Space, Race, and Symbol: The Rocket Ship on the Beltway

Two ostensibly discrete movements contributed in shaping the national conscience in the 1960s: The space race and civil rights. Each evoked hopeful optimism for a desperate nation locked in the clutches of a devastating and perpetual foreign war. Each was spearheaded by liberal ideology, progressive confidence and vibrantly passionate individuals. These two cultural phenomena represented the zenith of social and technological progression. Ultimately these preoccupations developed into a national cultural zeitgeist and, in an obscure and abstract manner, became manifest architecturally at the Mormon Temple in Washington D.C. (1968-1974).

Contending with the newly constructed Washington D.C. Temple, Charles Mark Hamilton, in his dissertation on the Salt Lake Temple published in 1977, discounted it as “a counterfeit design,” and characterized it “architecturally and aesthetically [as] an expression of space age expediency that in no way can compare to the hand-crafted “millennial” dignity of forty years of sacrifice needed to raise the spires of the Salt Lake Temple.” (1) True, the efficiency of the modern construction techniques employed in the new temple were a distant cry to the intimate craft employed at Salt Lake, but this condition does not forfeit the validity of its modern design and its ultimate and profound impact on the Mormon faith. Broadcast globally, the Washington Temple represents the futuristic, extroverted and modern paradigm of Mormonism. In contrast, the Salt Lake Temple remains the historic, introverted, and, in a positive sense, antiquated symbol of Mormonism for Mormons. The architecture of the Salt Lake Temple embodies Mormonisms need to separate from popular community while the Washington Temple is in contrast a representation of the need to integrate into global community. By subordinating the Washington Temple, aesthetically and architecturally, and by implication disqualifying comparison to its counterpart based on its “space age expediency,” Hamilton failed to grasp the understanding of the Washington Temple as the most important Mormon temple to be constructed since the Salt Lake Temple’s completion in 1893, and by consequence failed to grasp its global impact as an evangelical tool to the ultimate benefit of Mormonism and the reciprocal global impact the temple ultimately directed toward Mormonism.

In creating the modern iteration (i.e., “counterfeit”) of the Salt Lake Temple, the Mormon Church endeavored to strip itself of the unrelenting and peculiar nineteenth century stereotypes, incurred, in large part, by variant practices such as polygamy. By the 1970’s attrition had long since run its course and the Mormon Church, rid of polygamy, therefore sought greater acceptance with mainstream religions and in a broader sense with mainstream American culture. The materialization of this ambition was achieved architecturally through the sleek vertical lines of the white washed marble walls of the Church’s modern iteration of the Salt Lake temple in Washington D.C. The space age architectural expression of the temple was expressively reductivist, borrowing a slew of formal cues from its 19th century prototype, but entirely rejected the exaggeration of Victorian decoration that branded the Salt Lake Temple as peculiar. Mark Leone argues that the Washington Temple was “a political move designed to challenge and change national conceptions about Mormons . . . [and] a device for making Mormonism into a national religion.” (2) Gordon B. Hinckley, in 1974, generally agreed with this concept by referencing a well used passage from the New Testament as the expression of his sentiment regarding the prominence of the new temple: “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.” (3)

The Washington Temple was, therefore not the counterfeit temple, but rather the modern transcendence of the anachronistic Salt Lake Temple, soaring across space, time and context. As a symbol, the Washington Temple redefined the cultural objective of Mormonism as a global mainstream enterprise for the present and the future in contrast to the definition of seclusion and peculiarity that the Salt Lake Temple offered in the past. The distinction between the “hand-crafted” and the “space-age,” as noted by Hamilton is therefore not conflicting but rather the means by which the Salt Lake temple achieves its transcendence to the modern world through the Washington temple.

As one media critic aptly stated during its construction: “The architects of the Washington Temple have taken the endearingly awkward, Grandma Moses-like Gothic form of Salt Lake, streamlined it and blown it up into a stark, ostentatious, oversized billboard in Alabama marble.”(4) The most evident similarity, yet paradoxically also an immediate contrast, to the Salt Lake Temple are the six towers placed at each corner of the elongated central hexagonal block. Bundled together at each end of the Salt Lake temple, the grouped towers display a heavy bulky solidity consistent with the defensive mass of the crennelated Gothic granite forming the exterior walls. The towers of the Washington Temple, rather, are moderately spaced, independent, sleek and attenuated, and most remarkably reminiscent of a streamlined Saturn V rocket. Rather than planting themselves firmly in the earth, each defiantly launches up into the clouds toward Heaven. (Fig. 11) Each dynamic tower is symbolic of the emancipation from the 19th century shackles which continued to bind and captivate the fledgling liberalism within the church.

Precariously positioned atop the dematerialized thinness of the central eastern spire 288 feet above the ground floats an 18-foot modern interpretation of Salt Lake’s iconic Angel Moroni, sculpted by Mormon Avard Fairbanks, a relatively well-known American sculptor who executed important sculptural works in Washington. (Fig. 12) Interestingly during the 1930s Fairbanks designed the original ‘Ram’ radiator ornament for the Dodge Motor Company, a winged mermaid for Plymouth, and a griffin for the Terraplane made by Hudson automobiles, (5) all products of the streamlined modernism characteristic of 1930s and 40s industrial design. Again, as in the larger design, the detail of the timeless symbol of Salt Lake’s iconic flying angel gives way to the streamlined futurism characteristic of the Washington Temple

Architecturally the bold towers of the Salt Lake Temple symbolize the hierarchical authority of the Mormon church, the west towers being an expression of the lesser authority, the Aaronic priesthood, and the east towers the higher authority or Melchizedek priesthood. The towers of the Washington Temple are a restatement of that authority, a template initially conceived in the first temple depict by Joseph Smith in the 1830s. The towers of both the Salt Lake and Washington temples contain three tiered elements, representing the three divisions of presidency within priesthood quorums. In 1974, there still existed racial bias in the Mormon church, that is, all members of African ancestry were barred from entering the temple and therefore denied the “blessings” the white members of the Church were preferenced to obtain. The attenuated towers of the Washington Temple are a compelling restatement of the priesthood authority of the Church, and directly stand as compelling sentinels of the Church’s white male hierarchy, guarding the temple from unauthorized access by members of the Church with African ancestry.

A less obvious comparison is the tradition of symbolic sculpture developed initially at the Nauvoo Temple and refined and advanced in the Salt Lake Temple. The sculptural program of the Washington Temple, rather than continuing in the traditions of the sculptural program of the early twentieth century modern temples (7) regresses by directly referencing the sculptural symbolism of the Salt Lake Temple in an abstract and subdued manner. Franz Johansen reinterpreted Salt Lake’s granite sculptural motifs as large bronze medallions located on oversized and unused symbolic brass doors. Unlike the Salt Lake Temple, though, the sculptural program at Washington was restricted to these magnificent doors, and certain of the sculptures were given prominence based on precedents established at the Nauvoo and Salt Lake Temples. The most prominent exterior sculptural motif of the Nauvoo Temple was the anthropomorphic sunstone capital which when transferred to the buttresses of Salt Lake was stripped of the anthropomorphism and assumed a subdued and less shocking visual appearance. (Fig. 13) The anthropomorphic sunstone reemerges in Washington as the most prominent sculptural symbol both by its location in the upper-left position of the double-doors and through the sculptural artistry. (Fig. 14) Other medallions, present on the doors, abstractly depict the North Star and the Big Dipper, Saturn, the Moon , the Stars, the Earth, concentric circles representing eternity, and seven concentric pentagons representing the seven dispensations. (8)

 The original sculptural program at Nauvoo was awkward and primitive and the system would be refined and embellished at Salt Lake. The sculptural program at the Salt Lake and Nauvoo Temples was an overpowering and dominant aspect of the architecture when viewed in its totality. (9) In contrast the bronze medallions, relative to the monumental symbol of the Washington Temple, play a highly subordinated role in the totality of the scheme. Although de-emphasized nearly to the point of obsolescence, the importance of the inclusion of the symbolic medallions at Washington underlines their profound importance and validity in the modern church.

