{"id":42418,"date":"2022-01-20T09:54:07","date_gmt":"2022-01-20T14:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=42418"},"modified":"2022-01-17T10:13:23","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T15:13:23","slug":"sextuple-endowment-rooms-what-does-it-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2022\/01\/sextuple-endowment-rooms-what-does-it-mean\/","title":{"rendered":"Sextuple Endowment Rooms: What Does it Mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn the end, the character of a civilization is encased in its structures,\u201d stated Frank Gehry\u2014an important contemporary architect. One of the more interesting episodes in the treatment of historic Utah structures has been the decision to tear both the Ogden and Provo temples down to their frames and rebuild them with completely new fa\u00e7ades. Back in 2010, preservationists Steve Cornell and Kirk Huffaker related this structure to the character or nature of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by stating that: \u201cArchitectural preservationists should be up in arms about the planned changes. The Ogden temple with its counterpart [in Provo], represent a paradigmatic shift in the way Mormons conceived and interpreted the temple, transitioning from a sacred abode to a sacred machine.\u201d[1]<\/a> While the Ogden and Provo temples have an important place in history, it should not be assumed that they represent a worldview change in Latter-day Saint temple doctrine.<\/p>\n

The shift that Cornell and Huffaker are referencing is the streamlined organization of the buildings that allowed them to house six endowment rooms, which allowed an endowment session to begin every twenty minutes in each temple, while older temples usually were only able to begin a session every hour at best.\u00a0 Temple architect Emil Fetzer was commissioned to design a temple that was economical and functional that \u201cthe membership can use to do efficient temple work.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Fetzer described the experience of creating the interior design that was used in the temples as a vision during a conversation with Fred Baker.\u00a0 In this vision, \u201cthe most important thing was on the floor above the sealing rooms. There was a central room surrounded by a cluster of six ordinance rooms\u2026 I knew exactly how it was functioning, from the way I saw it. This was a very intriguing thing, a central Celestial Room surrounded by a cluster of six ordinance rooms. The idea was that the whole ceremony would be in one room, instead of going from room to room like the Salt Lake Temple.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Fetzer drew inspiration for his design from what he called a Danish ellipse. He had read about a new park being designed in Copenhagen that was completely surrounded by a roadway in the shape of an elongated ellipse. The outline of the upper two floors of the temple was really a modification of this park, with a corridor running completely around the outside wall that had entrances to the ordinance rooms.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 This also proved extremely efficient in accomplishing its purposes\u2014both the Ogden and Provo temples topped the Salt Lake Temple as far putting out the most endowment sessions per month shortly after going into operation, passing up the pioneer temple\u2019s 50,000 endowments a month at about 75,000 endowments per month each. Taking pride in this as well, Emil Fetzer noted, \u201cBasically, everything that has been built since that time has a kernel of the Ogden and Provo Temples.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

That being said, my specific qualm with the preservationists\u2019 statement is that they argued that the Ogden and Provo temples marked a shift from a \u201csacred abode to a sacred machine.\u201d \u00a0This seems to imply that temples existed primarily as a place for meditation and communion with God and that the focus on performing ordinances only started with the Ogden and Provo temples.\u00a0 The performance of ordinances for the living and the dead, however, was among the primary purposes given for temple construction for over a hundred years before the Ogden temple was announced. This created an increased pressure on temples throughout the 20th<\/sup> century that led to a need for a more efficient ways to perform ordinances, signifying that there was a focus on ordinance work long before the six endowment room plan was created. The architecture of older temples demonstrates this evolution for efficiency.<\/p>\n

As early as 1841, \u201cJoseph said\u00a0the Lord said that we should\u00a0build our\u00a0house\u00a0to his Name\u00a0that we might be\u00a0Baptized\u00a0for the Dead,\u201d[6]<\/a> indicating that even the Nauvoo temple (the second temple built by the Latter Day Saints) was constructed at least partially with ordinances for the dead in mind. After the Latter-day Saint community moved to Utah and began construction on four temples there, the performance of ordinances for the living and the dead was again stated as an important purpose for constructing temples. For example, in 1877 President John Taylor\u2014the leader of the Church at that time\u2014stated: \u201cWhy do we want to build these temples?… The Lord has shown us that we must build Temples in which to officiate for [all men who have lived and died without knowledge of the Gospel].\u201d[7]<\/a> \u00a0Thus, the performances of ordinances was listed as a central purpose in constructing temples long before the Ogden and Provo temples were even conceived, indicating that temples were intended to be \u201csacred machines\u201d before the plans were laid out for those two temples in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

