Unless you've been inside, it's difficult to imagine the massive nature of the LDS Church's new Conference Center north of Temple Square. So huge is the interior of the 21,000-seat auditorium, that first-time visitors looking out over its soaring open space have little more than a word to capture their awe: Wow!
With seating for more people than New York City's Madison Square Garden, the Conference Center is believed to be the largest auditorium built for worship anywhere in the world.
The 1.5 million-square-foot building and its four-level underground parking structure are 40 times the size of the Tabernacle on Temple Square, and the auditorium alone could house a Boeing 747 jet — with room to spare.
But the Conference Center auditorium is more than a cavernous meeting room. Visitors are struck by the warmth of the space, particularly when two huge projection screens on either side of the organ and choir area project digital TV images of the speakers, who can be heard easily even in the back row of the balcony more than 300 feet from the podium.
The auditorium's three levels — orchestra, terrace and balcony — hold 7,000 upholstered theater-type seats each, all with direct line-of-sight views to the stage. Unlike the Tabernacle, there are no pillars to obstruct the view of the rostrum, no matter where conferencegoers are seated.
A massive cherry-wood casing for the organ, rising 42 feet high and 75 feet wide behind the pulpit and choir seats, has 143 pipes visible on the front display and was crafted entirely from the wood of a 200-year-old American cherry tree. Its 7,667 individual pipes come in a vast assortment of shapes and sizes, and the five-keyboard organ console can be moved from the rostrum to a small room offstage, allowing the organist to play unseen by the auditorium audience.
Seating for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's 325 members and general authorities of the church is in front of the organ casing, culminating with a pulpit front and center as the focal point. Seen by millions of church members worldwide every six months, the pulpit has a story of its own.
When President Gordon B. Hinckley announced in April 1996 that the new Conference Center would be built, a black walnut tree was growing in his backyard, planted there decades before. When it had to be removed months later, President Hinckley asked a friend in the wood business whether the wood was sound and, if so, what could be made with it. With emotion in his voice and a smile on his lips, President Hinckley told those attending the first session of general conference in the building last April how the tree he had planted so long ago had become the pulpit from which he was speaking.
Elegant woodwork is incorporated throughout the public areas of the building as well. Cherry wood and pear wood paneling lines the walls in the Conference Center's main lobby areas, which feature Dakota mahogany floors, polished brass fixtures and complement the airy, open feel of the auditorium with plenty of natural light from windows that punctuate the building's stately gray granite exterior.
Artwork and sculptures depicting a variety of scenes and people familiar to church members decorate the building's interior. Particularly notable is the Gallery of Presidents, featuring bronze busts of each LDS Church president resting on individual pillars on the Conference Center's balcony level.
An appreciation for the arts has been built into the Conference Center in other ways.
In addition to the auditorium's versatile design, allowing for the podium and much of the seating to be replaced by a huge stage, the building features a new 900-seat theater, with state-of-the-art sound and lighting comparable to Broadway theater systems. And the orchestra pit platform in front of the stage can be raised to provide additional staging, or lowered to accommodate productions requiring an orchestra.
With its own box office, director's booth, two large dressing rooms, two small dressing rooms, two makeup rooms, two rooms for storing and cleaning costumes, and production offices, the theater — which has its own outside entrance on the northwest corner of the building — can be used for "stand alone" public performances. President Hinckley has said he is eager for the community at large to use the facility.
Outside, visitors can visit the four-acre rooftop meadow, complete with a massive fountain that flows in four directions through a series of springs, collecting into a large rooftop tank directly above the pulpit in the auditorium. The recirculating water then flows west to the building's 92-foot spire, where it cascades 67 feet down the south face of the building fronting Temple Square in a multi-level drop that widens at each level toward the base of the building.
A combination of 21 native grasses, collected as seeds from various mountain meadows along the Wasatch Front, and 300 varieties of Utah wildflowers grow amid bristlecone pine, Swedish aspen and Serbian spruce trees, mirroring the native plants that grow at progressively higher elevations in the Utah mountains.
Planted atop 6 inches of Styrofoam-like insulating material, the gardens feature a full irrigation system and were planted by hundreds of volunteers in a Utah-manufactured artificial growing mix designed to prevent weeds, disease, pests and insects to reduce long-term maintenance costs.
Terraced planting areas along the building's east side are filled with some of the 1,400 trees that grace the Conference Center grounds.
Adding to the appeal of a large fountain on the spacious plaza of the building's southwest corner, large, rough-hewn chunks of granite line a shallow creek bed on the south edge of the Conference Center block, where the waters of City Creek run open and westward along North Temple, providing yet another water feature for visitors to the 10-acre site.
The church literally helped pave the way for the creek to flow above ground again in recent years when it teamed with the city to help build City Creek Park at the corner of Second Avenue and State Street.
With its terraced, multi-level design, the Conference Center has added a religious and civic gem to Salt Lake City, all done as President Hinckley described it: with "a touch of elegance."