Exploring the History and Architecture of the Kirtland Temple

Welcome. My name is Lachlan McKay, and it’s going to be my privilege to share with you today, Kirtland Temple. We’re going to start by talking a little bit about temple construction. The building was built between 1833 1836. They hoped to build a bricks, but many of those bricks crumbled as they fired them. They ended up using a building technique new to this area, probably came down from Upper Canada, with a man by the name of Artemis Millet. His idea was to gather pieces of sandstone of various sizes and shapes. Using mortar to hold that stone together, they build a wall about 2 feet thick and about 45 feet high, and then immediately apply a hard plaster or stucco finish to the outside. You see that today as white. They described it in the 1830s as blue, a slate gray, I think it was. They had sent young people out to gather old crockery and glass that was crushed even finer and dumped into the stucco so that when the sun hit it, it would sparkle brilliantly. Then to create the illusion of cut stone block, which would be the most magnificent building they could put up at time if they could afford it, and they couldn’t.

To create that illusion, they painted mortar joints on the wall, painted lines on the stucco. From a distance, it looked like it was built of large cut stone block. But if you got close, you’d discover stucco and paint. The roof was wood shingles, dipped in a red lead paint to preserve them. The front doors, a moderate olive green, so pretty colorful temple early on, unfortunately, toned down through the years. But structurally, what you see really survived amazingly intact. They had big plans for Kirtland. They hoped to build two more of these buildings just here to the south. The first of those is described in a book called The Doctrine and covenants. It’s Community Christ, section 91, the Church of Jesus Christ, section 94. The first of those is going to be a house for the presidency, meaning an office building for church leaders. Then on the second lot to the south, they were going to a house for their printing operations, a print shop. Trying to imagine not one of these, but three in this whole area from what is now Maple Street, just north of the temple, to what’s still Joseph Street, a block to the south.

It’s going to become their public square with their town centered around that square. So even this early, they’re not just throwing up buildings here. They’re very carefully laying out, planning, building up a community. We’re now going to move over and in through one of the two front doors and stop in the outer court. So we have moved inside to what they would have referred to as an outer court. As we explore the temple today, I’d like you to notice the beautiful decorative woodwork that we are going to be surrounded by. Depending on the age of the craftsmen responsible for this work, though, they had very different styles. Early on, a man by the name of Jacob Bump seems to have been in charge here. He’s older, apprenticing earlier. He learned his trade using the 1806 edition of Asher Benjamin’s Architectural Pattern Books. It’s like this old house on CBS, but in the book form. It’s a very labour-intensive style. You see a lot of that work here, fluting, Grooves cut into a plank to form a pattern. Bump gets upset with the community for time, though, and leaves. Truman Angel comes in to help finish up.

He’s younger, learning later. He used the 1830 edition of the book. It’s a simpler and quicker style, or the thing you see here, that’s a Greek fret. Pieces of wood cut out and applied to form that geometric pattern. We’re going to see more of that simple, quick applied style on the second floor of the temple, more of this labor-intensive carved into style on the first floor as we finish up. If you look up, you’ll notice a rope heading through the first of four trap doors into the bell tower. They were trying to get a bell for the temple as early as 1835. W. W. Phelps wrote a letter to his wife, Sally, saying, A great effort is about to be undertaken to procure a bell for the Lord’s house. They don’t have any evidence that was accomplished, though, until 1890. That is the bell that hangs now. We typically ring it Sunday mornings at nine o’clock. We’re now going to move up 33 steps to the second floor of the temple and explore the inner part of the upper court. One of the most distinctive features of the temple are the tears of pulpits on both sides of these large rooms.

Behind me, you see Melchizedek priesthood pulpits, after Melchizedek, a high priest in the Old Testament. On the east, Aaronic priesthood pulpits, after Moses’s brother Aaron. The letters represent different leadership quorum presidencies, so PDA on the bottom on the east for the deacons quorum presidency, PTA for the teachers, PAP for the priests, and BPA for the bishops presiding over the Aaronic priesthood. I don’t know, though, exactly what those letters mean. They either didn’t write it down or it didn’t survive in the 1830s. So PTA, for example, might be Presidents of the Teachers of the Aaronic priesthood, but it might also be Presiding Teachers of the Order of Aaronic, or some other variation. I just know it’s teachers. Behind me on the bottom level, P-E-M for the elders. Above that, an MHP for the high priests. Above that, a PMH for the high council, a judicial body. On top, an M-P see for the first presidency, the three people residing over the entire church. They normally, though, ignored these letters in the 1830s and would sit not by office, but rather by age. Older members up top to younger down bottom. To confuse me a little more, by the time these people built a temple in Navoo, Illinois, lots of cues mixed in.

