The Provo Temple: An Architectural Eulogy

Guest post by Taylor Olson

During my time at BYU, the Provo Temple baptistry was perhaps the truest test of my faith. It was rare to see a single unclaimed spot in the waiting room pews. I diligently experimented, attending at different times to see if I could develop a clear strategy to avoid the extraordinarily long wait, but I would have a successful mid-day visit one Thursday and be thwarted the next by a random young women’s group. (How could they all be attending in the middle of the day? Don’t they have school?) The achiever in me wanted to be directly rewarded for my effort.

With my experience, I should’ve known better than to go on a Saturday, but on one afternoon in 2010, I sat waiting for over two hours only to be startled out of a trance by a temple worker walking down the pews, repeatedly whisper-calling my name. I worriedly climbed over the many white-jumpsuit-clad girls seated between the aisle and me. The worker let me know that a family member was at the front desk looking for me. Don’t worry, nobody was hurt. I had just been in there so long waiting to do baptisms that it was now well past 5:00 p.m. My parents were in town for dinner and had somehow managed to track me down in the temple basement well before phone-location tracking.

Since that time, thankfully, my temple visits have been shorter, and I honestly haven’t thought about the Provo Temple much. My husband and I live in Salt Lake and somehow the divide between Salt Lake County and Utah County feels increasingly large as we get busier with work, parenthood and the never-ending project of our own home, designed and built in 1955 by local architect and preservationist Burtch Beall Jr. as his family home.

As an interior designer, my own work is inspired by a love for historic architecture, which I credit to my parents who have traveled around the world visiting historic homes since I was a small child. After college, I worked as a volunteer docent at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House in Los Angeles. (Perhaps an unsurprising hobby for someone taking the time to write a blog post like this.) Since we purchased our home, it has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and much of my interior design work has been focused on architecturally unique homes, updating them while honoring their initial designs and preserving significant historic features.

So, as you’d guess, when I first heard about the plans to redesign the Provo Temple, I was one of the many disappointed people. Petitions were signed, articles were shared, and I voiced my thoughts to friends and family. I held onto hope that the plans would change, but the temple officially closes today and the reconstruction is set to begin.

A Sacred Machine?

The Provo Temple, dedicated in 1972, was built by Emil B. Fetzer, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ head architect at the time, and was almost identical to the original design of the Ogden Temple. Fetzer died in November 2009, and by February 2010, the Church had already announced the redesign of the Ogden Temple. The Provo temple redesign was announced in 2021. We have now lost both temples, though they were both innovative, significant buildings for our tradition.

In 2010, around the time I was sitting in the basement of the Provo baptistry, Steve Cornell and Kirk Huffaker (who coincidentally also wrote the history of my home), penned an article about the potential travesty of losing the unique architectural history of the Ogden Temple, the same sort of travesty we now face again with the Provo Temple. In their study of the architectural and historical significance of these temples they identified that Ogden and Provo were the first temples streamlined for ordinance work. They initiated the pattern of multiple ordinance rooms that all lead to one celestial room in the center, replacing the room-by-room progression seen in earlier temples such as the Salt Lake Temple. As the executive director of Preservation Utah remarked in response to news of the Provo Temple redesign in 2021, “The Provo Temple created a prototype for all temples that came after it.” Cornell and Huffaker wrote a memorable description of this change, saying that the design was incredibly innovative, marking the transition from “sacred abode to sacred machine. ”

The design of these two temples is a perfect physical representation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ emerging goals for temples in the modern era. As the Church grew in the late 20th century, temple ritual and worship evolved to suit a global population and keep up with the proliferation of names for proxy temple work. Modernist design was an ideal vehicle for pursuing these changes because of its focus on functionality (“form follows function”) and cost (affordable materials allowing for mass production). This prioritization of function and affordability is present in both Modernism and in Mormonism, at least as seen with our most common LDS architecture, the ward building. Temples have long since abandoned modernism in their design, but the modern ethos of temple work remains. The Provo Temple is a marriage of the Church’s modern aims with a design that intrinsically embodies those aims. I suppose that marriage wasn’t for time and all eternity, though.