The conspicuous Washington sunstone, symbolic of the highest degree of post-mortal glory attainable in the Mormon concept of the afterlife, (10) signaled a return to early millennial ideals present in the nineteenth century church, adapted to the twentieth century model. (Fig. 15) In fact, this appliqué was restricted to three temples, the Nauvoo, the Salt Lake and Washington D.C., arguably the most important of the seventeen temples at the time. Following the construction of the Washington Temple, the millennial motifs were never employed again. The decline and eventual disappearance of the sunstone, the moonstone, and the starstone motifs is, according to Laurel Andrew, a phenomenon due to a changing cultural paradigm, from one embracing the temporal and political kingdom of God to one more closely approaching the metaphorical meaning of other religions. (11) In other words, the applied symbolism on the Salt Lake Temple was a vestige of nineteenth century millennial aspirations, and became obsolete for the twentieth century temples, with the Washington Temple as the exception. To be sure, Washington was the modern and futuristic symbol of the Mormon Church, the transcended Salt Lake Temple, hence the muteness and obscurity of the millennial symbols, but the undeniable presence, nevertheless. “The juxtaposition of past and future is a fitting paradox, for the Mormon Church has one foot planted in the Old Testament and the other in the New Technology.” (12)

As evidence of this paradigmatic cultural shift Andrews notes that the degree of symbolism executed in the stones of the Salt Lake Temple was scaled back after the death of Brigham Young in 1877. The planned faces on the sun and moonstones became blank as did the earth stones, now seen as blank globes. (13) The most peculiar sculptural transcendence in the Washington Temple is the Saturn medallion (Fig. 16), which was included in the 1854 drawings for the Salt Lake Temple, but later omitted. (14) Brigham Young required the architects to include Saturn-stones on the Salt Lake Temple facade, an oddity given their complete absence at Nauvoo. The cornerstones of the Salt Lake Temple were laid in 1853 the year, coincidentally, which was ruled astrologically by Saturn, and Young later admitted he was an astrologist. (15) Another astrological symbols included on the Salt Lake and Washington Temples were the Big Dipper and Polaris. (Fig. 17)

Given these similarities, one stark difference between the two temples is the context in which they sit, thus continuing the preceding argument. The idea of one central millennial kingdom was replaced by one of dispersed multiple centers, each occurring around a temple. (16) This begins in Utah with the three nineteenth century temples constructed in various microcosmic centers of the church in Logan, St. George and Manti. In contrast, at a micro-scale the Washington Temple is a decidedly suburban phenomenon “in no way the functioning centerpiece of its immediate neighborhood . . .[but]. . .ministering to a widely dispersed flock that arrives in cars, necessarily [setting] itself apart.” (17) Construction of the Washington Temple shortly followed the completion of the Capital Beltway’s construction in 1964. (18) At a macro-scale, then, the Washington Temple became a suburban center for the nearly 250,000 (19) members residing in the eastern United States and Canada.

The site selected for the temple was one which guaranteed visual prominence on a scale never rivaled and never to be rivaled and, therefore, was understood to be a powerful proselytizing tool. In a memoir produced by Keith Wilcox, the architect of the Washington Temple, he recalled when the prominent site was selected in 1960, Church authorities envisioned the proselytizing potential of the site and wanted a building that would stand out. (20) Keith Wilcox‘s initial assessment when seeing the site from the Beltway: “I saw the highway turned there. I told the Brethren, ‘This temple must be seen as people come down the highway. It will be seen and understood.’” (21) Dean Dinwoodey, a local Church spokesman for the thirty-five stakes in the Washington area was more explicit in his objective for the temple when he expressed confidence that the temple would become something of a tourist attraction and added: “It will be an aid to proselytizing” (22) The potential of a prominent building attracting converts had been successfully tested just a decade prior with the Mormon Pavilion at the 1964 New York Worlds Fair. (Fig. 18) Interestingly, the facade of the Mormon Pavilion was an attenuated version of the east towers of the Salt Lake Temple, to which the Washington Temple has been compared. (23) “The success of the Mormon Pavilion did not end with the closing of the World Fair gates on October 17, 1965. More than fifty million people attended the fair, and nearly six million of them visited the Mormon Pavilion. Nearly a million referrals were obtained and presented to the Missionary Department as a result of the pavilion. About five million Church tracts and pamphlets were distributed at the pavilion. Nearly one hundred thousand visitors to the pavilion bought copies of the Book of Mormon.” (24)

The suburban space-age temple, therefore, dovetailed nicely with the Church’s desire to shed its early isolationist and quirky tendencies tolerated in the isolated western frontier existence and to establish itself as a global entity, as “as a city set upon a hill.” (25) The new icon followed closely the formalism evident in the Salt Lake Temple, but was stripped of most of the superfluous ornamentation in an attempt to recreate the image of Mormonism as progressive and modern. As one writer noted seven years following the construction: “The appearance of the temple, at once the medieval and futuristic, was an architectural idea intended to symbolize timelessness, and from afar the temple, perched lordly on a wooded hill, resembles a couple of space shuttles on the launch pad as much as a feudal castle.” (26)

The paradox created a tension between past and future and just as quickly as the superfluous decoration was removed – and with it the figurative association to polygamy and isolationism – a new modern symbol of the Church emerged in the Washington DC temple, however it was naively adhering to a discriminatory doctrine which threatened to catapult the Church back to its nineteenth century past. The origin of the controversial doctrine can be traced to early writings by the founding father of Mormonism, Joseph Smith. In an oration on slavery and abolition in 1836 Joseph Smith argued a biblical justification for slavery and noted that the “the curse is not yet taken off from the sons of Canaan, neither will be until it is affected by as great a power as caused it to come.” (27) The curse eventually took greater hold during Brigham Young’s tenure as President following the death of Joseph Smith in 1844, in large part because of the isolation and relative sovereignty afforded the Church in the west. As oppressive as the curse was, Joseph Smith’s vagueness created a loophole and there were some black members who had been ordained to priesthood offices in the early Church. In 1949, however, the Church authoritatively rubber-stamped the controversial doctrine by stating that the priesthood ban was revealed by God as a commandment. (28) Mormon authorities further sealed the fate of the African membership by advocating theories in the 1950s (which were regarded as authoritative and hence revealed through God) of pre-existential aberrant behavior on the part of “the Negro.” (29)

Therefore, it was with a mixture of courage, ignorance and naiveté that the Mormon Church proposed the construction of a temple in Washington D.C. on November 14, 1960. Fewer than three years later on August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. stood in the “symbolic shadow” of Abraham Lincoln and unequivocally stated “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.” Just prior to the King speech, and likely as the result of social pressure from within and from without, the Church made a concession which was reported by the New York Times: “One of the highest officers of the Church said today that the possibility of removing this religious disability has been under serious consideration.” (30) The said officer was Hugh B. Brown, a member of the First Presidency of the Mormon Church. He further attempted to quell the tension created by the aberrant policy in a message delivered in the General Conferences of the Church in October 1963. Ironically, and rather absurdly, while maintaining that the policy was not in violation of civil rights he said:   “We have consistently and persistently upheld the Constitution of the United States, and as far as we are concerned this means upholding the constitutional rights of every citizen of the United States. We call upon all men everywhere, both within and outside the Church, to commit themselves to the establishment of full civil equality for all of God's children. Anything less than this defeats our high ideal of the brotherhood of man.” (31)  While Brown’s oblique statements regarding nuanced differences between civil and constitutional rights are troubling, he was both a revolutionary and liberal voice in the conservative Church and should be credited with beginning important dialogue on race issues the Church. No action was taken, however.

Interestingly, the majority of newspaper articles published on the construction of the Washington Temple between 1965 and 1978 deal with the Church’s racial restrictions. With the death of two status-quo conservative Mormon presidents, Joseph Fielding Smith (32) and Harold B. Lee between July 1972 and the end of 1973, the hope for an eventual retraction of the priesthood ban was seen as plausible. Less than a week after the ordination of Spencer W. Kimball to the Presidency of the Church in January 1974, however, the momentum was quashed. The new president conceded to the press that the ban would be upheld and change was not foreseen in the near future. (33) Then, again, at a press conference at the Washington Temple celebrating its completion, a question regarding the retraction of the racial policy of the Church was posed to Kimball, which he deemed inappropriate, declined comment and deferred instead to his public relations director, who submitted a previously prepared statement written in 1969 defining the Church’s position. (34)

The globally visible Washington Temple conveyed the controversial argument of the Mormon priesthood ban to a world audience. Mormonism’s self-assessment of the Washington Temple as a “monument to spirituality” (35) contrasted dramatically to those speeding by on the Beltway who regarded it as a “monument to racial discrimination.” (36) Mark Leone characterized the temple in 1975 as a “prominent paradox,” visible by millions of commuters traveling on the beltway deeming it at once both “American” and “blatantly racist.” (37) Therefore in a city founded for democratic rule based on the equality of man, the Washington temple rather ironically and antithetically exposed itself and by association the religion it represented as a monument to racial discrimination. Seeming rather oblivious to the racial controversy at hand, Gordon B. Hinckley, in a special publication on the Washington Temple in 1974, on the one hand regarded the ban as a non-issue with its rank-and-file white majority membership and on the other marginalized the entire black constituency in the Mormon Church with his dissatisfying statement:  “But all of this would appear to be selfish indeed if the blessings of these ordinances were available only to those who are now members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The fact is that the opportunity to come into the temple and partake of its blessings is open to all who will accept the gospel and be baptized into the Church.” (38) 

The existence of the Washington Temple directly catalyzed and advanced the decision to repeal the priesthood ban by announcing boldly and unequivocally the inconsistent racial policies of the Church, thereby influencing an increase in political pressure by outside activists in Washington, but also by the more liberal mindset of members residing in Washington and in the Church at large. Because the Washington temple was the first temple constructed east of Utah, the Church was suddenly dropped onto the world stage and unprepared to deal with mounting social pressures aimed at the incongruous racial policy. As Marjorie Hyer describes, “in recent years the Church [had] been under massive social-and some legal-pressures to drop its policy of racial discrimination, which [had] been an embarrassment to some of its members.” (39) In addition to outsiders, eastern members of the church were equally as adamant about lifting the priesthood ban, (40) and it became a source of tension for the entire membership of the Church. (41)

In 1971, again in an attempt to satisfy opposition groups inside and outside of the Church, the leadership established the Genesis Group, an auxiliary program sanctioned by the Church and created “to discuss how the Church might better support its members of African descent.” (42) While the Church adamantly maintained throughout the 1970s that the ban was not a civil rights violation, the Church was most definitely not supporting the needs of the Genesis group as outlined in its charter. The Genesis Group dwindled in number from its original membership of 50 until 1978. (43)

The long overdue announcement finally came on June 9, 1978 when President Spencer W. Kimball announced the retraction of the controversial priesthood and temple restrictions on members of African descent. The following day, June 10, it was plastered on the front page of most Eastern newspapers. (44) (Fig. 19)

The Washington D.C. temple was the most important temple constructed since the Salt Lake Temple in 1893, yet its story is marred by the divisive racial policies of the Mormon Church, having been rightly or wrongly characterized as a “monument to racial discrimination.” (45) This was not unlike the controversy polygamy aroused prior to the completion of the Salt Lake Temple. An interesting paradox emerges, however, because although perceived as being racially exclusive, it also forged the path for the eventual retraction of the longstanding temple and priesthood ban upheld by the Mormon Church. The paradox generated from the ambiguity then implies a further question. What is the legacy of the Washington Temple?

