As many as 750,000 people entered a Latter-day Saint temple prior to its dedication in 1974 a moment when a building meant to be viewed from a distance became, briefly, a public interior. The paradox of visibility and privacy is at the heart of temple architecture in Mormonism: these buildings are meant to be seen from a distance, but entered by few.
The tradition begins with a movement that grew from a small church founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 to a people who were determined to build what Smith called “cities of Zion.” In Nauvoo, Illinois, renamed for a “Beautiful Place,” the people built a large Greek Revival temple that marked permanence even as the hostility closed in around them. The original Nauvoo Temple was finished in 1846 and destroyed, but its importance lasted long enough for a new generation of the church to build on the site; the temple was dedicated in 2002 with a replica front and a new interior design.
Persecution and forced migration affected the history of the Mormons in general and contributed to the architectural style. The early temples were protective thick walls, few windows, a certain confidence that bordered on fortress mentality. When Brigham Young oversaw the construction of the Salt Lake Temple, symbolism became structural. The traditional six-tower design was hierarchical: the east towers, representing the higher priesthood, were taller than the west. This would be carried out in the suburbs of the twentieth century, where height and position did cultural as well as religious work.
The church’s building program intersected with highways, car culture, and visibility by the mid-century boom years. The Washington, D.C., Temple was situated in such a manner as to be a landmark along the Beltway; its wooded site was chosen specifically to make it a landmark along the Capital Beltway. It stands 288 feet tall and contains an 18-foot angel Moroni statue scales that shrink theology to a silhouette. But inside, it follows the traditional temple plan: no grand nave, no cathedral-like hall, and many rooms with no windows, which aids in the passage through certain ordinances rather than gathering for traditional Sunday worship.
This internal logic explains a great deal about why temples can be so domestic despite their monumental fronts. Instead of a single worship space, the faithful move through a series of rooms to learn, to worship, to seal, and finally to a celestial room that seeks to recreate heaven through light, sound, and material opulence. The purpose is not congregational show but rather progress. A historian of religion, John G. Turner, has summarized the distinction with characteristic candor: “aren’t used for ordinary worship, but for particular rituals (…) for the living and the dead.”
The exteriors, by contrast, have never been able to come together in a style. In Idaho Falls, the temple was constructed in an Art Deco parlance that is more characteristic of high-rise buildings than temples. The tower is more like a setback skyscraper, and the material used to cover the tower was an experimental one, Mo-Sai precast white marble and concrete aggregate, which was chosen for its bright, sculptural quality that accentuates the shadows at night.
The single spire architectural style of the building marked a shift in style but maintained the temple’s “wedding cake” quality of levels and height. Of these variations, a few things remain the same: prominent sites, light-colored stone or buff-colored facades, and the near-total absence of crosses an architectural flourish that acknowledges the Latter-day Saints’ emphasis on the resurrected Christ. The angel Moroni, when present, is less a decoration than a signifier, a reference to Joseph Smith’s tale of golden plates and the church’s future role as an international body that uses architecture as both demarcation and welcome.