What was certainly for quorum. What’s most important about the letters on the pulpits, though, was that everybody was a new member at this point in time. And every time they came into the temple, the pulpits with the letters would teach them the administrative structure of their new church. We climb stairs in an outer court to get here, and are now in an inner court. Of course, Old Testament tabernacle in temple language. They also started to install in this room, but we’re not able to finish here, what they call veils or partitions. Like so many words in our history, veil, before you know what it means, you have to know when they’re using it. So at this point in time, it’s simply a room divider. It becomes something different in Nauvou. The plan here was to wrap canvas around the large wooden rollers attached to the ceiling. They’re going to attach ropes to those rollers thread them through little receivers in the ceiling. It was to go into the crawl space, down into the columns, around windlesses inside some of the little doors we’ll see. We’re going to put a crank on these metal rods and start turning and crank these massive curtains up and down.

So one large classroom space, this was going to be for priesthood and leader education. So one large classroom space, they’re going to drop the canvas in an opening running east-west, and another one that runs north-south. They’d have four smaller classrooms. They could teach four separate subjects, perhaps at the same time. They could also divide off around and between each level of the pulpits for privacy in which to study or pray, or at least that’s the plan. Again, not finished here. Downstairs in and functioning and used regularly. The pew boxes, the pew boxes, they’re New England heritage. That’s the way you built a church where these people were coming from. But here, the pews are not attached, the bench is not attached. They slip back and forth so we can face either end, depending on who’s in charge at the time. The desktops out here in the middle, later additions, they flip up and lock into place. On the columns, you see large Greek frets, pieces of wood cut out, applied to form that pattern. Remember, downstairs, we’re going to see something very different. We’re going to move now to the attic offices or school rooms.

That’s up another 33 steps to get there. There are five attic offices or school rooms here on the third floor of the temple. They held in these rooms in 1833, ’36 and ’37 what they called the Kirtland High School. The students in this high school ranged in age from 6 through 30-year-old Wilfred Woodrow. There were three departments in the high school. The first, the Juvenile Department, where they learned the first principles of education, read and write. They also had an English Department meeting here. It wasn’t just English, but geography, grammar, arithmetic, and a Classics Department, where they learned Latin and Greek languages. Between those three departments, they had 135 to 140 people a day here in class. They also held a Hebrew school up here. That was part of what they called the Kirtland, Ohio Theological Institution, one of the first five seminaries operating in the state of Ohio. They hired a man by the name of Joshua Satius to teach them Hebrew. He was very talented. He had written his own textbooks. One of those has a list of obscure and anomalous forms in the back that are found in the Hebrew Bible. On that list, N’Avoo, carrying with it connotations of beautiful.

So Joseph Smith would have learned that here from Joshua Satius. Leadership quorum filled these rooms in the evenings: high priests on Monday nights, sevenies on Tuesday nights, elders on Wednesday nights. Finally, this was also Joseph Smith Jr’s office. It was here that a committee wrote the prayer of dedication for the temple, which was then read at the dedication, downstairs on the first floor. Now, that is the room we’re going to go to next, and that is where we will finish up. We’ve now made our way back down to to the lower court or the first floor. In many ways, this room looks like the one above, but there are some significant differences. Maybe the most obvious, the pulpits here are much higher and more elaborate. Now, part of that is that this is worship space versus the school room above. But also this is Jacob Bump’s style of work versus the simple quick style of Truman Angel above. Maybe the best example of that, the beaded keystone you see in the center of the arch near the ceiling behind me. Very labor-intensive. That comes right out of the 1806 edition of that pattern book. Remember, Bump gets upset, Truman Angel comes in.

