The Salt Lake Temple, which has been closed for an extensive renovation and seismic retrofit since Dec. 29, 2019, will open its doors for a rare public open house from April 2027 to October 2027.
The remodel builds upon the craftsmanship of the pioneers in an effort to ensure the iconic landmark will stand “through the millennium.”
On this episode of “Deseret Voices,” Andy Kirby, director of historic temple renovations, and Matt Grow, managing director of the Church History Department, discuss the monumental undertaking and how the church balanced the need for preservation with an eye to the future.
Subscribe to “Deseret Voices” on YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Note: Transcript edited by Steven Watkins.
McKay Coppins: Andy Kirby, Matt Grow, thank you for joining “Deseret Voices.”
Matt Grow: It’s a pleasure.
Andy Kirby: Yeah, it’s an honor to be here.
MC: So we are here in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building overlooking Salt Lake City, Temple Square and the temple, which next year will open its doors to the public for the first time in over 130 years. Millions of people are expected to come visit, to tour the temple. I wonder if we could start with you, Andy. When the leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints approached you, what was it, a decade ago, to talk about undertaking the pretty expansive renovation of what is, I think, arguably the most iconic and recognizable landmark of the church. What did they say was their ambition? What did they want to accomplish?
AK: At the time, some of the core drivers for proposing a renovation were that the building hadn’t been renovated since the 1960s. So major systems like mechanical, electrical, plumbing were close to failure and so we were worried that those types of systems needed to be fixed before they caused problems with the operation of the temple. They’d also been contemplating a seismic upgrade to the temple for many years and decided this was the time to seriously consider that. So we proposed options and they decided yes, do the seismic upgrade and do a renovation focusing mainly on drivers of those outdated and older systems.
MC: So once they decide, you know, there are structural reasons, engineering related reasons to undertake this renovation, there was then an opportunity to think kind of more expansively about what do we want Temple Square and this temple to convey to the world, right? What were those early conversations like?
AK: Yeah, when we proposed updated site plans to church leadership, for example, we proposed removing the South Visitors’ Center to access the construction site and proposed options for a replacement visitors’ center. And at that time, we received direction from the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to change the messaging at Temple Square, to make it more focused on Jesus Christ and his ministry so that it was clear to people what we believe in and to help with that.
President Nelson made a statement, or a directive, that he wanted Temple Square to become one of the major centers of Christianity, similar to Jerusalem or to Rome. And so that was our vision, that was our focus. And as the project progressed, we were constantly given more direction on how to update it. For example, we proposed some statues to meet the request of showing the Savior ministering. I think we proposed three or four, in the end, we added about 12 statues to Temple Square.
MC: Yeah, it’s so interesting. In my conversations with, you know, church leaders and people involved in this project, the thing you hear over and over again is this desire for Temple Square to be, you know, a kind of American Vatican. That they want it, you know, to signal the dedication to Christianity. They want this site to be, as you put it, a global center of Christianity. Matt, as a church historian, I’m curious, when Brigham Young first kind of carved this out as the site of the Salt Lake City temple, how did he and the early church leaders think of Temple Square? What did they want Temple Square to be and how did the thinking evolve over time?
MG: Yeah, it’s a great question. Latter-day Saint prophets from Joseph Smith on have always had an expansive vision of what the church would become; that it would one day fill the world, that missionaries would take the gospel of Jesus Christ everywhere. And so I do think that from the beginning, there was this sense of, we are going to build a temple to our God that will be a signal, that will attract people, that will be, they called it, an ensign to the nations, drawing on scriptural language that will attract people to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so there was that sense very early on that Temple Square would be a real marker of who we are as a people.
MC: And, you know, for a while, you know, part of the direction you got about making it more clearly centered on Jesus Christ probably comes from the fact that a lot of the iconography and messaging was actually more about the pioneer history of the church and the early saints. And I think that was understandable, right? I think when people would come to visit Utah, they were interested in Utah’s history and the pioneer history. When you were thinking about, you know, taking that directive from the leaders of the church, how did it inform the work that you were doing? You mentioned the statues, for example.