The emphasis placed on performing ordinance work for the dead led to an increase in genealogical work and temple attendance in the Latter-day Saint community, showing an interest in performing ordinances decades before the Ogden and Provo temples were built. As indicated one study, the amount of endowments for the dead performed per year saw a dramatic increase between 1910 and 1970, even when measured against the growing Church membership.[8]<\/a> With this growth, existing temples had to find ways to deal with the mounting pressure. The Salt Lake temple went from one endowment session three days a week in 1911 to three sessions four days a week in the 1920s.\u00a0 To further relieve pressure, the endowment ceremony was codified during the 1920s and reduced from six to nine hours long to about two to three hours in length, close to the length of the ceremony today.[9]<\/a> Pressure still mounted and it was a 1967 report that \u201ctraffic in the Manti and Logan Temples is becoming so acute that it becomes necessary either to remodel those Temples or build new ones\u201d that prompted the decision to construct the Ogden and Provo temples.[10]<\/a> In this light, the efficiency in the design for these twin Space-age temples was not born of a shift in belief but an increasing need for the ability to perform endowments in more effective ways.<\/p>\n

Rather than ordinance work being the primary purpose for earlier temples, Cornell and Huffaker argue that temples were meant to be sacred abodes prior to the construction of the Ogden and Provo temples. Seeing that form follows function, the architecture of the earliest temples does indicate that this was one of their purposes. The first Latter Day Saint temple, built in Kirtland, Ohio, was constructed as a \u201cmeetinghouse temple\u201d primarily consisting of two large meeting rooms placed one on top of the other, showing that meetings were among the most important functions of this temple. Further, this temple was referred to as \u201cThe House of the Lord\u201d more often than \u201cthe temple,\u201d and Church members were promised the chance to see the face of God when it would be complete, indicating that it was also thought of as a sacred abode of divine presence.[11]<\/a> \u00a0Later Church leaders also indicated that a purpose of attending temples was to draw closer to God. For example, Apostle John A. Widtsoe said that \u201cthe pure in heart who go into the temples, may, there by the Spirit of God, always have a wonderfully rich communion with God\u2026. In this way, the temples are always places where God manifests himself to man and increases his intelligence.\u201d[12]<\/a> Thus, the idea of the temple as a sacred abode where people can draw closer to God does fit in among the purposes for constructing temples, particularly among the earlier sanctuaries constructed in the Church, though as we’ll see, it is not the primary purpose.<\/p>\n

Continuing with the idea that form follows function, however, we see a change in the pattern of temple construction arise around 1877. The St. George temple was the only Utah temple to be completed at that point, and to effectively perform the endowment ceremony, the lower assembly hall of that temple was divided into several rooms by screens, allowing the endowment to be presented in a series of rooms. This allowed new endowment sessions to start while previous ones moved into the next room, increasing the number of ordinances that could be performed. Realizing the changing needs of the times, the designs for the interiors of the three Utah temples still under construction were modified to included progressive endowment rooms instead of a lower assembly hall.[13]<\/a> \u00a0The next temple to be constructed\u2014the Cardston, Alberta temple\u2014had no assembly halls whatsoever; favoring a structure designed entirely around the endowment ordinance rooms.[14]<\/a> \u00a0The next few temples (Laie, Hawaii; Mesa, Arizona; Idaho Falls, Idaho; and Los Angeles, California) followed the same basic design. During the 1950s the Church recorded the endowment using motion picture technology, allowing the ordinance to be presented in a single, small room with minimal staff. This meant that the temples could be built on a smaller, less expensive scale and paved the way for further innovations. The Oakland, California temple\u2014completed in 1964\u2014took advantage of this by utilizing two large endowment rooms to present the film simultaneously, allowing up to two hundred people to begin the ceremony every hour.[15]<\/a> \u00a0The Ogden and Provo temples\u2014announced three years later\u2014merely took this one step further with six ordinance rooms, allowing a session to begin every 20 minutes. This innovation was the result of a continual process of seeking to construct economical temples focused on the presentation of the endowment, indicating that ceremonial presentations were a main purpose of their construction as far back as the late 1800s.<\/p>\n