His keystone is in back. It’s flat with little holes drilled in it to form a pattern much simpler and quicker. While you’re looking up, you might notice that the ceiling is significantly different as well. There are not the large wooden rollers on the ceiling here that we saw above. They did have, though, curtains or veils in and functioning and used regularly on this floor, but they were different in design. These were described as canvas, painted heavily white on both sides, like sails to a ship operated like theater curtains. And they talk of ropes, pulleys, canvas. And this time the wooden roller was on the bottom of the canvas for a wait. It would drop into the opening that’s running east-west, as well as an opening that runs north-south. So one big worship space here becomes four smaller ones. They could also divide off around and between each level of the pulpets for privacy in which to study or pray. They used this system most often on Thursdays for prayer meetings. Joseph Smith senior most often presided over these. They would come in the morning, maybe 10:00, drop the veils, assign an elder to each corner and have four services going at the same time.

That would allow more to participate, more testimonies, more prayers. But these services often still went from 10:00 in the morning to 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. Dedication Day, March 27 of 1836. For that service, they squeezed somewhere between 900 to 1,000 people into this room. 900 to a thousand, according to Joseph Smith, was as many as could be comfortably situated. Children were on the laps of adults. Every seat and aisle were crowded, and their service lasted for seven to eight hours. Sydney Rigdon preached that day for two and a half hours. Joseph Smith’s prayer of dedication, and both men were sitting second row from the top. Joseph’s prayer of dedication about a half an hour long. There were hundreds who didn’t get in to the temple dedication. They were standing around outside listening through the open windows to the service that day. To allow those people to fully participate, they decided to repeat the entire service on the following Thursday. Edward Partridge, here for both, said the second dedication was even better and even longer than the first one. Their typical worship patterns here, before and after the dedication, included those Thursday prayer meetings, but they also would come to this room on Sunday mornings for hymns and prayers and sermons, and testimonies.

They’d break for lunch. They would come back for more. Hymns, and prayers, and sermons, and testimonies. They would serve sacrament or communion. You see those tables, tables in front and in back, those flip up and lock into place. They would go home for dinner. Some might then come back for choir practice. You see choir lofts on all four corners here, and they would sing from all four corners at the same time. On the dedication day, the choir sang, The spirit of God, like a fire, is burning. It has since the Kirtland Anthem. There were months surrounding the temple dedication, where the people are recording in their journals incredible spiritual experiences. Latterday saints are Christian primitivists or restorationists. And what I mean by that is that they were trying to restore what they understood of New Testament Christianity. And the best written description of what that looked like comes from the New Testament Book, the Acts of the Apostles. In many ways, that book is a template for what they’re trying to accomplish here. So the Book of Acts describes a community as being gathered. If you join and you have packed your family up and moved to one of the central communities.

And so that’s what these people do as well. If you join them, you have probably move to Kirtland or maybe one of their Missouri communities. The Book of Acts describes the people passionate about the plight of the poor and trying to live all things common, so the surplus of the wealthy could lift up the poor. And so the people here are trying to live all things common. Unfortunately, the impoverished folk were quick to sign up for that program. The wealthy members, not quite as quick. The Book of Acts describes Christians with temples, because Acts is so early in Christian history, the people are still Jewish. Church. And that is why Latterday Saints end up Christians with temples today. Book of Acts describes people passionate about proclaiming the gospel to the West rest of the world. And it was from this pulpit in 1830, 37, that Joseph commissions Hebrew C. Kimball to take the gospel overseas for the first time. Soon, they’re headed to the United Kingdom with incredible results. And because of that close connection, these people felt with the Book of Acts, they are often turning to Acts language to try and describe these spiritual experiences they’re having.

They talk about the temple being filled with the sound of a mighty rushing wind. They talk about people speaking and singing in tongues and interpretations of tongues. They talk of tongues or pillars of fire on the roof of the temple. These accounts go on and on and on. One of my favorites. Now, Joseph had counseled these people, If God gives a manifestation, keep it to yourself. But they were overwhelmed. Within 10 days of the temple dedication, a non-member here in Kirtland writes to his sister and says, They say the temple is lit without candles. Love it. One of the best known of all of those spiritual experiences, April third of 1836. So it’s one week following the temple dedication. March 27 was Palm Sunday. So with the spirit of God, we are shouting, Hosanna, along with most of Christianity. So April third is Easter Sunday. There’s once again a Sunday afternoon service going on here. Once again, a thousand people present. The curtains out here are dropped. The room is four. They’re blessing babies and confirming converts. And while that’s happening, it seems, Joseph Smith and Oliver Caldry retire into the pulpits to pray. They They drop the curtains or veils around them.