AK: Yeah, statues is probably the easiest perspective on that. We proposed different options, different messages for statues, an area focusing on church history and pioneers, an area focusing on the Savior, and in the end it kind of worked out that way. We have statues around the Tabernacle that focus on key events of the Restoration, and then the statues around the temple focus on Jesus’ ministry. We even added a statue on Main Street near the Relief Society Building. It’s the Five Wise Virgins, focusing on the importance of women and their commitment, and they’re all focusing on the temple and how that relates symbolically to the temple covenants.
MG: And there is this interesting dynamic between statues and iconography that celebrate the pioneer past with this emphasis on Jesus Christ and his mortal ministry. And of course, we’ve long had symbols of Jesus Christ on Temple Square. Of course, this isn’t an entirely new thing. The Christus statue that was in the North Visitors’ Center for 60 years was for many years that main symbol. And so it’s really an expansion of that focus, that messaging on Jesus Christ.
And at the same time, still recognizing that this is a really interesting and important and significant historical site and recognizing that out of the saints’ poverty, they built this. And it took them 40 years and it took a tremendous amount of sacrifice and devotion, and they did it because of their testimonies, their witness of Jesus Christ. And so we’ve tried to even more tightly tie that history to their witness of Jesus Christ. The first statue on Temple Square was a statue of seagulls, right?
MC: Well, yeah, I was interested to hear when I was on the tour of the new visitors’ center, which we’ll talk about in a second, the person leading the tour said, you know, in the old visitors’ center in the old Temple Square, one of the questions we’d get especially from visitors from other countries were, “Oh, we didn’t realize that you worshipped seagulls,” right? And this is, of course, hearkening back to the miracle of the seagulls, which is a story that we all learned about church history, if you were a member of the church. But it does kind of present a confused message to people who don’t know that much about our faith.
MG: And so we’re just trying to tie that history more into our witness of the Savior, that it was their belief in Jesus Christ that brought the saints across the plains, that led them to build this temple, that led them to have this experience where they believe that God saved their early crops by sending seagulls to remove the crickets from the fields. And so both things can be true, that we can both celebrate the history of devotion and sacrifice and celebrate what they were sacrificing for, just this message of the Savior.
MC: Well, that leads me to a question about historical preservation and how you kind of approached those questions, right? Because as you both know, this is a very sensitive subject anytime you undertake a big renovation of a historical site because, you know, a lot of people see the temple, they see Temple Square, as, yes, a religious site but also an important historical site for the State of Utah, for the United States of America.
And even on the tour that I went on yesterday, you know, I heard a little sadness from some of the people on the tour who were saying, “Oh, well what about the grand staircase?” or “What about this element or that element of the temple?” that they grew up with. Maybe they got married in this temple, maybe they saw their kids or grandkids get married here. What was the overarching philosophy in terms of historical preservation?
AK: Well, first I think it points to the importance of permanence and a desire for permanence in our culture. Everything we have is, you know, throwaway, and buildings like the Salt Lake Temple can be a symbol of permanence and ground us, that there’s something strong. And so it’s very personal, it relates to what you believe in and who you are, and buildings like the Salt Lake Temple can help ground us in stability and permanence. So we want to protect that, we want to make sure that that symbol isn’t changed or ruined, right? And so we definitely care about preservation as we work on a major renovation. I’ve had the great opportunity to work on several historic temples: the St. George temple, the Mesa temple, the Manti temple. I also did a new construction of the Provo City Center Temple. I think that’s one of the first times I really learned about preservation, worked with the Church History Department and their people, they teach us about curation and what important facets of a building are important to preserve. And in our proposals to church leadership, we have components of preservation to make sure that we’re preserving the important things.
MG: And the core, I think, message on historic preservation is the church just underwent this amazing project to preserve the building. That building is going to stand for hundreds of years, in large part because this amazing project that just happened to preserve that building. And questions of historic preservation, it’s always a continuum, right? It’s never black and white. So you’re always balancing. Buildings have a past and buildings have a future, especially buildings that are still used. So the Salt Lake Temple is a monument, but it’s not just a monument; it’s a living building, a living space where people are still getting married and people will still participate in temple ordinances.
So the other thing to weigh against just the historic preservation is that use of the building and the future use. And there was a very clear message from church leaders that they wanted to expand the accessibility of the temple, both in terms of accessibility in terms of disabilities, accessibility in terms of languages. If this is going to be the ensign to the nations, people have to be able to experience the temple ordinances in many, many, many languages, right? And that leads to a different kind of structure on the inside of the temple. There was an impulse to expand just the capacity of the temple. There was one baptismal font for baptisms for deceased ancestors and now there’s two baptismal fonts. And so as you work with the current and envisioned uses, that does lead to changes on the inside of the temple.