In a typically severe review in 1974, the mercilessly forthright architectural critic of the New York Times, Paul Goldberger, postulated that the Washington Temple would become a landmark of “ersatz architecture,” (46) to borrow language from Charles Jencks, the widely known Post-Modern theorist. Thirty-years following the construction of the Washington Temple, one can legitimately judge the merits of Goldberger’s prescient assessment. To Goldberger’s credit the Washington Temple is fundamentally an ersatz architectural interpretation of the Salt Lake Temple as Charles Hamilton concluded.

Keith Wilcox, architect of the Washington D.C. temple, intended the temple’s architecture to “reflect light to the world.” (47) His thematic concept of light commenced during his education with his architectural thesis in 1953 at the University of Oregon in which he conceived of the concept which best described the spirit of the Mormon Church. He stated, “The one term that seems to encompass these ideas and all others pertaining to the Church is ‘enlightenment.’” (48) While the temple’s presence is imposing and impressive during daytime hours, the temple appearance during the evening is otherworldly and Wilcox should be judged an absolute architectural genius as a result. The white marble’s natural tendency to amplify and reflect the artificial light bombarding it from all sides is exploited in the gravest sense, granting the temple status as the brightest streetlight on the Beltway. It stands unnaturally lit akin to a Saturn V prepped and ready on the launch pad for final countdown. Its presence was such as distraction to evening Beltway commuters that the lights illuminating the south and east facades were ramped down to prevent further traffic entanglements. In quantitative terms, measuring the amount of reflected light in footcandles in the evening would be an astronomical figure. In qualitative terms, this is more difficult to assess. For Mormons, the temple is understood largely in spiritual contexts, as a sacred space, where one receives the “endowment of power” that was originally described by Joseph Smith at the first Mormon temple in Kirtland, Ohio in 1832 (49) Therefore, reflecting the light to the world, as was Keith Wilcox’s intention, takes on a varied and metaphorical meaning in the temple. The temple’s existence symbolized the dissemination and enlightenment of absolute divine truth in a world darkened by myth and misconception. The participant in the endowment ceremony receives “further light and knowledge at the veil,” which is literally understood to be the threshold between earth and heaven. It is at this axis-mundi that the participant takes the hand of God and “enters His presence.” Paradoxically this passage into heaven is understood as both a figurative symbolic ritual and as a literal, intensely sacred and transfigurative event.

The Celestial room of the temple, the hierarchically most important, is understood by the members of the Church to be the literal abode of God. A ubiquitous inscription on all temples of the Mormon Church from the first temple at Kirtland to the most recently constructed reads conspicuously, “House of the Lord.” (Fig. 20) Fundamental to Mormon belief is the idea of God and Jesus Christ as having tangible, flesh and blood bodies. Because the Celestial room of all temples is considered the literal abode of God, most Mormons believe that both God and Jesus have literally at one time or another have been present in those rooms. The result is an intensely powerful and sacred experience, and certainly an endowment of power as Joseph Smith described it. As Laurel Andrews noted in reference to the Salt Lake temple, “the secular qualities of the castellated style can now be seen as not only symbolizing the fortress of the Lord, but also the residence of Christ.” (50)

In a witty contraposition to the experience of the Mormon, one glimpses the Washington Temple’s meaning through the eyes of a non-Mormon in military thriller novel by author Tom Clancy. The fictional Deputy Director of Intelligence, Jack Ryan is caught in an emotional high-powered political game where he must decide between acting honestly or blatantly lying, either way, the likely outcome will result in his professional demise. It is in this conflicted ethical dilemma that the reader is allowed into the tormented mind of the observer:

“Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just outside the beltway near Connecticut Avenue. A decidedly odd looking building, it had grandeur with its marble columns and gilt spires. The beliefs represented by that impressive structure seemed curious to Ryan, a lifelong Catholic, but the people who held them were honest and hardworking, and fiercely loyal to their country, because they believed in what America stood for. . .You could tell what these people stood for. The Mormons tithed their income, which allowed their Church to construct this monument to faith. . .What better proof could there be of what really mattered? Jack knew he wasn't the first to wonder at the fact, not by a very long shot indeed, but it wasn't often that anyone perceived Truth so clearly as Ryan did on this Monday morning.” (51)

Although fictional, the reflected light of the Washington Temple graced Jack Ryan. The symbol of the temple is experienced through very different channels for Mormons and non-Mormons, and even then it becomes deeply personal and individual. For Mormons, the grander experience occurs on the inside, as the culmination of belief. The non-Mormon experiences the temple from the outside as a secular phenomenon and as part of a larger experience of journeying on the Beltway. Due to the contradiction of interpretation by various demographics, Mark Leone argues that “the temple has begun a conversation with its viewers, Mormon and non-Mormon, which is like that between two deaf mutes over an elephant. They both know the object is there but cannot talk about what it means for each other. Neither can even be sure that the other knows the elephant is really white.” (52)

In a retrospective review a decade following the completion of the Washington Temple, Benjamin Forgery writes of the temple as a memorable and likable building but admits that “most of us would not recognize the Mormon symbolism of the temple without being told about it,” and even that is not certain. Surprisingly, this lack of understanding is true for both Mormons and non-Mormons. The exterior symbolism on temples like Nauvoo and Salt Lake was largely abandoned. The architectural symbolism on the Washington Temple is subdued and subtle, but nevertheless there. The reemergence of the early Mormon symbolism is an undeniable link to the origins of the Church and thereby the Washington D.C. temple assumed a status unseen since the completion of the Salt Lake Temple. It bridged the gap between the early and modern church by fully expressing both the formalism of the original temple prototypes and the integrating the esoteric symbolism on the symbolic entrance doors, the most humanly intimate location. These represent the boundary between heaven and earth and through artistic sculpture proffer a didactic lesson on the Mormon belief in immortality and deification of the human being. The reinterpretation of the early temple symbol at Washington contrasted sharply to the temples constructed following Salt Lake and directly prior to Washington. These ran the stylistic gamut of Modernism from Prairie Style to International Style. The steely modernism of each of these tuned their backs on the early prototypes as efficiency became the overriding functional concern governing the formal qualities of the temple.

In an interesting phenomenon, the Washington Temple has been likened to a futuristic rocket ship by more than one observer. Paul Goldberger observes that it is as if “the architects had tried to design Buck Roger’s church.” (53) The associative metaphor is a method whereby one comes to understand the unfamiliar modern building with something that one understands through familiarity. (54) Intensely familiar and recent, at the time of construction of the Washington Temple, were images of the space race, which culminated in the landing on the moon. Sleek and streamlined Saturn V rocket boosters propelling the astronauts beyond the terrestrial frontiers and into space were images seared in the collective memory of America.

