Idaho Falls, Idaho Temple

That is kind of a clunky title, I always thought, but it’s utilitarian and it serves its purpose. Still, you’d be hard pressed to get locals to call it by its full name—Idaho Falls, Idaho Temple. Same is pretty much the case wherever you go. I never once called our nearest temple the Sacramento, California Temple. It would be weird to say the Manti, Utah Temple.

These naming conventions may seem like trivial minutiae, but it does make a difference when trying to find interior photos from the original church press releases.

Anyway. Next in my archive of interior photos and trivia is the Idaho Falls, Idaho Temple.

 

It’s very World War II-era architecture, following the more modern styles of the time. It’s another temple that uses the written word as a form of sacred decoration, with gilt letters over the marble door frame of the chapel (at least, last time I was there ... in 2014, I think). The interior architecture reminded me, actually, of an old-timey chapel from the same era, but grown into something greater (or evolved, if you will—I’m still on something of a Pokémon Go kick). There was a kind of folksy warmth that comes from having beautiful marble doorways in the same room as fuzzy walls, of the exact same kind you get in 80s/90s-era chapels.

Most striking of all, to me, were the murals that covered the walls of the Celestial Room. I have never before been in a Celestial Room with muraled walls! And though the colors of the few photos I could find seemed to fit in a muted, warmer palette, the mural is much cooler in person, with lovely blues and greens sticking out most strongly in my memory.

As for its history, this temple was designed according to the older way of using an official Church board of architects, though this board included some names from previous temple designs we looked at for Mesa, Arizona and Cardston, Alberta, like Pope and Young. Kind of like a Best Of album of recent temple architects.

World War II did slow construction significantly, the groundbreaking by David Smith (sharing a name with Joseph Smith, Jr.’s youngest son, whose story is perhaps one of the most poignant in Latter Day Saint history ... ah, I could do a whole blog post on him!) in 1939 and the dedication by George Albert Smith in 1945,

The aforementioned Celestial Room, with murals

 The Celestial Room is one of the few I could find decent-sized/quality images of. This particular one, I believe, is from the more recent pamphlet the Church published about temples, which included photos of Idaho Falls, Vernal Utah, San Diego California, Salt Lake, and other temples.

The rest, I’m sad to say, are more of the small, low-quality images of the past. If anyone has better quality ones, please let me know!

Creation Room

 This Creation Room is notable, to me anyway, because it’s one of the few that uses anything like practical special effects as part of the Endowment ceremony, with small, blue lights set into the ceiling that look like stars. It’s a very pretty effect.

Garden Room

Also Garden Room?

World Room

Baptistry

Evidently another view of the Garden Room

As of this writing, the Idaho Falls temple is undergoing renovation, so I don’t know what (if anything) described here will change. I haven’t heard anything about gutting or redesigning, but it is a lengthy renovation so some improvements may be noted.

Cardston, Alberta Temple

I have returned from my lengthy hiatus!

CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1102285

At this time, to many locals, the Cardston, Alberta Temple is probably better known as a fairly high-ranked Pokémon Go gym, which might be the only original contribution I would be making to the established readily-available info about this temple.

For a lot of the temples that I’ll be writing about, it will quickly become apparent that I have an intimate knowledge of perhaps a handful of them, and this is no exception.

Still, there are some interesting facts I could highlight:

(1) This temple actually preceded the Mesa Arizona Temple I wrote about in my previous post, so yeah, it’s out of order.

(2) This temple may have had the longest open house of any constructed by the LDS Church after the succession crisis—approximately two years. Apparently it took a long time to finish the interior! Then again, there was a war on (the second World War, to be precise), and times were hard.

(3) This is another in the “Solomon’s Temple” style of LDS temples, and I’m fairly sure that Mesa was the last. Arguably, the upcoming Paris France Temple is a revival of this style:

Copyright Intellectual Reserve 

I enjoy the uniqueness of this sort of design: it’s broad rather than tall, and seems to carry a sort of strength in stone, a heaviness that suggests the weight of how seriously the Canadian Saints took this project. Of course, the Cardston temple design was the first to be put up to prominent LDS architects, and the design we see today was Pope and Burton’s. They were heavily influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, and it shows!

I have had a great deal of trouble finding interior photos of this temple, but here are some of the meager fruits of my labors:

The chapel with some very helpful info ... presumably from an old Ensign

Baptistry

Mural detail: John the Baptist and Christ

Another view of the baptistry

Baptistry Oxen

Mural: Abraham Offering Sacrifice

These photos were all scans—old scans by the look of them—from an Ensign article. If anyone can tell me what year/month it was, please let me know! Because then I could find it and, you know, do my own scans. So, yes, again the quality is going to be kind of poor.