And of course, when you walked in that temple in 2010, you weren’t walking back into the 1893 temple in the first place, right? Historic buildings like the Salt Lake Temple, after 130 years, has already undergone lots of renovations on the inside. And so part of the impulse was, there’s going to be changes, modifications on the interior to expand the accessibility, and at the same time, let’s do what we can to recreate that sense of 1893, right? And maybe you could talk to that, Andy.
AK: Very true. We started that precedent, I think, with our efforts on the Provo City Center Temple where we had a historic tabernacle that we were asked to transform into a temple. So we took the, studied precedents of the architecture and interior design of the tabernacle and recreated a temple using those important historic features. We did the same at St. George, the same in Mesa, where there had been renovations in the 1960s or ’70s that were very modern style attached and part of the experience in the temple. In our renovations, we try to make it homogeneous so that it feels all like you say, 1800s style. So in each situation, we’ve studied extensively the interior design of the temple from what we see in the temple today and then also from photos and documents from the past.
The Church History Department prepares a Historic Structures Report on each of these temples to use as a guide for us as we’re picking precedents to replicate throughout the building. For me, probably one of the most seminal moments on this project was in early months of 2020. We had direction from the First Presidency to change the scope. We had already designed our renovation and started construction, and the First Presidency asked us to double the capacity of the Salt Lake Temple.
MC: Complicated time to get that directive, right?
AK: It was, yes, but, you know, we believe in miracles and I trust the Lord and thousands of people and it’s been a major, major success. In fact, I believe that the direction at that time made the design and construction of the temple more functional. We were trying to preserve things that made it less functional and we received direction from the First Presidency to focus more on the future function of the temple than on preservation. We still focus on preservation, but more on how it will be used in the future.
And we have many facets of preservation for the future. We have the seismic upgrade, which is significant, probably the largest scope on this temple to help preserve the temple in case of a major earthquake. We improved the accessibility, like Matt talked about, so that we have 22 elevators in the complex now, that there’s an accessible path for all of the ordinances for anyone that way. We updated it for hearing ability in the ordinances, in languages. So before, only people who could speak English could participate in the Salt Lake Temple. Now, I think it’s translated into 80 different languages. And it’s a vision of many people, many members of the church around the world, or a desire to someday go to the Salt Lake Temple and go attend General Conference, right? And this gives them the ability to do that in their own language.
MC: Yeah, it’s such an interesting point because I do think a lot of people who are not members of our faith see the temple and think that inside it’s probably like one of the great cathedrals around the world? Which are tourist destinations and often sometimes are still used for worship, but sometimes they aren’t. And what you’re saying is that the direction you got from church leaders was that this is still primarily a functioning temple in which religious ordinances that are very sacred and important are to take place and that has to take precedence over kind of museum level preservation. Is that right?
AK: That’s correct, and a big focus on increasing the capacity of the Salt Lake Temple with a vision of many years into the future being used for those special ordinances. We brought the building to code from an electrical perspective, from a fire suppression perspective. For example, there’s a dual-action fire suppression system in the temple so that it takes two alarms to set it off. I mean, one of the biggest risks in a fire is actually the water damage from the sprinklers, right? And so we have a system that’s more careful in opening the sprinklers. It also has nitrogen in the system that helps suppress the fire before the water goes and the nitrogen helps preserve or reduce corrosion in the sprinkler pipes. All of those systems were added to the temple as a part of this renovation, which help preserve it in the future.
MG: And the other thing that happened is part of preservation is that when things change, that you document really well what went on before. Church historians, we were involved in really extensively documenting, including removal of artifacts and doorknobs and sections of the murals that had been there. So the church really went to great lengths to understand, to document, to take artifacts for the future that would represent —
MC: I was going to ask you about that. So I imagine there are a number of artifacts and things that have been taken out of the temple that are now in possession of the church, Church History Department?
AK: Church History Department.
MC: Right. What is the plan for those? Do you plan to display them, do you plan to preserve them, how are you thinking about that?