© 2010 Steven D. Cornell

Citations:
1 Hamilton, Charles Mark. The Salt Lake Temple: An Architectural Monograph. Dissertation, Ohio State University, 1978. 154.
2 Leone, Mark P. “The New Mormon Temple in Washington D.C.” Historical Archaeology and the Importance of Material Things. Papers of the Thematic Symposium, Eighth Annual Meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology, Charleston, South Carolina, January 7-11, 1975. ed. Leland Ferguson. Special Publication Series, Number 2. The Society for Historical Archaeology. John D. Combs, ed. 56.
3 Hinckley, Gordon B. “A City Set Upon A Hill.” Ensign. November 1974.
4 Von Eckardt, Wolf. “Spires of Babylonian Solemnity.” Washington Post. June 30, 1973. C1.
5 1913 Avard went to Paris and studied at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts, the Ecole de la Grande Chaumiere, the Academy Colarossi, and the Ecole Moderne. As an example of his work in Washington he executed a number of sculptures for Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol Building including: Abraham Lincoln, Marcus Whitman, John Burke and Esther Morris. http://www.avardfairbanks.com/
6 Various quorums or levels exist in the two priesthoods (i.e., Elders, High Priests and Seventies in the Melchizedek, and Teacher, Deacons and Priests in the Aaronic. Associated with each quorum is a presidency.
7 The three modern twentieth-century temples all employed sculptural motifs which were either literal depictions of scriptural narratives as in the Laie, Hawaii Temple, a program of modernized classicism as in the Mesa, Arizona Temple or the borrowing of prairie school sculptural motifs as in the Cardston, Alberta Temple.
8 England, Kathy, "The Washington D.C. Temple," Ensign. October 1977. 88.
9 Ibid., 88. “A Symbol of the Church, a symbol of the plan of salvation, a symbol of eternity.”
10 D&C 76: 96-98. Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 1989. This revelation was received by Joseph Smith in 1832 and included information concerning the three states or glories of the afterlife, the Celestial Kingdom, which was represented by the glory of the Sun, the Terrestrial Kingdom, represented by the glory of the Moon, and the Telestial Kingdom, represented by the glory of the Stars.
11 Andrew, Laurel B. The Early Temples of the Mormons: The Architecture of the Millennial Kingdom in the American West. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. 1978. 200-01.
12 Brown, Chip. The Mysterious Citadel on the Beltway. Washington Post. May 24, 1981. A1
13 Ibid., 123, 131.
14 Hamilton, Charles Mark. The Salt Lake Temple. 1972 Masters Thesis. University of Utah. 100.
15 Quinn, D. Michael. Early Mormonism and the Magic World View. 2nd ed. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1998. 282.
16 Andrews, 201.
17 Forgery, Benjamin. “The Temple By the Beltway.” Washington Post. November 17, 1984. D1.
18 http://www.roadstothefuture.com/Capital_Beltway.html
19 Fiske, Edward. “Mormons Building New Temple On 57 Acres Near Washington.” July 23, 1972. The New York Times. 50.
20 Forgery, Benjamin. The Temple By the Beltway. Washington Post, November 17, 1984. D1.
21 Dalphonse, Sherri. “Inside the Temple” Washingtonian. 30. November 1994.
22 Fiske, Edward. “Mormons Building New Temple On 57 Acres Near Washington.” July 23, 1972. The New York Times. 50.
23 “To Build A Temple.” Ensign. August 1974. 15.
24 Top, Brent L. “Legacy of the Mormon Pavilion.” Ensign. October 1989. 22.
25 Hinckley, Gordon B. “A City Set Upon a Hill,” Ensign. November 1974. This phrase is borrowed from biblical rhetoric and was employed by Hinckley in an address he delivered to the general membership of the Church about the Washington Temple.
26 Brown, Chip. The Mysterious Citadel on the Beltway. Washington Post. May 24, 1981. A1
27 History of the Church, 2:438-439.
28 "The attitude of the Church with reference to the Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time."
29 McConkie, Bruce R. Mormon Doctrine, Salt Lake City, Utah : Bookcraft, 1958. See Moses 7:8, “For behold, the Lord shall curse the land with much heat, and the barrenness thereof shall go forth forever; and there was a blackness came upon all the children of Canaan, that they were despised among all people.” This account was published as part of Mormon scripture by Joseph Smith in the 1830s.
30 Turner, Wallace. “Mormons Consider Ending Bar On Fall Membership for Negro.” New York Times. June 7, 1963.
31 Brown, Hugh B. General Conference address. October, 6, 1963.
32 Joseph Fielding Smith was the Church’s authority on doctrine and was key to the racial propaganda ingrained as doctrine the 1950s with the publication of major doctrinal texts, specifically “Gospel Principles.”
33 Gillens, Peter. New Mormon Leader Won’t Change Traditional Policies, The Washington Post, January 4, 1974. C 11.
34 Turner, Wallace. Mormon Avoids Question on Blacks. New York Times, September 10, 1974
35 Smith, 7.
36 Hyer, Marjorie. “The Mormons move East.” Washington Post. September 8, 1974. PO14.
37 Leone, 55.
38 Hinckley, Gordon B. “Why These Temples.” Ensign. August 1974. 40.
39 Hyer, Marjorie. “ Mormon Church Dissolves Black Bias.” Washington Post. June 10, 1978. A1.
40 Leone, 56. Leone addresses the more liberal nature of Washingtonian Mormons.
41 Life in Washington gives Mormons a New Outlook. Wallace Turner, NY Times, September 16, 1974. p.24
42 http://www.ldsgenesisgroup.org/history.htm
43 “Black Group Clings to Mormon Church Despite Restrictions.” New York Times. April 30, 1978. 23.
44 Hyer, Marjorie. “ Mormon Church Dissolves Black Bias.” Washington Post. June 10, 1978. A1.
45 Hyer, Marjorie. The Mormons move East, Washington Post, September 8, 1974. PO14.
46 Goldberger, Paul. “New Mormon Temple: $15 Million Conversation Piece.” New York Times. November 12, 1974. 30.
48 Dalphonse, Sherri. “Inside the Temple” Washingtonian,. 30. November 1994.
49 Wilcox, Keith Wilson. An Architectural Design Concept for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Masters of Archtecture Thesis. University of Oregon. June 1953. 23.
50 D&C 38:32. Wherefore, for this cause I gave unto you the commandment that ye should go to the Ohio, and there I will give unto you my law, and there you shall be endowed with power from on high.
51 Andrews, 149-150.
52 Clancy, 480.
53 Leone, 44.
54 Goldberger, Paul. “New Mormon Temple: $15 Million Conversation Piece.” New York Times. November 12, 1974. 30.
55 Jencks, Charles. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. 3rd Edition. Rizzoli: New York. 1977. 40.

Young’s Salt Lake City and Haussman’s Paris: A Tale of Two Cities

Paul Goldberger, the New York Time’s Pulitzer Prize winning architectural critic, on a visit to Salt Lake City in 2007 to deliver the opening plenary at the Utah Heritage Foundation’s Annual Preservation Conference, noted the burden of Salt Lake City’s pioneer era block sizes by suggesting: “this is one real drawback to your urban grid here, that it was designed without pedestrians in mind…” A somewhat presumptuous statement given Salt Lake City’s gridded plan derived from the divinely mandated Plat of the City of Zion.

As a bit of history, the central idea of the original plat depicted a orthogonal delineated city populated by a series of large blocks. In the central block a multitude of twenty-four temples were depicted with one emphasized as the principle temple. The temple was graphically described on an unsigned and crudely drafted sheet depicting the plan, front and side elevations alongside an articulate description. These “houses of worship, schools, etc.” were to accommodate the projected 15,000 to 20,000 inhabitants of the proposed City of Zion. Each of the planned twenty-four “houses of worship, schools, etc” was to be at least as large as the specifications found in the drawings for the principal temple of the Presidency, but was to be dedicated to and managed by the various quorums in the two levels of Mormon Priesthood, the Aaronic and Melchizedek. A revised plat was prepared by Frederick G. Williams to correct oversights in the original plat and was sent to Bishop Edward Partridge in Independence in August of 1833. In the revised plat, the total area of the city was increased from 1 mile to 1.5 miles square, the number of half acre lots was increased from 968 to 2,600 which reduced the average number of people projected per lot from between an estimated 15.5 to 20.7 persons to between an estimated 5.8 to 7.7 persons. One of the three central public blocks (used for storehouses and schools) was removed and the remaining central public blocks were reduced in size from the rectangular fifteen acres to ten acres square which resulted in a uniform block pattern throughout. The axial direction of the central public blocks were changed from a north-south to an east-west direction, the uniform street width of 132 feet was limited to the four major cross-axis avenues and the remainder streets were reduced to 82.5 feet. Finally, names or numerical designations were included for the streets in the revised plat. The gridded plat devised for the City of Zion was not uncommon in the United States during this time, and was primarily based on the ubiquitous Federal land survey of 1785. It was the “utopian premise behind Smith’s plan and how it was to be implemented” which distinguished Zion from other contemporary American cities. Brigham Young, Joseph Smith’s theocratic successor, continued imprinting the Plat of Zion concept, with utilitarian revisions as necessary, on successive colonial settlements in the West. Salt Lake City was laid out with the four principal streets bounding the solitary yet central temple block.

Returning to Goldberger’s assertion, however, so what of Salt Lake City? Because of the overly large block sizes and wide streets the city exudes a suburban feel in its city center vis-à-vis the densely packed fabric of, say, Portland, Oregon. Salt Lake’s streets are monotonous and uniformly rigid which is surprisingly disorienting despite its obscene rationality. As mentioned, the gridded blocks are ten acres in size and require roughly two minutes to walk end to end, eight minutes around. The streets hold to a uniform 132 foot width, averaging approximately 15 feet of sidewalk on either side with 100 feet of road surface, give or take. Young’s 19th century urban framework accepted the intrusion of the automobile with considerable ease and its accommodation has changed little since the extraction of the intra-city trolley system in the 1950s and 60s. However, in anticipation of the 2002 Winter Olympics, Salt Lake City “re-constructed” a much needed light-rail system. The 19-mile light rail system, smartly named TRAX, consists of two lines originating downtown at the Salt Lake City Intermodal Hub; one line, which opened in 1999, heads south to Sandy and the other, which opened in 2001, branches east to the University of Utah. Salt Lake City’s Main Street, from South Temple (at the northern aspect) to 400 South (at the southern aspect), was redesigned as a result of the light rail line and now exists as a fresh counterpoint to the surrounding ubiquity of the auto-philic streets. Salt Lake’s Main Street sidewalks are much wider than the typical widths in the rest of the city center; as well there are only two lanes (one on each side of the street) dedicated to the automobile, and of course two light rail tracks. In this five block strip, there are expansive pedestrian platforms at the first, third and fifth blocks providing access to the train and offering a bit of diversity to the street. Here the city comes to life; the shops are vibrant and oriented to the sidewalk and the pedestrian, there exist outdoor dining areas, places to sit, the trees are full and regular, and the architecture exists in the background as a subtext to the street. Main Street is replete with civic amenities, which leaves one to bemoan the drought in the rest of the city. The street itself is a civic amenity.