As they finish, they stand. They record a vision of the Lord on the breastwork of the pulpit before them. So I love that. Easter Sunday, a vision of the risen Lord. To try and capture and summarize this time, Joseph called it a Pentecostal season. It was a glorious time in the life of the church. If the spring of 1836 was the mountaintop for these people in Kirtland, they were soon headed into a valley. They had opened a bank which was not chartered or recognized by the state legislature. And soon, local newspapers ran articles saying that anybody who even accepted one of the bank notes from Kirtland could be subject to a $1,000 fine for illegal banking. That’s at a time when a farmer and their family might make $400 in a year. And And so, fairly quickly, that bank fails, resulting in lots of lawsuits and lots of dissent. Many of these people start packing up and heading to Missouri. Over 500 left in one day with what they call Kirtland camp. Soon, though, they lease the temple to the Western Reserve Teacher Seminary and Kirtland Institute, a teacher’s training school. It’s a five-year lease, but they moved out after a year complaining that there were too many steps in the temple and it was too hard to heat.

Very quickly, though, the church is growing again in Kirtland. Church leaders here realized that they could find English converts gathering to Nauvou and convince them to stop short. So by 1842 and ’43, there’s perhaps 500 members here again, worshiping in the temple and living in some of the beautiful homes that had been left behind. That is causing significant problems in Nauvou, though, because that land is purchased on credit, and the only way they have to pay for it is to resell it to the gathering converts. So if they’re stopping in Kirtland, they’re not buying in Nauvou. There’s a lot of pressure on members and leaders here to support the gathering to Nauvoo, and they do. So by 1844, you’re back down to about 100 members here. Joseph Smith is assassinated, June 27th of ’44, and soon the church branches out into lots of different varieties of Latterday saints, and the temple is a magnet drawing many of those groups back. At times, people here are loyal to Brigham Young, at times, Sydney Rigdon, at times, James Strang, at times, James Colin Brewster, at times, Martin Harris, on and on. By the 1860s, some of the earliest members of the reorganization are worshiping here.

And we, in Community Christ, had a branch going here by the 1870s. That one didn’t survive. The current branch dates to about 1886. So that is possession, but that is different than ownership. And ownership, even in the 1830s, was pretty messy. At times, Joseph Smith owned the land the temple sits on personally, and at times, he owns it in behalf of the church. And there are occasions where people in the 1830s are selling the land the temple sits on before there’s any record that they own that land. But it does seem that at Joseph’s death, the temple is back with him as trustee for the church. What that means, though, is that the various groups that are starting to come out of Nauvou start to try and strengthen their claim by attempting to gain some a deed or color of title. And so the 12 asked William Marx, who had had the temple in his name in 1837, he’d been the state president here, to sign the temple over to them. Unfortunately, Marks really, though, had nothing to sign over because he had given his claim back to Joseph prior to Joseph’s death. There is a sale on the courthouse steps in about, well, the early 1860s.

The temple in 13 acres sell for $150. The guy who buys it sells just the temple to Joseph Smith III and Mark Forstget. So Russell Hunt is that in between. He sells it to Joseph Smith III and Mark Forstget, who were leaders in the reorganization. They initially had hoped to sell it to the city of Kirtland for a town hall, but the Township here is nervous that they might not have clear title. And so leaders in the reorganization eventually decide that identity is really more important to them than anything else. And they put together a lawsuit related to temple ownership It’s called the Kirtland Temple Suite. Happens in 1879. The ruling is 1880. The judge said great things for the reorganization, like the reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints is Joseph Smith Jr. ‘S Church and entitled the property thereof. But he also noted in his final paragraph that we filed the case wrong and he dismissed it. So it was as if it really didn’t happen from a legal perspective. But at that point, Joseph III conveyed possession of the temple to his church, and their cloudy ownership ripened into clear ownership as early as 1881 or as late as 1901, depending on how conservative the attorney is.

We did a lot of restoration work on the temple in the 1880s, hoping to make it look just as it did. And again, the Kirtland congregation gets going in the 1880s. They worship here regularly into the 1950s, and were at that point invited to move across the street. They come back to the temple for Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving. It’s most often, though, used for pilgrimages. We invite all kinds of people who share this heritage to come back for worship services and classes. So about once a week, there’s an activity here in the temple. It has been my privilege to share the story of Kirtland Temple with you. Thank you very much for that opportunity.