Cornell and Huffaker observed that the shape of the Ogden and Provo Temples unintentionally evoke the image of a modern rocket propelling into space, while also portraying the symbol that was actually intended of God’s cloud and pillar of fire to protect and guide Israel. Both the images capture important themes of temple worship, which include a significant focus on the vast expanse of creation and the covenantal care of the God of Israel. The design, like the temple instruction and covenants, provokes reflection on both the universal and the particular, the ancient and the modern.

The design is highly functional and symbolically striking, and both these features clarify the nature of temple worship and emphasize the urgent performance of temple ordinances. Though I didn’t experience efficiency like that of a modern factory while waiting in the baptistry, and while Cornell and Huffaker’s sacred machine image is perhaps more provocative than accurate, the modernist symbolic design of the Provo Temple does still ensure the swift completion of vital ordinances. There is reason to bristle at a mass-production approach to religious practice, but the audacity and scale of the Latter-day Saint temple project requires an efficient design, which is a testament to the importance of the work being done within.

Architecture: A Living Record

If you have followed the conversation around the Provo Temple, you have likely heard people call the temple “ugly” or an “eye-sore.” This criticism isn’t new and has been present since plans were first revealed. Some of the derogatory nicknames used over the years were identified on a Mormon Land podcast, “the Lord’s Thumbtack, the Mothership, the Celestial Cupcake, Carrot Top, the Carousel, and Marshmallow Matey.” But architectural significance and preservation are not primarily concerned with trends or ever-evolving preferences. It is a matter of preserving architectural styles and history, not merely as things to remember in our minds and hearts, but also for the experience of them. Many of our church-funded buildings are architecturally notable and influential, and as church members, that is something we should appreciate and proudly strive to preserve.

Our religion has a relatively short history, but it is still rich and important enough that the Church creates storage vaults that can withstand nuclear blasts, maintains historical museums and sites around the world, and spends decades compiling histories. Our distinctive text, The Book of Mormon, is itself a witness of how important a historical record is to the broader mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a church, we certainly have some sense of the specific importance of architecture as history. Several massive projects to preserve pioneer-era temples are underway or completed, but we do not have the same care for the modernist Provo and Ogden temples, both now to be supplanted by classically styled structures. The Church Newsroom states that the Provo Temple redesign will meet modern seismic codes, reconfigure layouts, and increase energy efficiency. These are important parts of adapting a historic structure, but are all possible to achieve without losing sight of the original design. The fact that something wasn’t built by pioneers doesn’t mean it isn’t worth preserving. 20th century history is also vital to preserve, especially as the younger population of the church has increasingly less awareness of those decades that seem ordinary to my grandparents’ generation. We are dismissing our history so quickly that this important example of innovation and modernity has been erased within a single lifespan.

One of the most simple and direct ways church members engage history is through their own personal family history work. Temples are centers where we turn to our ancestors and unite in the joy of salvation together. Intergenerational connections are vital to our faith. Engaging the past can sometimes be uncomfortable because of significant cultural differences across generations, but what better way to appreciate those who came before us than to perform important saving ordinances for historical people in a building of historical significance? We shouldn’t ignore the history of the very buildings where we perform that important work.

Architecture is a unique form of art that cannot be fully appreciated through photographs, and certainly not through written explanation. It is intended to be used and experienced and is naturally engaged as we go about our normal activities. Because of this familiarity and utility, buildings are uniquely positioned to help us experience history. Someone who knows nothing about or isn’t necessarily seeking out history can literally enter it. History matters to our church. Why then are we destroying important architectural history that can only be appreciated through its continuing existence?

I moved out of Provo not long after that Saturday afternoon visit to the baptistry and I must confess that I never made it back to the Provo Temple since my time at BYU. I was endowed many years later while living in Los Angeles and never managed to make the time to go to Provo for a session since moving back to Utah. Like so many others, I will never be able to fully experience Fetzer’s pioneering design. Though my personal connection to the Provo temple is minor compared to those who may have been sealed in it or have grown up in the neighborhoods nearby, I still mourn the loss of this significant building. The distinctive design has led to the proliferation of temples, making temple attendance accessible to countless people around the world, which deeply matters to me and my personal faith. Just as I came to regret attending the Provo baptistry on a Saturday afternoon, I fear we will come to regret our rejection of this building’s importance as a living record of our church history.

Taylor acquired an ever-growing collection of books through marriage that inspires her to learn, but challenges her space planning as an interior designer. She loves cooking, running, and music.