Brigham Young’s streets were designed ostensibly to accommodate the required turning radius of a team of oxen hitched to a wagon. This archaic function still exists in a majority of the surface streets in the city, however why this remains important is an ongoing mystery, unless one considers the turning radius of the average SUV. Perhaps Young’s prescience anticipated this ungodly environment.

Paul Goldberger continued: “The street means more than the building, and that you can make a great street out of so-so buildings if they are put together well and relate to each other well and make a tight urban fabric, and if you have enough great streets you have one of the most important ingredients of a great city.” Getting at the heart of Goldberger’s argument requires a look at a city known for its striking streets: Paris.

On their face, Paris and Salt Lake City are two of the most unlikely comparitive urban models. Salt Lake once boasted the Paris Department store and the two cities developed into their modern cloak in the 1860s but beyond that, their growth and development resulted from a very diverse set of variables, with a diverse set of end goals, and by very diverse political groups with varied interests. Modern Paris is burdened with its own issues of sprawl, crime and overpopulation, to which any large metropolis is necessarily subject, however it boasts some of the most diverse streetscapes of any city on earth. Goldberger would love modern day Paris with this endless street diversity. It only became a hallowed model of urban planning in the latter half of the 19th century, prior to that time it existed as a medieval rabbit’s warren teeming with narrow twisting roads and dirty alleys. Thomas Jefferson, who spent a considerable amount of his career in Paris as the U.S. Ambassador, stated of cities in general: “The yellow fever will discourage the growth of great cities in our nation & I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man…” Pre-Haussmann Paris was Jefferson’s likely reference in this anti-urban denunciation.

Georges-Eugène Haussmann and Brigham Young were contemporaries. Both exuded a large and dominant personality, accented by their large portly figures. Both are regarded in their locale as pre-eminent urban planners. Haussmann’s modern reinvention of medieval Paris was on a scale unlike any seen before or after, excluding of course cities ravaged by war or natural tragedy. Haussmann's crafty re-urbanization was largely accomplished by obliterating many of the old, twisting streets and leveling rundown apartment houses. The great urban voids were then replaced with the rues, avenues and wide, tree-lined boulevards which is what Paris is heralded for today. Other elements of Haussman's plan included uniform building heights along the grand boulevards with anchoring elements such as the Arc de Triomphe and the Grand Opera House. Haussmann's plan for Paris inspired some of the most important global architectural movements, including the City Beautiful Movement in the United States. During this urban recreation many of the boulevards were just that, just the street. Development followed the street which is an important point which I’ll come back to. Paris seems to just get better with time like a fine Bordeaux.

Salt Lake City, however, seems a stale cola in comparison, which in effect is just losing its gas. As Goldberger suggests, Salt Lake’s streets may be a liability, however taking the high road (no pun intended) its streets may be an endearing and empowering asset. Salt Lake’s streets already fit the Paris template. Unlike Haussmann’s destruction of Paris, Salt Lake simply has to refit its existing network, akin to removing extra and unecessary clothing as temperatures rise. Most importantly, there must exist a defined hierarchy of streets within the city.

The Parisian “Grand Boulevard” street type can be aptly applied to the existing Salt Lake “arterials” accessing downtown. These include 700 East starting at 2100 South and terminating at the landmark anchor, South Temple; State Street starting at 2100 South and continuing to the Beaux-Arts State Capitol (1916), by Utah’s preeminent architect Richard K.A. Kletting, as the landmark anchor; 400 South starting at the Interstate-15 off-ramp with the University of Utah’s John R. Park Building (1914) as the anchor, which was designed, by the way, by the prominent firm Cannon, Fetzer & Hansen; North Temple beginning at Salt Lake’s International Airport with the Salt Lake Temple as the anchor; 500 South beginning at 700 East and extending to Interstate-15; and 600 South beginning at Interstate-15 and extending to 700 East. These streets are hierarchically the most important, functioning as the primary gateways to Salt Lake City and should be the “Grand Boulevards.” These should offer diverse transit alternatives such as TRAX (as on 400 South and planned for North Temple), Bus Rapid Transit lines, and, of course, automobiles. (See Drawing 1) As well, major arterials from I-15 to the south should populate this category and include 1300 South, 2100 South, and 3300 South all extending to 700 East.

 The Parisian “Boulevard” street type should include South Temple (from the University of Utah past the temple and to the Union Pacific Railroad Depot; Main Street from 2100 South past the temple to the Main Street Plaza (where a stoic statue of Brigham Young stands); West Temple from 1300 South past the temple to the huge architectural behemoth LDS Conference Center. The Salt Lake temple exists as a dominant theme in the overall landscape of these boulevards. These streets should mimic the landscape on Main Street described above, still providing space for the automobile but not allowing it to dominate. Again there should be TRAX lines, bus lines, trolley lines, etc. (See Drawing 2)

The Parisian “Avenue” street type should include 100 South, 200 South, 300 South, 200 West, 300 West, 100 East, 200 East and 300 East; essentially, the commercial core of the city outside of the four principal boulevards. The avenues should be pedestrian oriented with wide sidewalks, bike lanes, bus lines, trolley lines, etc. The automobile will still be allowed but will be a very minor theme to the overall street character. Use of one-way directional patterns should abound at this level to create elbow room for a wide variety of users. (See Drawing 3)

The Parisian “Rue” street type should apply to the remainder of the streets from 400 East to 700 East, from 400 West to 700 West, and from 700 South to 1200 South are primarily residential in character and should be redesigned to include dedicated bike lanes, trees, ample pedestrian sidewalks and promenades, etc. Because of the overall use pattern they should be intimately scaled to the human. The automobile traffic present on these streets should be strictly local. (See Drawing 4)

There should be a progressive and radical initiative on Salt Lake City’s part to continue to promote the development of mid-block alleys, an agenda already being stressed in current master planning initiatives. Mid-block alleys are essential to the future vitality and success of the large and unwieldy Zionic blocks. The mid-block alleys create a permeance within the city, allowing it to breathe in a sense. Mid-block crosswalks should be a mandatory component of a mid-block alley. In essensce a secondary block pattern shoud be established which gives primacy to the pedestrian.

Within all of the models described above a rich diversity of street sub-types can and should exist within each of the street types. Looking closely at the “boulevard,” if TRAX is only feasible on Main Street then other streets within this genre should be outfitted with bus rapid transit, trolley lines, bikes lanes, etc. As streets take on a distinct character, the monotony of the grid will be diminished and citizens will form a relationship with the street.

The ultimate function and goal of the street is it’s capacity to transport people and goods from one point to another, in other words a vehicle for commerce. The street is the vehicle for commerce, not the car. The rational grid built by the pioneers in Salt Lake City accomplishes this economic proposition with unprecedented efficiency. The street will accept any number of transportation alternatives to fulfill its function. In fact, with a greater diversity of transportation alternatives, the street will function at its highest and most optimal. Let’s consider a hypothetical: 100 citizens must get from Main Street to the University of Utah. If all were to hop in their cars, in the large parking lot required to house the cars downtown, and get on 400 South, these 100 cars occupying the current three-lane roadway, assuming each car requires at least its own space and the space of a car in front and back for elbow room, the cars would require at least two blocks (roughly 1500 feet in 3 lanes). These cars would require a large parking area on the other end as well. Now if you added TRAX and assumed 75% opted for this mode of transport, the 25 cars now occupying the three lanes would require only a half a block (about 375 feet). A single TRAX car easily would house 75 passengers and takes up only about 80 feet of linear space (compared with 750 feet for 3 lanes of cars or 2250 feet for a single lane of 75 cars). Now if we add bike lanes and give 15 of those people bikes, and 75 still ride TRAX, we have only 10 cars on the road and these cars only require 100 feet of space packed into 3 lanes. This is about 1/8 of the Salt Lake’s typical block. Suddenly there seems to be little need for three lanes of car traffic and the parking areas required at the origin and destination points is absolutely minimal.

