done!
I recall seeing this building with my cousin, Robert Tibbs, some 45 years ago. I recall that there were marks of the temple garment engraved on the structure. Is that the case?
ReplyDeleteJeff Allred
La Verne, CA
626-222-2024
Hi Jeff, my understanding, and this is just rumor, is that Salt Lake (quite recently) asked the owners of the building to remove the original plaque. Again, I can't confirm this but that is what I've heard.
DeleteYes, it is the case. In a biography I believe it said Spencer W. Kimball asked the owner to remove the plaque, but it was still there when I visited a few years ago. The symbols in question can be construed as masonic as much as temple-specific, so I don't think it's particularly offensive, but I haven't heard anything about recent efforts to remove it.
DeleteAllen Roberts told that story in an article (Sunstone, July-August 1978, p. 9). The article also has old pictures of the plaque, where the square and compass are in relief while today they are depressed. I think that they were indeed erased but somebody (likely Roberts and Craig Call, who used to own it) later carved them back in.
DeleteIt doesn’t seem as though many endowments were performed during the period between the abandonment of Nauvoo and the building of the Council House, probably just Addison Pratt’s endowment on Ensign Peak. Sealings were far more common at that time. Some were performed in the Council House, some were performed in Brigham Young’s office, but quite a few were performed in people’s homes (which was also true in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith performed quite a few sealings in people’s homes). I’ve been curious about this so-called “Spring City Endowment House” for a while, but I’m starting to suspect that it was just a place where you could be sealed (which makes sense, since Orson Hyde was an apostle).
ReplyDeleteIf he performed any endowments in the area of Spring City, it’s likely that it was on one of the nearby mountaintops or in a large, private space that could be appropriately partitioned. It’s also likely that this building wasn’t used for even sealings once the Manti Temple was built (since Manti was less than a day’s walk, let alone a day on horseback). In fact, if it was used for temple related ordinances, it might’ve only been in use for a year or so, since the St George Temple was finished the next year. That said, after the Endowment House was built, I’d imagine that most endowments were performed there, and only extenuating circumstances would allow someone to receive them somewhere else.