"What a remarkable and useful building (the Tabernacle) has been. What great purposes it has served. I know of no other structure like it in all the world. . . . As today we close the doors of this Tabernacle and look forward to opening the doors of the new Conferenc Center next April, we do so with love, with appreciation, with respect, with reverence -- really with affection -- for this building and for those who have gone before us, who built so well, and whose handiwork has served so long. . . .The spirit of the Lord has been in this structure. It is sacred unto us. We hope, we anticipate, we pray that the new structure will likewise radiate the same spirit. . . . And so, as we might say to an old friend, goodbye. May the blessing of God rest upon this sacred and wonderful hall."
President Gordon B. HinckleyOctober 1999 General Conference
"Illogical as it may seem to some -- and a testimony of divine guidance to others -- there was no overall plan for the Tabernacle. . . . the roof was constructed from a rough sketch drawn by Brigham Young and Henry Grow and from details that Grow drew as he went along. Brother Truman O. Angell's diary makes clear that the interior was all designed after April conference of 1867, while the exterior of the Tabernacle was approaching its finishing stages. These items emphasize both the genius and good fortune that attended the construction of that remarkable building."
Stewart Grow
great-grandson of Tabernacle architect Henry Grow, in Improvement Era, April 1967
"There were perhaps not then in all America in 1867 a handful of auditoriums of such size. And as we have performed in the great capitals and concert halls of Europe and America, we are ever more grateful and humbled and ever more amazed at what our pioneer forbears did with what they had -- people not long since homeless, at times hungry; facing untold hazards; some 6,000 of them died along the way before the railroad came."
Elder Richard L. Evans
April 1967 Tabernacle Centennial Celebration