Salt Lake Temple Amazing Exhibit

So, this is what I have always wanted. . . to be able to share with you some of what I've seen on the inside of the Salt Lake Temple. It is such an amazing building and now the South Visitor's Center at Temple Square has an exhibit just about the Salt Lake Temple. Below are some photos I took of the massive 6-foot or so tall sectional model. I have never seen a more detailed and well-constructed model in my life. It is truly a piece of art as well as an accurate depiction of the masterpiece which is the Salt Lake Temple.

When I was working for Heath Engineering, we did a mechanical study of the buidling which required me to crawl in all sorts of spaces in and around the rooms you're seeing below. It was a true joy to spend lots of time in this building (even though most of my time was in the sub-basement levels) and I would be happy if I could work on Temple projects for the rest of my career. I'll try and give a brief explaination of what you're seeing below.


This is a shot of the exterior corner of the model. You'll notice that they have accurately depicted the blemishes on each of the granite blocks based on photographs of the real building. The image below is the baptistry in the basement of the Temple where they perform baptisms for the dead. Below is one of the instruction rooms depicting the world in which we now live.
Below is the Priesthood Assembly room which is used less than it used to be, now that the church is so big. I think they mostly use it now for meetings of general authorities of the church.

There are two rostrums, one on the west and one on the east, patterned after the Kirtland and Nauvoo temples.The one on the west is for the Aaronic Priesthood and the one on the east for the Melchezidek Priesthood. There are two levels to the room. . . a balcony level and the main floor level where the two rostrums are located. . .

Below the priesthood assembly room you can see the room where the council of the twelve meet each week. Below you can see some of the detail work done on the doors of the model. . . very cool.

Here's a bigger shot of the model. You can see the room where the twelve apostles meet each week in the upper left of the photo with the instruction room and baptistry from the previous photos. On the right you can see the Celestial room representing being in Heavenly Father's presence. Below on the right is the garden room representing the garden of eden.

Here's another shot of the Celestial Room. The upper windows are natural light from the outside. The lower windows are artificial light because the annex which was added . . . I can't remember. . . possibly around the time of David O. McKay. . . The door on the far left used to be a window too, but they added a couple steps to get to the annex level.

The lighting was pretty realistic too. All the new Temples typically have one large chandelier in the middle. It is interesting that the lighting is fairly uniformly spaced. Most likely it allowed the room to be brighter when fixtures used to not be able to put off as much light as the new chandeliers now can. The new chandeliers are kind of like a big light bomb in the middle of the room and the rest of the lighting can be toned down. Back when this Temple was built, mainly natural light from the windows was used during the day. . . funny how we think we need the lights on all the time. . . "for the experience." In my opinion, natural light and the occasional shaddow are very powerful experiential features. But there is something to be said for a room full of light . . . that seems very appropriate.

The image below is a bad photo of the ceiling in the Priesthood assembly room.

Here's a detailed image of one of the rostrums.

Here's a close up of the garden room.

Another photo of the priesthood assembly room. The big oval windows used to be operable so the lower windows would bring in cooloer air and the upper windows would exhaust the hot air.

This is a great building for no air-conditioning because of the climate. Massive exterior walls slow the heat build up on the interior and the temple is narrow enough to get good cross ventilation.

It is hard to see, but the chairs on the balcony level are tiny padded folding chairs. . .the model is truly amazing.

Here's another shot of the instruction room representing the world in which we now live.

The next bunch of photos are of a section through the east towers of the Temple. Here you can find rooms which served as apartments for various people like James E. Talmage or Lorenzo Snow.

This door leads to the exterior door on the east side of the building on the south side. I believe it was around this location that President Snow saw the Savior.

Another amazing part of the model. . . not to mention the real thing in the buildng. . . are the spiral staircases. I had a pioneer ancestor that worked on these stairs. They are beautiful.

So this is my favorite room in the Temple. . . the top room in the east tower. It has a door to the roof. But the best feature is the huge circular windows with splayed openings. I don't recall any light fixtures in the room. . . just the two massive windows high above the head. If I remember right, the room is basically a 30-foot cube of space with these two windows. . . It is incredibly minimal in it's experiential qualities. Peaceful, serene, powerful.

A better shot of the room. You can see the door to the roof in the back. I'm not sure the model has the scale quite right for this room. . . but you get the idea. . . and sometimes scale can be tricky when it is experienced versus drawn. . or modeled.

The middle two rooms in the east tower on this photo are sealing rooms where people like my parents got married. The rooms are small but beautiful and accessed directly off of the Celestial room. Part of why I'm excited that this exhibit is going on is that people like my grandparents, who aren't members of the church, can see inside the Temple. It must have been quite frustrating to not be able to go in and see your daughter's wedding. Maybe we can convince them to come out again to see this exhibit. . . part of the exhibit has videos of the interior which explain the experience much better than the model.

The room with the chest of drawers in this picture has a picture of James E. Talmage. This one of the spaces that he used while writing Jesus The Christ. There is a small staircase that leads to the room below which appears to have been a bedroom. It had a closet but no windows. I'm not sure if that was the case, but it looked probable.

The west tower (on the other side of the temple) was simlar to this side before they gutted it out to install the elevators.

So. . . there you go. . . even though the basement and sub basement are kind of cool too (even though it is just footings and mechanical equipment. . . the only thing I regret is that they didn't cut away the roof to expose the big steel trusses above the priesthood assembly room that look like old bridge trusses with a gazillion rivets. . . Because the structure took so long to build, you can see how the building technology changed as you go from the basement up to the roof. Steel construction in the west didn't really exist until the Temple was 80% or so complete.

Anyway. . . hope you all enjoy this.