For the ordinance rooms, since I’ve already explained the purpose of the five rooms in previous posts for the benefit of my non-LDS friends, I’ll just post the images (again, small as they are!) below.

Creation Room

Garden Room

World Room

Another view of the Garden Room

It seems the curtain is drawn and we see the path on the other side that the temple patrons would take as they exited the room. That is pretty awesome—a rare view of a hallway. I guess that’s a pretty good measure of my personality. I get excited by random hallways as long as they aren’t photographed very often.

Another view of the Garden Room, this time with the curtain closed

A glimpse of the Terrestrial Room

Celestial Room

I am sad that all I have is this tiny, tiny image to convey the awesomeness of this very unique celestial room. What immediately strikes me is the dark wood. Normally, the visual rhetoric of the temple is that as you progress through the Endowment, the room becomes lighter by degrees, symbolic of incrementally approaching the Kingdom of Heaven. But here we emerge into a dark-wood Celestial Room. I like the subversion of the norm here. Perhaps because it’s so unexpected, it makes me stop and ponder in a different way.

A much better image of the Celestial Room, but sadly only one wall of it

A Sealing Room

The dark wood is carried over into the Sealing Rooms, which are often furnished similarly to the Celestial Room in other temples. Just reinforcing to me that the dark wood was no mistake.

Note, again, how very modern and daring this new temple design was. I already linked to the Unity Church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but I’ll include it in here directly to make a visual comparison.

Temple stonework detail

The temple in its entirety

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Church in Chicago, Illinois

The similarities are quite striking, and to be so boldly modern with a temple, a structure whose architecture had previously been quite conservative, was a major step that paved the way for some of the temples we’ll be looking at in future posts.

Until then, I’d better charge my phone. I have to go challenge Red Team at the Jordan River Temple Gym.

Mesa Arizona (or: the one post in nearly all black and white)

The Mesa Arizona Temple is one I admittedly know little about. I have no family connection to it and I have never visited it. It is one of the oldest temples still operating in the Church and was one of the first not designed by a designated Church architect. Actually, this is in the wrong order: Cardston, Alberta was dedicated before Mesa, Arizona. But I have already started writing this post and, as I will probably repeatedly mention, I just finished finals and I am eager to post again.

Cardston, Alberta and Mesa, Arizona, like Laie, were built in style called the “Solomon’s Temple” template. The idea was to mimic, on the exterior at least, the design of the Temple of Solomon as described in the Old Testament. Since we don’t know precisely what it looked like, there is a lot of room for interpretation. These two are striking in how different they are.

Interesting factoid: the design for Mesa Arizona Temple was actually put to a competition! Two entries that did not win:

I’m not so crazy about this design. It looks like the beehive motif was used for the spire, and as much as I like beehives, it looks a little to me like the architectural equivalent of wearing a novelty hat in the shape of an ice cream cone or a wedge of cheese. It is interesting to note that an Angel Moroni statue was proposed in that design—it would have been the third LDS temple to feature an angel on the spire, after Nauvoo and Salt Lake. Similar designs, at least from this front view, would later be used in some 21st century temples like, for instance, the San Salvador temple, but without the beehive on top.

Now, for my part, I must confess that I am slightly sad that the Cannon and Fetzer entry did not win. I like the very Spanish/Pueblo style and the large window, a little reminiscent of Santiago de Compostela. 

Ultimately, though, the design that won belonged to Don Carlos Young, Jr., and Ramm Hanson.

Of course, from that old photo, you would think that it is gone. It isn’t!

In fact, it still stands today but I just finished my finals and I don’t feel like doing any more research to find newer pictures. I will probably update later with newer images! 

The interior:

One thing I adore about these older temples is the amount of love that went into making them. Not that this doesn’t hold true today, but I am touched by this image in particular:

I know that lots of temples today feature hand-painted murals, but being able to see one of them working on it is a rare treat for me. This is the only image of the creation room I can find.

Here is the garden room—another thing I enjoy about these old temples is progressive-style Endowment rooms, where instead of the entire Endowment taking place in one or two rooms, one passes through a creation room, a garden room, a telestial room, and a terrestial room.

Another black and white photo of the garden room.

The telestial room.

I wish I could find a better image of the baptistry. But this gives you a sense of the high degree of craftsmanship that went into the font and the oxen. I have a question for anyone who might know: why is that ox’s horn facing backwards?

Another view of the baptistry with its beautiful murals.

Some detail of the murals in the baptistry.

This is the terrestrial room. I am fascinated by those chandeliers—are they still there?

 The celestial room.

A sealing room.

Another sealing room.

I enjoy the writing over the door—I don’t see that very often in temples. Writing inside the building, that is. For anyone who is having a hard time making it out, it reads “The glory of God is intelligence.” This style of grand staircase has been making a comeback in recent temples, which I am glad for.