MG: Yeah, so as part of this temple celebration that will happen next year, there will be an exhibit at the Church History Museum that will tell the history of the temple: both its construction, its initial dedication, its use over time, its most recent renovation. We’ve actually, just this last couple weeks, opened a children’s exhibit as a kind of companion. And in that children’s exhibit, we have some of the original stone tools but we also have, of course, we see behind us the Angel Moroni. And in March 2020, just as Andy is getting more instructions from the First Presidency, we have an earthquake?
MC: Right.
MG: And the Angel Moroni’s trumpet falls and hits several things on its way down. And now in our children’s exhibit, we have that trumpet just sort of as a fun artifact to say, “This sat atop the temple for more than a century.” And so some of those objects will go on display, others will be preserved in our collection.
MC: Did that prompt a whole round of kind of engineering to make sure that this trumpet is really firmly attached to the Angel Moroni?
AK: That’s a great question. It helped us in several ways, ironically. Seeing an earthquake helped us. But we had sensors on the building at the time, and so we were able to observe how the building moved in that earthquake and validate our assumptions on how it would move in our in the future. So there was actually a benefit to us in that. Because of the the damage to the spires we quickly got a crane here, we removed the Angel Moroni, we refurbished the statue and attached it better to the temple, we built a whole structure in each spire, there’s tons of steel in each of those spires to hold those stones together so in the the event of an earthquake it’ll hold together. Yeah, the seismic upgrade of this temple is amazing.
MC: Well, you know, Brigham Young obviously famously said that this is a temple that would last to the millennium, right? He envisioned this as a building that would stand for, you know, the rest of human history, basically. And I imagine that that quote was kind of echoing in your ears as you were undertaking this.
AK: Yeah, President Nelson even added to that and said “through the millennium” and said it would be the safest place in Utah in an earthquake. I thought that was a great endorsement from a prophet for my work.
MG: Even the early builders of the temple, this sense that they wanted it to last forever really shaped what they did, right? I mean, so they took a long time to figure out that it was granite that they should be using rather than sandstone or other kinds of stone. I mean, it took 40 years for good reason, right?
AK: Yeah. It’s a magnificent building.
MC: You know, I have taken some friends on kind of tours of Temple Square in the past. I remember several years ago actually taking the editor of The Atlantic where I work on a very poor tour of Temple Square — because I was leading it and it was very clear that I didn’t know enough history — but, you know, he was very impressed by it and interested in everything that was there. And then we came to the moment where he asked the question that pretty much every visitor asks when they come to the temple, which is, “Can I go inside? Can I go inside the temple?” Very natural question. It’s a beautiful building, you want to see what it’s like inside, and the answer was “No.”
And I think that, you know, you both know better than anyone that for a long time there was this kind of sense of mystery and maybe even secrecy surrounding the Latter-day Saint temples because they were reserved for sacred ordinances for members of the Church. And a new visitors’ center was just revealed this week that I think in really interesting and unusual ways addresses some of those questions about what happens inside these temples, what does it look like. Could you talk a little about the thinking in the visitors’ center and what the hope was in accomplishing this kind of really unusual visitors’ center? What was the goal?
AK: Yeah, great question. So to carry the message about Jesus Christ, about the purpose of temples and families. Church leadership debated about how to do that in the visitors’ center for several years, actually. We had the concept of the visitors’ center approved with two large structures that allows a view to the temple. We’d proposed one for the Christus statue and the other for a model of the temple, which in past surveys were two of the most important features of Temple Square, so we wanted to recreate those in the new visitors’ center. But then what do we do in the rest of the visitors’ center and how is the message presented?
There’s an idea I think by Elder Duncan, who was a leader in the temple department, came up with the idea of doing a full-time open house at Temple Square. When we finish a construction of a new temple or do a major renovation of a temple, it’s been our tradition to open the temple to the public so they can come in and see what a temple is like. Just like you said, so that we’re not trying to hide anything. We want to invite them in, help them feel the spirit of the place. And Elder Duncan’s idea, which was approved by church leadership, was to build replica rooms of a temple so that anyone who comes to Temple Square when they ask the question, “Can we go into the Salt Lake Temple?” “No, you can’t, but you can go to this visitors’ center and learn about temples around the world.” There’s replica rooms of a baptistry, of an instruction room, of a celestial room, of a sealing room where marriage takes place. And we built replica rooms in the temple, it’s beautiful.
