Mesa Second Ward

First built in the 1910s, the Mesa Second Ward is just a few blocks west of the Mesa Temple.

In 1934, the current chapel was built on just west of the original chapel. In the 1960s, the original chapel portion was demolished, but the 1930 chapel is still standing.

Laketown Ward: Interior Details

Similar to the Herriman Ward's building, the Laketown Ward's exterior was well-preserved, but the interior is completely redone. The front half of the building on the main floor is the primary room (see below), and the rest of it is divided into small classrooms. I couldn't really find any historical features that were kept.

Meanwhile, I also hopped next door to the 1920s cultural hall to photograph the interior.

This ward (like most other wards around Bear Lake) is so busy in the summer, nearly every room is set up with chairs and video so everyone can participate in sacrament meeting.

The cultural hall even has some classrooms above the main entrance and behind the stage. I really like the feel of this complex of buildings, although I wish some more historical features could have been preserved from the original chapel's interior.

Granite Ward

Located in east Sandy, near the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, this building is beautiful. Construction began at the turn of the century, around 1900. The exterior was completed by 1905, but the interior wasn't finished until about 10 years later (And paying the building off took much longer). The building is originally red brick, but was painted over in 1950.

In 1964, a new building was built a couple of blocks to the north. The original cornerstone was moved to the new building, and the old building was sold in 1965 to Avard T. Fairbanks, a well-known sculptor who used it for storage. (Among many other things, he carved the baptismal font and friezes in the Laie Hawaii Temple, the Angel Moroni for the Washington D.C. Temple, the Priesthood Restoration Monuments on Temple Square, the Joseph Smith statue in the Joseph Smith Building at BYU, and many other Church works of art.) His son now owns the building and uses it to house his fathers' pieces.
 

Coalville Tabernacle: Stained Glass Detail & Preservation

I have already done posts on the former Coalville Tabernacle and the chapel that replaced it and houses its paintings and stained glass. After my first visit I learned that the window at the front of the chapel has backlighting, and so I made another visit to properly photograph it.

This window is lovely, with cool green colors that contrast with the other windows.

A dove with an olive leaf is at the top of the window.

While there, I checked on the other windows and talked with some local members. The Church is taking good care of these historic artifacts--the paintings of the prophets were removed a couple of years ago for some cleaning and preservation efforts and then replaced. Now, the Church is working on the stained glass windows, taking them down one at a time to do repair and preservation efforts before replacing them. The south window was gone when I visited.

Finally, last time I visited, there were curtains on the sides of the stained glass windows; now, they have a bar at the top and a shade that comes down. The only issue is the bar blocks the top of the windows from being viewed properly, but it's a minor quibble. These stained glass windows are among the oldest in the Church, and I'm very happy to see that the Church is taking good care of them and keeping them in this chapel for local saints to enjoy.

Salt Lake 34th Ward

Built in 1921, this chapel on the west side of Salt Lake City has an impressive entrance. It was later sold and now houses another congregation.

Binghampton Ward (Tucson, AZ) Exterior Details

I was in Tucson recently and finally got a chance to visit this historic building. It is beautiful and fits in perfectly with the architecture of the city. A previous post examining this building can be found here.

A History of LDS Temple Architecture: Part 7 - The Return of Progression

Note: This is Part 7 and the final post in a series on the history of the development of LDS temple architecture. This series is based on my personal research and is a looser, less detailed, and less formal version of a paper that was presented at the 2015 BYU Religious Education Student Symposium. For a complete list of posts in this series, click here.

The last temple to have full murals in its ordinance rooms was the Los Angeles Temple, dedicated in 1956. The New Zealand Temple copied the Los Angeles Temple in having a simple landscape scene decorate the walls of its celestial room:

Celestial Room in the New Zealand Temple (rendering)

After that temple, no murals were added to ordinance rooms (although the Oakland Temple did temporarily use projections to mimic murals during the film presentation of the endowment). This means that between 1958 and 2001, no ordinance rooms had murals added to them.

In 1998, the smaller temples, pioneered by Gordon B. Hinckley, began to be dedicated. Initially, these temples were built with one stationary endowment room, meaning that a session could only begin every 2 hours at most. This proved inadequate to handle patrons, and so the basic plan was switched to enable a new form of progression--two-stage progression. The first room combined the creation, garden, and world rooms, all of which normally had some type of mural in the four-stage progression temples. The second room served as the terrestrial room. This format ended up being similar to the renovated temples that used a veil room.

For the first few years, these temples still didn't have any murals, although the Winter Quarters temple (dedicated in 2001) did have large paintings of the Missouri River and Chimney Rock placed in its first room.

Telestial Room in the Winter Quarters Temple

The Columbia River Washington Temple, dedicated in November 2001 was the first to reintroduce murals, including them in its first ordinance room. There is no background as to why murals were reintroduced at this time, but it quickly was implemented in all new small temples built after that time.

Columbia River Washington Temple

Since that time, this format of endowment, including the one room with murals, has become the preferred method of the endowment.

There were still a few large temples were still built without murals (probably that had already been in the planning stages before murals came about). One exception was the Nauvoo Illinois Temple, which had murals placed in all of its ordinance rooms, the first temple to have all four rooms and murals since the Los Angeles Temple. This was an intentional decision to reflect on the temple's historic character.

Nauvoo Illinois World Room

That doesn't mean that every temple built currently has progression. Some exceptions include Gilbert, Arizona; Payson, Utah; and Kinshasa, D.R.C., all of which have stationary rooms. However, two-stage progression has become the standard, and it appears that will continue.

Meanwhile, the Church has had renovations in its older temples to restore the progression. The Los Angeles Temple, which began to use a stationary presentation in 1981, restored progression in 2003. Laie's rededication in 2010 brought back progression as well. Upcoming renovations in Mesa and St. George also appear (as far as I can tell) encouraging in restoring progression in the endowment. If correct, this would mean that Logan, Utah is the only temple so far that originally had progression and doesn't have plans to restore it. Of course, we will have to wait for more information on that temple's renovation to know what will happen there.

World Room in Mesa Arizona Temple (rendering)

***

From the very beginning, the use of murals and progression was used in the endowment to envelop patrons in the story of the endowment and teach principles of progress, redemption, and exaltation. While film ended up replacing these tools, it's not a perfect substitution, and I'm glad to see that the Church eventually used a compromise--a mix of different tools to teach the same symbols. What's interesting is that these adjustments have largely been preserved in our temples--depending on which temple you visit, you'll get a different experience. Temples have become a living record of our use of the endowment.

St. George Temple (post 2019 renovation rendering)

As the Church continues to build temples--over 200 have now been announced--the architecture may be adjusted further to meet the needs of a worldwide Church. But the temples already established, from St. George to the present, continue to speak volumes about the role architecture plays in teaching gospel principles.