Outside of the central city there exists intact neighborhoods with distinct character and rich diversity with established and fabulous streetscapes. These include the Avenues, Rose Park, Glendale, Sugar House, and Federal Heights. By providing transit options to these “streetcar suburbs,” these areas will continue to thrive and add to the vitality of the city. Another important component of Salt Lake’s urban re-invention would be the inclusion of greater Salt Lake in the mix. For example, the southern boundary of Salt Lake exists at 2100 South, at which point the City of South Salt Lake begins. There is nothing architecturally or geographically that separates the two cities. The Grand Boulevards on State Street and 700 East described above should continue through South Salt Lake to the southern “boroughs” of Midvale, Murray, Sandy and Draper.

Transportation is the key. Alex Marshall stated in his profound book entitled How Cities Work: “Every city built has grown from the spine of its transportation system, like flesh around bones, whether it be a river, a trail, a railroad, or a highway. If we want to shape a city, we have to shape its transportation system.” In summation, to borrow a common phrase: “If you build it, they will come.”

© 2010 Steven D. Cornell

Sources:
Goldberger, Paul. Utah Heritage Foundation Annual Preservation Conference Plenary Address.

Smith, Joseph. History of the Church, 1:357-59.

Marshall, Alex. How Cities Work. 46.

Utah's Space Age Temples at Ogden and Provo

Mormon temple construction succumbed to the strains of economic depression in the 1930s and the distractions of World War II in the 1940s, a construction drought lasting nearly two decades. Construction resumed in 1945 with the completion of a temple in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Additional temples were constructed in Bern, Switzerland in 1955, Los Angeles, California in 1956, Hamilton, New Zealand and London, England in 1958, and Oakland, California in 1964. The temples in the post-war period were distinctly modern, vis-à-vis the early Utah temples, with their minimalist vernacular. This new breed was devoid of extravagant ornament, yet still suited to the established temple typology. The Idaho Falls Idaho Temple resembles a wedding cake with its progressive setbacks which eventually resolve into the central spire. The Bern Switzerland Temple, the London England Temple, and the Hamilton New Zealand Temple all formally exhibit a heavy and grounded rectangular main massing contrasted with a spire engaged in the front façade with a distinct vertical character. The Los Angeles California Temple exhibits a more elaborate base, in the form of a Greek cross, yet maintains the vertical spire on the front of the massing. The Oakland California temple is a derivation of the Los Angeles Temple but with five spires, with prominence given to the spire in the center of the massing. The four lesser spires act more as pinnacles, an extension of the main mass. Although these were modern temples, the interior spaces were designed for the traditional live ceremony with two important exceptions.


As if to usher in the modern era, in 1953 President David O. McKay commissioned a 16-millimeter film version of the endowment ceremony, up until that time it was a live ceremony, to be used in the one-room Swiss Temple. However, the Oakland temple was the first temple designed with the intention of modernizing the temple ritual by implementing 35-millimeter projection screens for a new film in the endowment rooms, thus altering the traditional interior plan and modernizing the temple ceremony. The Oakland temple bridged the transition between the earlier and less efficiently managed ‘live-action’ temples and the streamlined efficiency of the neo-modern temples, the first two being the Provo Utah and Ogden Utah temples, both of which were built in 1972 and designed by then Church Architect Emil B. Fetzer. Each exhibited a solitary central spire, vaguely reminiscent of the post-war temple typology, but embraced an obvious, yet highly abstract, ornamental program to embellish the exterior, something the immediately preceding temples lacked. Formally, both consisted of a rectangular massing with soft chamfered corners articulated with alternating attenuated windows within wider solid spandrels, all detached and elevated from its larger orthogonal base through the use of a narrow band of windows recessed from the face of the main block above. A tall central spire contrasted with the main form like a toothpick through a Reuben. These new Utah temples exhibited formal characteristics anathema to the traditional temple building typology. The new forms boasted of heightened efficiency of the ceremonies within and, therefore promoted a sense of fretful urgency to the work. Each served a large population center, relieving the stress on the overburdened Salt Lake Temple.

The Ogden and Provo Utah Temples both resemble a futuristic architecture and would greatly influence the architecture of the Washington D.C. Temple (1974), next in line and in design during the construction of the two Utah temples. An associative metaphor is a method whereby one comes to understand the unfamiliar modern building with something that one understands through familiarity. The Apollo Space program depended on the sleek and streamlined Saturn V rocket boosters to propel the astronauts’ module beyond the terrestrial frontiers and into the great voids of space. The Ogden and Provo Temples captured the same imagery in their architecture with the spires resembling the Saturn V breaking away from the earthly tether atop of pillar of fire and the main massing resembling the billowing exhaust from the powerful rocket boosters. This familiar imagery was seared in the collective memory of America in July 1969 as Apollo 11 targeted the Moon. Although the Saturn V symbolic imagery was likely unintended by the architect, the intended symbol of the new Utah temples, the Hebraic pillar of fire and the cloud God employed to stifle the Egyptian army as Israel made her miraculous escape, was very similar. The Ogden and Provo Temples are unlike any other temple, they are larger symbols, where the architectural systems of space, structure, and program are subordinated and suppressed by the overall symbolic form. As Robert Venturi alleged: “This type of building-becoming-sculpture we call the duck in honor of the duck shaped drive-in, “The Long Island Duckling.” The Provo and Ogden Utah temples are therefore ducks in Post-Modern theory.

Both temples occupy very diverse sites. The Ogden Temple is sited near the center of downtown, the Provo Temple at the foot of the craggy Y Mountain, atop Provo’s east bench. The Ogden Temple is seen from without the city and the Provo Temple is seen from within the city. Although the architecture of each reflects its time, both have been continuously impugned by architectural critics and church members alike for their lack of religious aesthetics worthy of Mormonism’s most important building type. The Church has made attempts to refine and standardize each of the outstanding temples in recent years by painting the gold colored spires a bland and boring white and perching a gilded Angel Moroni at the top. Each temple was designed and conceived of as a machine with a singular functional motive: to relentlessly churn out ordinance work for the living and dead. In that regard, each has been highly successful and despite the paucity of architectural acceptance, each has assumed an iconic presence and defined a sense of place.

However, in November 2009, the nonagenarian former architect Emil Fetzer died. As if signaling a green light, the Church immediately developed plans to update the Ogden temple and on February 17, 2010, ceremoniously announced plans to scrap the iconic Ogden exterior for one resembling the newly completed Draper, Utah temple, which is the new “standard plan” for temples. In other words, the iconic Ogden temple will no longer be iconic, but will become a bland and monotonous member of the new group.  Additional upgrades will include improvements to the old electrical, heating and plumbing systems with more modern, energy-saving systems. As well, the above ground parking will be eliminated and an underground parking garage will be constructed along with a complete redesign of of the temple block. The changes affect the adjacent Ogden tabernacle which will lose its spire in submission to the more hierarchically important building type. Paul Anderson, a Mormon temple scholar, opined that the Ogden Temple's look was controversial from the beginning. He added: “Some of the building materials were associated with commercial, not sacred architecture, and the location on a main city street, rather than elevated above it, added to that impression.” For one as conversant as Anderson, the precedent for siting the temple in an urban setting gained acceptance with the early temples, Kirtland, Ohio, Nauvoo, Illinois, and especially Salt Lake City, Utah, which functions as Mormonism’s primary architectural symbol.

Architectural preservationists should be up in arms about the planned changes. The Ogden Utah temple, along with its close twin, represent a paradigmatic shift in the way in which Mormons conceived and interpreted the temple, transitioning from the temple as a sacred structure to the temple as a machine. As the Church’s 14th and 15th operating temples, and two of four built in the 1970s, these were designed for ordinance work, and not as places of refuge and communion for the faithful adherents. As the sense of urgency for temple work increased, twenty-six temples were constructed in the 1980s, twenty-four in the 1990s, and sixty-one in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The update to the Ogden facade represents a rejection of the history associated with these specific temples.  Ironically, the Church made a gross error in the 1970s when it allowed architect Emil Fetzer to gut the interior of the historic Logan Utah temple and replace it with a disturbing 1970s interior, closely reminiscent of the Ogden and Provo interiors.  The same intentions seem to be at play with this planned renovation.

A member of the Church’s presiding First Quorum of the Seventy, Elder William R. Walker explained, “the Ogden Utah Temple has been a beacon of faith in downtown Ogden for nearly forty years and has blessed those who have served and worshipped within its walls. We hope these improvements will not only better serve Church members but also add to the beauty of downtown Ogden for all to enjoy.” He further explained that, "It basically is the same as building a new temple.” The decision to reinvent the exterior of the temple originated from the three members of the Church's governing First Presidency Walker added, because “they thought it somewhat dated.” One hopes that the First Presidency will moderate their extreme architectural urges when they consider the outdatedness of the Salt Lake, Manti, Logan, St. George, and for that matter any temple constructed prior to the Ogden Utah temple.

© 2010 Steven D. Cornell

Sources
1.  Buerger, David John. The Mysteries of Godliness: A History of Mormon Temple Worship. Smith Research Associates: San Francisco. 1994. 167.

2.  Jencks, Charles. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. 3rd Edition. Rizzoli: New York. 1977. 40.

3.  Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. Learning From Las Vegas : The Forgotten Symbol of Architectural Form. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 1977. 87.