I’m very proud of what we did there and I believe it’s a beautiful tool to help people understand better the purpose of temples. I had the great opportunity to be there when the First Presidency saw it, and I think it was President Oaks said he imagined kings or presidents or ambassadors from other countries coming to Temple Square, which they often do, and to be taught about the purpose of temples and when we propose building a temple in their country, they’ll be more familiar with it and understanding it. He also envisioned families coming to Temple Square and being able to teach their children about the purpose of temples. It’s a great teaching tool and exciting and I think it’s beautiful.
MC: It seems to me just walking through that visitors’ center — seeing the kind of immersive replicas of the sealing room, the celestial room — you get this sense that this is kind of a season of openness for the church that I think you, the Church History Department, has been part of. Could you talk a little about that and kind of the spirit of this visitors’ center and what it says about the church’s openness?
MG: Oh, I love it. I mean, I think in lots of different ways the church over the last decades has been trying to say, “We have nothing to hide. Come and see. Come and participate with us.” In terms of the history, “Here are all the documents come and scrutinize them.” In terms of — I mean, temple open houses have been such a major part of who we are as a people for the last decades. They’re such an event when a temple opens and you can walk with friends not of our faith through the temple and explain “This is what we do.” Or you can walk through with your children because of course most areas in Latter-day Saint temples aren’t open to children. And so the core insight was those great experiences can happen all the time at Temple Square, right? Let’s just, let’s be open, let’s be transparent, let’s invite the world to know who we are.
MC: Next year when the temple open house begins, millions of people are expected to come. This will be a major event. And it’ll be an opportunity to tell a story to the world. What story do you want the church to be telling?
MG: Well, I would hope they would come away with a sense of who we are as a people, a sense of our dedication to the gospel of Jesus Christ, both in terms of how this building was built originally and in terms of this renovation, which has really been remarkable to say that this building in which, and of course it’s not the temples as structures that are the most important thing, it’s, for Latter-day Saints, it’s what we do in the temple, it’s the covenants that we make with God and Jesus Christ and with each other. And to share that sense of devotion and devotion to the community of the saints and the devotion to the Lord as well.
When the temple was being built, people would come from all over the world to see Temple Square even when the walls were 10 feet and 30 feet and 50 feet. They would come to hear a sermon at the Tabernacle and they would come to see the construction. And throughout time we’ve tried to welcome people at Temple Square and we’ve done that in lots of different ways over time and I think always with that core message: “Come and see who we are come and see our devotion to our God and to Jesus Christ.”
AK: Yeah, I like the term curiosity. I hope they come with their curiosity and I hope that it’s met in several ways. I hope that people who have been in the temple many times will come with their curiosity to see how it feels and I hope that they feel that it’s the Salt Lake Temple, that they feel, “This is still the Salt Lake Temple.” And then feel the beauty of it and how it’s been preserved, how that sacrifice of those pioneer builders has been preserved and is more accessible and easier to use.
I hope the people who come with a curiosity maybe from a history perspective or an architectural perspective get the message of what the actual reason for why we have the temple. And I believe they will. I think the Church is very, very good at explaining, “What’s the purpose of a temple?” And they will feel that purpose or be taught that purpose and I think even more they’ll feel the spirit of the temple when they’re here. So I hope their curiosity is met with special feelings of comfort, of permanence, of stability, of a tie to God and most of all to understand the dedication we have to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
MG: You know, and just as we look over our shoulder, right, and this is such a magnificent view, and on the front of the temple, those pioneer craftsmen put that sign, “Holiness to the Lord,” right? And in Latter-day Saint discourse recently, we’ve been talking both about temples using that term but also about the house of the Lord, right? And I think, fundamentally, that’s what we would want people to sense: that we believe this is the house of the Lord and we believe they can feel it too.
AK: Yeah, I love that term “the holiness to the Lord.” I used to think that it meant like the temple is dedicated as a holy place to the Lord, but more and more I think that it’s more an invitation to have us enter the temple and become more holy. So it’s, I view it as the opposite of that. It’s actually a place for us to be lifted up by God.
MC: Andy, Matt, thank you for this conversation.
AK: You’re welcome.
MG: Thanks, McKay.