I must note that the images were probably from the temple open house, but I can’t find any original pamphlets to scan the images myself. If anyone knows where I might find one, do please let me know. I was mining through old copies of the Ensign because the Church will often post the interior photos in the issue that is published just after the open house, but I suspect that this practice had not begun at the time of the rededication of the temple.

Pardon me for the “See Spot Run!” writing style I exhibit here. Like I mentioned, I just finished my finals, including two term papers, so my writing abilities are somewhat sub-par at the moment. I just desperately wanted to feature a new temple. Wait, I have an idea: rather than listen to me drone on in my endless subject-verb-object monotone, why not ask of any readers who have strong connections with this temple to share something about it in the comments? I would love to learn more, especially given my poverty of experience with it.

Laie, Hawaii

It sometimes surprises people to learn that one of the earliest LDS temples was built in Hawaii, in part because the Mormon story is so entrenched with the Old West in so many peoples’ imaginations. But Hawaii and Europe were places of large growth in the early days of the Church. ’Tis true.

Joseph F. Smith at 19

Built in 1919 on the island of Oahu (adjacent what would later become BYU-Hawaii), the land for the temple was dedicated by Joseph F. Smith, one of the early missionaries to the Hawaiian islands. Joseph, the nephew of Joseph Smith, Jr., was called to serve as a missionary in 1854, when he was just 15 years old. Ten years later, he was called back to Hawaii to rectify a certain problem that had arisen surrounding Walter M. Gibson.

Walter M. Gibson,
frequently described as the most flamboyant contributor to Hawaiian history

I’m not really certain of the details of what he was up to—I read a few sketches of his life, but it seems that his post-excommunication life was far more interesting than his time as renegade Mormon leader, because that era of his life is usually relegated to a one-paragraph blurb, something that must be mentioned before getting to the meat of his life of political intrigue in the Kingdom of Hawaii. From what I was able to glean, he:

• sold Church positions
• made purchases of land in his name using Church funds
• encouraged the Hawaiians to worship him? This point is a little bit fuzzy, but I did find an article that suggested as much

Anyway, it was a bit of a mess that Joseph had to clean up, but everything turned out: it seems that the Hawaiian Saints turned away from Gibson, who was excommunicated, and to this day Laie is among the bastions of strength in the Church. My mother, who was not really raised with a religion, joined the Church in Laie, and she always spoke of how impressed she was by the strength and faith of the Hawaiian people.

The Laie temple was rededicated recently, providing me with access to the press media package, including some of these excellent photos of the interior.

Photo courteously hijacked from Rick Satterfield via ldschurchtemples.com

Part of the relief sculptures that span the central tower of the temple

Here is the recommend desk, the first place you will see. Turning left(?), you will see the waiting room, the one room in the temple where non-recommend holders (including non-members) may visit.

For some reason, I want to say there are miniatures of the relief panels that adorn the central tower exterior somewhere in this room.

Ah, there we are. Wait, different room. Maybe this is the waiting room? I am confused now. I have never actually visited this temple, so I am guessing a lot here.

This is the baptistry of the temple. I enjoy the simplicity of the white stone finish. Also, those paintings and the stained glass panels are beautiful. Let’s take a closer look.

The scenes are of several scriptural stories, prominent among them Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. The tree in the stained glass is reminiscent of the Tree of Life from Lehi’s vision recorded in 1 Nephi 8: 

“And it came to pass that I beheld a tree, whose fruit was desirable to make one happy. And it came to pass that I did go forth and partake of the fruit thereof; and I beheld that it was most sweet, above all that I ever before tasted. Yea, and I beheld that the fruit thereof was white, to exceed all the whiteness that I had ever seen. And as I partook of the fruit thereof it filled my soul with exceedingly great joy; wherefore, I began to be desirous that my family should partake of it also; for I knew that it was desirable above all other fruit.”

Oh, dear! What happened here? Looks like the file didn’t download properly. And the Church has removed the images from the website! Well. I’ll try to right that one later.

These ordinance rooms represent the progression of mankind’s journey from before the Fall back into the presence of God, which is represented by the Celestial Room:

Though architecturally far simpler than the previous temples we’ve looked at, I just love how, well, bright and cheerful this one feels.

Moving along, we find ourselves in a sealing room, where the ordinances of sealing (on earth as in heaven) are performed both for weddings and to seal children to their parents for eternity.

As I recall, Elizabeth Smart was married in this temple, in a room much like this one (quite possibly this actual one). So glad everything turned out so well. She is an inspiration to me.

Speaking of weddings, there is the Bride’s Room, where brides can get ready for their temple sealings.

It is a simpler temple, but I love the brightness and happiness that it just somehow exudes. It’s just a delight to see.