To return to Frank Gehry\u2019s statement that the character of a civilization (or, in this situation a religious group) is displayed in its structures, we can tell whether the Ogden and Provo temples represented a worldview shift in the Latter-day Saint conception of the temple from a \u201csacred abode\u201d to a \u201csacred machine\u201d by observing the history and architecture of other temples built by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In this light, the twin space-age temples of Utah do not represent a new ideology within the Latter-day Saint community, but rather one part of a series of innovations to meet the needs that traditional Latter-day Saint theology created. Thus, while architectural preservationists have reason to be upset about the loss of the old Ogden and Provo temples, it is not for the specific reason that Steve Cornell and Kirk Huffaker gave.\u00a0 It\u2019s more accurate to state it along the lines of what David Amott wrote: \u201cThe Provo Temple created a prototype for all temples that came after it (in the LDS Church\u2019s effort to take the temple experience to the four corners of the world), and for that reason alone it deserves to stand.\u201d[16]<\/a>\u00a0 Even with that being the case, however, the key innovation of six endowment rooms in an ellipse remains intact, since, as was noted when the renovations were underway for the Ogden Temple years ago: \u00a0\u201cWhen the decision was made by the First Presidency to do the renovation, there was obvious respect for [President David O.] McKay and other considered, and it is being built on the footprint of the first temple.\u201d[17]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Footnotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Steve Cornell and Kirk Huffaker, \u201cLDS Should Preserve Utah\u2019s Space Age Temples,\u201d Salt Lake Tribune<\/em> 2 April 2010. Web. 28 Oct 2012.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Gregory A. Prince and Wm. Robert Wright,\u00a0David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism\u00a0<\/em>(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005),\u00a0270.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Prince and Wright,\u00a0David O. McKay<\/em>, 270.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Doyle L. Green, \u201cTwo Temples to Be Dedicated,\u201d\u00a0Ensign\u00a0<\/em>January 1972<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Prince and Wright,\u00a0David O. McKay<\/em>, 271.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> “Account of Meeting and Discourse, circa 2 February 1841,” p. [8], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed January 16, 2022, https:\/\/www.josephsmithpapers.org\/paper-summary\/account-of-meeting-and-discourse-circa-2-february-1841\/1<\/a><\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> John Taylor, \u201cDiscourse by President John Taylor, November 14, 1877.\u201d Journal of Discourses.<\/em> Ed. George D. Watt, et al. 26 vol. (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, et al., 1854-1886), 19:155-156.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> David John Buerger, \u201cThe Development of the Mormon Temple Endowment Ceremony,\u201d Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought <\/em>20 (Winter 1987): 57.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition<\/em> (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 299-300.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Prince and Wright 269-270.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, <\/em>Vintage Books edition (New York City: Vintage Books, 2007), 308-19.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> John A. Widtsoe, \u201cTemple Worship.\u201d The Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine<\/em>. Vol. XII, 1921: 55-56.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Richard O. Cowan, Temples to Dot the Earth<\/em> (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1989), 82-83, 138-139.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Paul L. Anderson, \u201cA Jewel in the Gardens of Paradise: The Art and Architecture of the Hawaii Temple.\u201d BYU Studies<\/em> 39, no. 4 (2000)<\/em>: 186.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Cowan, 172-173.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Cited in Peggy Fletcher Stack and Scott D. Pierce, \u201cGoodbye, Space Age design.\u00a0 Now we know what the Provo Temple will look like,\u201d Salt Lake Tribune<\/em>, 24 November 2021, https:\/\/www.sltrib.com\/news\/2021\/11\/24\/goodbye-space-age-design\/<\/a><\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> Tom Christensen, \u201cOgden LDS Temple to reopen this year,\u201d\u00a0Standard Examiner<\/em>, Jan 30, 2014. Online, accessed 26 April 2014:\u00a0http:\/\/www.standard.net\/stories\/2014\/01\/29\/ogden-lds-temple-reopen-year<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn the end, the character of a civilization is encased in its structures,\u201d stated Frank Gehry\u2014an important contemporary architect. One of the more interesting episodes in the treatment of historic Utah structures has been the decision to tear both the Ogden and Provo temples down to their frames and rebuild them with completely new fa\u00e7ades. Back in 2010, preservationists Steve Cornell and Kirk Huffaker related this structure to the character or nature of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by stating that: \u201cArchitectural preservationists should be up in arms about the planned changes. The Ogden temple with its counterpart [in Provo], represent a paradigmatic shift in the way Mormons conceived and interpreted the temple, transitioning from a sacred abode to a sacred machine.\u201d[1] While the Ogden and Provo temples have an important place in history, it should not be assumed that they represent a worldview change in Latter-day Saint temple doctrine. The shift that Cornell and Huffaker are referencing is the streamlined organization of the buildings that allowed them to house six endowment rooms, which allowed an endowment session to begin every twenty minutes in each temple, while older temples usually were only able to begin a session […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":42424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-history","category-temples"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/stained-glass.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42418"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42425,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42418\/revisions\/42425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}