4.  Salt Lake Tribune. February 18, 2010. 'Somewhat dated' LDS temple to get new look.

American Fork Main Street

The recently constructed Good Earth Whole Foods development on West Main Street in American Fork is blatantly more conspicuous than the early 20th century house it replaced and therefore more impressive in our collective memory. With little effort the developer abandoned the historic value of the site and in a larger sense further eroded the historic fabric of American Fork’s Main Street. The ostensibly trivial removal of elements in American Fork’s historic core do not seem to be a legitimate concern to those involved in local city planning. It’s akin to whittling away at the base of a mature oak tree, initially the cuts are harmless, but over time the cumulative effect undermines the entire structural system and destroys the tree with catastrophic and irreversible effect. Death by a thousand cuts, as it were.

The proposal to demolish the historic house was presented at a planning commission meeting in 2006. A few local preservationists in attendance spoke in defense of the historic structure on Main Street and decried the proposed Good Earth development. If and when historic architecture is replaced, the replacement should be better than that which is replaced and should at a minimum reference the historic condition. There is so much potential to develop responsibly and sustainably, yet cities seem to lack resolve in upgrading exiting Euclidian codes and are reluctant to confront developers. The disruptive urban and architectural issues with the Good Earth development are numerous. The building is set back from the street face with parking areas awkwardly plopped in front paying homage to the automobile. Without decrying the distasteful nature of the architecture, to replace a historic residence with a strip mall is contrary to every current urban planning best practice.

The home’s eventual demise was delayed due to some technicalities in the approval process required for the demolition permit, but ultimately not prevented. During the course of that meeting the Planning Commission Director blithely remarked, “We can’t save everything.” The decision to demolish the structure was based on economic considerations and the director was accurate in suggesting that not everything can be saved. But when one looks at the losses to date in this growing community it is long past time to unequivocally affirm that the remaining historic architecture will not be sacrificed for mediocre and poorly conceived replacements. Decisions to demolish historic structures for the sake of economic development set dismal precedents. Economic development is essential to sustaining cities, but big box and strip mall development is inappropriate and counter productive in the downtown core and especially on historic main streets in small towns like American Fork. The community as a whole is failing to protect the historic core, and until an historic overlay district is established in the downtown core with city ordinances to boot, the trend will continue and increase toward substandard development allowing unabated erosion of the remaining historic architecture and destroying it as a public and civic place.

When one spreads the losses over a number of years and generations those losses are more easily accepted, but when the cumulative effect of the losses are considered it is revolting. It is difficult to imagine that American Fork City seriously considered the demolition of American Fork’s City Hall (1903) just a few years ago. After persistent determination on the part of local and state preservationists and some determined internal city administrators, City Hall was preserved and restored in 2006, reassuming it’s rightful position as American Fork’s crown architectural jewel and receiving numerous state preservation awards. City Hall is once again the metaphorical and physical center of American Fork City.

The economic benefit reaped by developers may not necessarily be beneficial for the fragile communities which we have desperately tried to establish and retain. With each loss towns like this moves one step further from creating and retaining a walkable and pedestrian friendly city center with public amenities which includes a compelling and attractive inventory of historic architecture. In short, a distinctive and unique city center where one prefers to be. With each loss we propel ourselves one step closer to an environment geared entirely toward the automobile, a metastasizing and ubiquitous phenomena which ultimately leads to pedestrian barren landscapes like US Highway 89 which is an unrelenting amassing of strip malls and car lots. A pedestrian no mans land, a non-place. The opposite of the non-place is obvious, as James Howard Kunstler put it: “The idea that people and things exist in some sort of continuity, that we belong to the world physically and chronologically, and that we know where we are.”

A major car dealership in American Fork recently expanded to the east resulting in the demolition of three houses in Columbia Village, a historic Post-war development built in the late 1940s. This just to expand a parking lot filled with gas guzzling super-charged Dodge Ram pickups. The losses will continue to accrue until communities decide enough is enough.

Using American Fork as a mirocosmic example, this trend is occurring in many of Utah’s local communities. All is done in the name of economic development, which in no way guarantees good development. What do we care though, as long as we optimize our conveniences and destroy what created our sense of community and sense of place, to ultimately establish our coveted new organic food stores, Wal-Mart Supercenters and Auto Malls to feed our relentlessly insatiable consumerism.

© 2010 Steven D. Cornell

Daybreak: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Daybreak is the most expansive and most socially responsible suburban residential development to grace Utah’s montane landscape since World War II. I say suburban development because it fits comfortably into the ubiquitous sprawling development model. Although Daybreak differs from the suburban model in many distinct and important ways, it still remains a greenfield development dependent on the automobile for its economic function. Suburb literally means ‘under the city’ deriving from the Latin suburbium,which described a general demographic division in which the upper classes tended to inhabit areas within the city wall on one of the Seven hills of Rome, while the lower classes lived outside of the walls and at the foot of the hills. The term ‘suburban’ in American culture has assumed a pejorative inference as any resident of Detroit will attest. Suburbia is a veritable wasteland, a non-place, a “geography of nowhere.”
The suburban development at Daybreak, sited at the foot of the Oquirrh Mountains, within the boundaries of South Jordan, was made possible by the large tracts of surplus acreage under the control of Kennecott Land, the real estate arm of Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation, which is itself a subsidiary of the multi-national mining magnate, Rio Tinto based in London. The development at Daybreak is but a fraction of the overall estimated 30 to 50 year build-out of the West Bench Development, which in the end will comprise “162,800 houses in neighborhoods mixing the wealthy and wage earners in shared communities of gardens, pocket parks and surrounding open space.” This mass of land, roughly 93,000 acres in all, is nestled between the rugged landscape of the Oquirrh Mountains to the west and the medium metropolis of Salt Lake City to the east, and is estimated to house a half a million new residents.

Daybreak, initially conceived as Sunrise, will occupy 4,200 acres when fully built-out and was intended from the outset to include a variety of housing types placed within proximate location, (i.e., walkable distances) to retail and commercial centers, all of which is surrounded by open space. These design elements define the difference between Daybreak and the traditional American suburb. A key component of the Daybreak development plan calls for construction of a mid-Jordan TRAX spur to parallel the development. Referred to as Transit Oriented Development, a term coined by Berkeley New-Urbanite planner and architect Peter Calthorpe and author of Daybreak’s master plan, Daybreak neighborhoods would be oriented around a transit hub to ostensibly convey residents to their jobs or other activities throughout Salt Lake Valley. Currently the TRAX extension is under construction and is expected to be completed in 2012. In the meanwhile, the Utah Transit Authority has met the burgeoning demand for multiple transit options at Daybreak by providing express bus routes for commuters heading downtown.

A visit to Daybreak’s website creates some lasting warm and fuzzies. However, there is a darker side to all of this. West Jordan and the surrounding communities have been burdened by costs for transit infrastructure development which are not being borne by UTA alone. Murray, Midvale, West Jordan and South Jordan, with help from Kennecott Land, agreed to give UTA $1.5 million to cover roughly half of the $3.2 million environmental impact study needed just to qualify for federal funding for the new TRAX line. The 10.5 mile line will cost in excess of 450 million dollars. The local community (i.e., Salt Lake County) will bear half the cost of the new line with proceeds from a sales tax hike that voters approved last year. In addition, lest one think that this community and the larger West Bench development can subsist on public transit alone, the Utah Department of Transportation has joined in. Believing multi-faceted transit options refers to multi-laned freeways systems UDOT is planning and constructing the Mountain View Corridor, a parallel freeway sited roughly 10 miles west of the commuter behemoth, Interstate-15, in response. The cost of constructing the new freeway system is currently estimated at $730 million dollars was allocated by the Utah State Legislature in the 2009 Legislative Session as part of a bonding package for start of construction in Salt Lake County. Costs to maintain and expand the new freeway system in the future will continue to burden the taxpayers and the tax payers children and their children. Does all of this sound familiar? While it may be a TOD in Peter Calthorpe’s eyes, it is also just another auto-dependent suburb with New Urban amenities. As well, clustered like fleas on a healthy dog at the entrance to Daybreak off of the auto-centric Bangerter Highway is “The District at South Jordan.” Comprising 120 acres, The District is anchored by big box commercial chains including Target, JC Penney and Larry H. Miller's 20-Screen Mega-Plex Theater, to name a few. The District offers approximately 1,200,000 square feet of retail space. The District is primarily marketed for its adjacency to the “Fastest Growing Residential Area in the Wasatch.” Civilization close at hand just in case the New Urbanite might need to hop in the automobile hidden in the rear alley and drive the 1.2 miles to Target for baby wipes. It’s like camping with a trailer, it just can’t be done, one excludes the other. There exists a hefty dose of subterfuge amidst the clean Disneyland appearance. It’s difficult to imagine why residents of Daybreak would forgo the use of the two or three automobiles they can easily afford to ride TRAX.

In near comical fashion, Ivory Homes announced in June of 2008 that it planned to start building homes in the North Shore Village. Apparently, the mighty recession makes even the most irresponsible sprawl developer in Utah desperate enough to stoop to traditional neighborhood design. At the time, Chris Gamvroulas, Ivory’s Development Director arrogantly stated, “We have our way of doing things, and they have their way of doing things. It takes a while to make the plans we designed fit their standards.” In other words, Daybreak may be desperate enough to keep construction progressing in a sluggish economy to make steep concessions to satisfy the whims of the careless developer. Stucco and vinyl siding were outlawed in previous Daybreak developments, yet the romantically labeled home styles in the Ivory repertoire such as Alden, Chadwick, Dearborn, Claybourne, Ivory Stratford, Imperial, and Hartford have somehow donned the contraband Ivory cladding.

Modeled on the Andres Duany’s iconic Seaside in Florida, Daybreak lacks key New Urban amenities. Given its emphasis on walkability, there seems to be little of that going on. A walk through Daybreak does not give the impression of a friendly, open community, with neighbors visiting on the street, but rather of a closed, insular landscape, because it is all a façade. The cars are hidden in the rear alley garage, and because the community is largely car dependent, the back door is where Daybreakers interact with the community at large. As well, Daybreak lacks a diverse demographic based on income level. Overall Utah is not rich in cultural and ethnic diversity and, therefore, those quotas may be unrealistic and unattainable. However, there exists a distinctive lower income and ethnic minority in Utah, both of which are excluded financially from residency in Daybreak. There are few if any janitors, mechanics, factory workers, maintenance workers, cooks, dishwashers, secretaries, firemen, etc., that live and work in Daybreak. Traditional Neighborhood Design calls for above-shop residences, granny-flats, basement apartments, etc., to provide housing alternatives for those with lower income levels to live and work in the immediate community. Daybreak has none of the above; alternative living quarters, with their working class occupants, would blight the clean and sterile environs essential to marketing the Daybreak experience. When a community lacks a representative income demographic, it lacks a local economy. Community in the words of James Howard Kunstler, “ [community] is a living organism based on a web of interdependencies – which is to say, a local economy.”

Perhaps Daybreak simply needs the patina of time to fill its large shoes. For example the tree-lined avenues seem barren given the immaturity of the arbor frame. The full layering of the street is, therefore, incomplete and emits a suburban hum. As well, as retail and commercial amenities fill in over time the community may become less dependent on outside retail and commercial attractions. The commercial and retail node, SoDa Row (for South Daybreak), a 45-acre Village Center is currently under construction and in the end, although it is a bit exclusive, will provide basic amenities for the community. A 185,000 square foot corporate center which will potentially house 700 employees was recently constructed on SoDa Row and the retail center will eventually house 130,000 square feet of mixed use office and retail space. Future retail nodes, such as Rubicon Road on the other side of Oquirrh Lake, will only add to its viability.

Time will tell, but in the meantime Daybreak has certainly embraced a vibrant vision of community and elevates a standard by which future developments will be judged.

© 2010 Steven D. Cornell

Sources
Kunstler, James Howard. “The Geography of Nowhere.”
New York Times, April 7, 2006. “Utah Mining Company Building City”
Salt Lake Tribune, September 30, 2001. “Kennecott Set to Mine Golden Real Estate”
Deseret Morning News. May 9, 2004. “Cities dig deep for TRAX line”
Salt Lake Tribune, October 29, 2007. “UTA poised to build light-rail line to South Jordan.”
http://nrt258.local.cbcworldwide.com/
Salt Lake Tribune. June 3, 2008. “Ivory joins Daybreak”

The Absurdity of the Odd Fellows Hall "Preservation"

The Odd Fellows Hall was designed by architect George F. Costersian and constructed in 1891, for the fraternal organization known by the same name. The Independent Order of the Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F.) was truly an oddity in this western Mormon stronghold. The I.O.O.F. was an altruistic fraternal organization derived from similar English Oddfellows service organizations which came into being during the 1700s, at a time when altruistic and charitable acts were far less common, hence the name. Excluding the majority Mormon population, the mainly Protestant and Jewish members of the Utah Order erected their new hall in the emerging non-Mormon sector at the south end of downtown. The Odd Fellows Hall represents one of the few commercial examples of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture remaining in Utah. The Odd Fellows vacated the building some years ago, and it has since served as office and restaurant space for various business enterprises. Most recently it has served as avian refuge for countless downtown pigeons. Situated just off of Salt Lake’s Main Street on Market Street (historically known as Post Office Block), a mid-block avenue between 3rd and 4th South Streets in the downtown area, the building has undergone relatively few exterior alterations in its 116 year history. The interior unfortunately was entirely gutted and stripped in the early 1980s of its Odd Fellows interiors and replaced with conventional office improvements. The original cast iron columns are the only remaining feature of the original interior.

The Federal Government’s building division, the General Services Administration (GSA), obtained the Odd Fellows property as part of an eminent domain acquisition of the entire block, and subsequently began planning for a much needed addition to the overburdened Frank E. Moss Federal courthouse located on the same block. The courthouse addition, by a prominent New York based architectural firm, Thomas Phifer and Associates, will imperialize the entire downtown block of this medium-size metropolis, a precondition established early in the design process by the GSA as a response to security and logistical concerns and, therefore, the 10 acre parking block directly to the south across 400 South was deemed inadequate for the needs of a modern Federal Courthouse. The historic Hotel Newhouse which occupied that site until 1983 was imploded for additional parking downtown, a use that persists today.

The new courthouse addition is a likely contemporary glass box and will be a key component to the economic and human vitality of the depressed downtown. Unfortunately, any vestige of the former structures occupying the block will have been completely erased. Early schemes of the westward expansion of the Moss made attempts to incorporate the Odd Fellows Hall in part or whole but these schemes were quickly abandoned for a more unencumbered design. Relocating the Odd Fellows Hall was a compromise reached by the GSA and local preservation groups in exchange for the condemnation and eventual demolition of three additional buildings situated inside the footprint of the planned courthouse addition, one of which regrettably is the 1912 Shubrick Hotel, one of the few remaining historic hotels in Salt Lake. For the last twenty years the Shubrick has housed the highly successful Port O’Call bar and restaurant and has functioned as an unintended gateway element to Salt Lake’s downtown. Sited on the downtown area’s main access to and from Interstate 15 from 400 South, the Shubrick Hotel demarcated southwest corner of the city center. However, as a compromise with the Utah Heritage Foundation, a private foundation dedicated to the preservation of Utah’s historic buildings and landscapes, the Shubrick Hotel was deemed less important given the façade of the Odd Fellows Hall is protected under a preservation easement by the Utah Heritage Foundation. In addition, the building itself was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.

The purported preservation of the Odd Fellows Hall comes at a hefty price to the taxpayer, approaching seven million dollars, and will in the end, do little to preserve the existing fabric of the building or necessarily extend the life of the building. Unfortunately, the seven million dollars will simply cover the cost to move the building from point a to point b. It will still be a neglected run down building upon arrival in its new home, or as some have characterized it, its “final resting place.” Built of un-reinforced masonry with an internal structural wood frame with three primary levels including a mezzanine, the building is a virtual seismic tinder box and the structural integrity of the building will have undoubtedly been compromised during the relocation. Cracking and movement in the existing brick masonry walls during the relocation was constantly monitored by the contractor. The few improvements being done as part of the relocation include a seismically robust concrete foundation on which the building will simply rest, a new internal emergency egress stair and some paint. Once the GSA disposes of the property by public auction the responsibility of funding necessary improvements to meet current seismic and safety codes and to render the building habitable will fall to the new owner, an ominous task which will be difficult if not impossible to pencil out in a pro-forma given the downtown real estate is likely worth more than the structure.

The GSA’s purpose in moving the building, outside of reaping the reward of being a showy preservation steward, was simply to clear the site of the nuisance. If this bureaucratic behemoth truly were the preservation steward they so painstakingly have attempted to prove, why not just finish the job and upgrade the building for a viable future use? The GSA’s responsibility with the Odd Fellows Hall ends once the building is moved off site. Little thought or concern will be expended by the GSA after that event. “Preservation steward” suddenly seems an ill fitting moniker. There is little preservation amid a whole lot of fluff. Because of the hefty price tag associated with any lasting restoration of the Odd Fellows Hall and the strict restrictions associated with the façade easement its immediate use seems to be in jeopardy. If Salt Lake City doesn’t immediately condemn the property once it is sold to a new owner, the city will have little more than a home for homeless pigeons, perpetuating its primary function prior to relocation. Unfortunately Salt Lake City has endured more than its fair share of urban invention and reinvention, and given the paucity of the existing historic building fabric, the city has slowly eroded away, with a few oscillating leaves still clinging to the tree. The overall absurdity of the Odd Fellows relocation is proof of the absurdity of the state of preservation. Fully exposed, the relocation is no different than premium demolition resulting from continued urban renewal.

Unfortunately this story is not unique. Countless historic buildings are cleared away to make way for new urban constructions. In some cases, the life of the historic building is extended, but the building itself does not fulfill any useful purpose and over time becomes disused and discarded, in other words simply demolition by neglect. If that occurs then it will all simply be a wasted effort. Communities are too often placated by the mere presence of the historic building and fail to understand the need for viable uses necessary to maintain and preserve its existence, an alliance which is a necessary precursor for unrivaled placemaking in delicate urban areas like Salt Lake’s downtown.

© 2010 Steven D. Cornell