How the Salt Lake Temple renovation became biggest preservation project’ in Latter-day Saint history

The first time Brent Roberts read a seismic report on the stability of the historic Salt Lake Temple was in 2001. The news was alarming.
“Well, it scared me to death, is what it did,” said Roberts, managing director of the Special Projects Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The future viability of the massive pioneer totem was at stake for two reasons.
First, “Our modeling shows the temple will not stand through a significant earthquake, and it if does, it will be significantly dangerous for anyone that is in there,” Roberts said.
Second, the technology didn’t exist to do anything about it. “I knew enough about construction that it would be difficult to do anything without endangering life and limb,” he said, “so we as a technical group and as a department were very hesitant to bring it forward. We did because we felt we had an obligation.”
An earthquake did strike the temple after work finally began nearly two decades after Roberts first saw a seismic report. The damage was mostly limited to the exterior. The March 2020 quake did shake the horn from the lips and hand of the statue of the Angel Moroni that stands watch on the eastern tower.
“It’s scary to look at the seismic reports about a very tall, heavy, non-reinforced masonry structure after an earthquake,” said Andy Kirby, director of historic temple renovations.
That history, and what Roberts and Kirby and their teams learned when they opened up the temple for the seismic upgrade, illustrate why they say everything about the six-year renovation of the Salt Lake Temple is a preservation project, from 35 feet below ground to the Angel Moroni 210 feet above the earth.
“Our goal at the onset, one, was to preserve the temple,” Roberts said. “And, two, was to do all we could to potentially double the capacity of the temple, which we did of course in the baptistry” with a second font. “We’ve done more than double the number of sealings.”
“We’re talking about preserving the temple itself, for goodness sake,” Roberts said. “This is the biggest preservation project ever encountered in the state of Utah — by the church, by anyone. Compare it to what they’re doing in Paris, France, to preserve the Notre Dame Cathedral (a five-year project). We’re trying to preserve the temple, and to do that, we have to make sure it’ll stand through difficult circumstances …
“I firmly believe this is the biggest preservation project we’ve ever been involved in, or ever will be involved in, because it’s preserving the Salt Lake Temple.”
The most comparable preservation job in Utah history is the Utah State Capitol. From 2004-08, workers moved the 168-million-pound Capitol onto 265 base isolators so it can sway up to 2 feet in any direction during a quake. That project cost $273 million.
Ultimately, when construction workers walked into the temple in January 2020 to begin the renovation, most of the temple’s interior no longer looked the way it did when the pioneers opened it in 1893 due to multiple previous renovations. The project under way now will take it back to that style and be more true to its history.
“It will look like a Victorian Age temple,” Roberts said.
The two project managers and a historian explained that preserving the Salt Lake Temple as a whole and more than doubling its capacity will ensure that it will be more accessible to more people from more nations around the world for generations to come.
They also shared information about a substantial addition to the art inside the temple, how much capacity was added and how they changed the interior so it would be more familiar to the pioneers who built it, as well as how they did some of the work they are doing.
“Our goal at the onset, one, was to preserve the temple,” Roberts said, “and two was to do all we could to potentially double the capacity of the temple, which we did of course in the baptistry” with a second font. “We’ve done more than double the number of sealings.”
The Salt Lake Temple is the centerpiece of Temple Square, which is a Registered National Historic Landmark. Naturally, some people have lamented the losses of some pieces of the interior during the temple renovation.
Some of that couldn’t be helped as difficult decisions were made between preserving the temple as a whole versus preserving parts of the interior, Roberts and Kirby said. Church President Russell M. Nelson asked them to preserve it for millennia.
“We’re trying to preserve what we can,” Roberts said, “but because the First Presidency, President Nelson in particular, made the decision to move forward to preserve the temple — the whole temple — we needed to do seismic, and that seismic implementation is quite invasive. … It required us, throughout the temple, to put in steel structures, both in the ceiling, in the trusses, in the walls, in the floorboards so we can accomplish and preserve the Salt Lake Temple into the millennium.
For example, this week workers are scheduled to finish a breathtaking three-year project of drilling 96 holes from the top of the temple down through its walls and into the foundation. The holes allow workers to install post-tensioning cable that is tying the temple’s roof and stone walls — what previously was non-reinforced masonry — to the new foundation.
Workers poured the last section of that new foundation three weeks ago. Kirby called it a major milestone.
Now when an earthquake hits, that tensioning system will allow the totemic temple’s roof, walls and foundation to sway together as a single piece. The system required a company in Canada to double its capacity and built machines specifically for the temple renovation, Roberts said.
The complexity of the seismic upgrade necessitated the removal of a staircase that connected the first and second floors.
“Everything that we did outside had to happen on the inside, too, because we’re building a foundation to transfer an 800-million-pound structure to a new foundation,” Roberts said.
That work and effort to double the capacity of the temple’s instruction room called for the removal of murals painted on plaster in some rooms over the temple’s 131 years. It wasn’t possible to preserve them within the temple, Roberts said.
“When something is painted on plaster, it is like painting on concrete,” he said. “You put a painting on concrete, how do I take that down? How do I preserve that? Andy’s done a great job of taking out portions of it and giving it to Church History.”
Roberts said the walls in those rooms were reconfigured and will be stronger in a way that ultimately preserves the entire temple to fulfill its true purpose.
“I think a lot of the people who wish that the church would preserve all of the pioneer-era murals and everything inside the way that it was when it was originally built forget to some degree what the purpose of the temple is,” said Mark Henshaw, author of “Forty Years: The Saga of Building the Salt Lake Temple.”
“The temple is not a museum. That’s not its function. It’s not there to preserve the church’s history,” Henshaw said. “The church has a very fine Church History Museum and Church History Library right across the street, which does that kind of a thing. The purpose of the temple — and the pioneers understood this perfectly well — the purpose of the temple is to enable people to go in and make covenants that can only be made there.
“I think that our pioneer ancestors, if they were here today and if we could talk to them, they would be all in favor of making whatever changes were necessary to maximize the number of people who could go into the temple to make those covenants because, in the end, that is really — it’s not just the most important thing, it’s really, in a sense, the only important thing.”
Henshaw said he has loved the Salt Lake Temple’s pioneer craftsmanship. He and many others have expressed gratitude that the temple will still include the original craftsmanship in the celestial room, two original sealing rooms, the large assembly room on the fifth floor, four stone spiral staircases in each corner tower and most of the terrestrial room.
“The church and the leadership actually are very keenly aware of the temple’s place in church history and what it represents in terms of the sacrifices our pioneer forefathers made when they built that temple,” Henshaw said. “They do want to preserve our history as much as possible.”
The church recently completed major renovations of the St. George Temple, the Manti Temple and the Logan Tabernacle.
“Look at the amount of resources the church pours into the Church History Library and the Church History Museum,” Henshaw said. “Nobody can say that this church is not interested in trying to preserve its own history. You just can’t make that argument.”
The Salt Lake Temple was the last to provide instruction during the endowment ordinance via live actors rather than a film. Some wanted it to remain a sort of boutique temple, the only one to offer this paean to the past.
Henshaw said that would be exclusionary, leaving out millions of church members who don’t speak English.
“This is a growing church,” he said. “This is an increasingly international church. If the church has a flagship temple, it’s the Salt Lake Temple, and it would be unfair to all of those members of the church from around the world who might come to Salt Lake and come see that flagship temple but not be able to go through it and make covenants in their own language.”
The endowment ordinance, during which members make five covenants with God, will now be available in more than 90 languages via audio translation.
“We’re all children of God. We’re all equal in his eyes,” Henshaw said. “If we can open that temple up to be able to do endowments in 90 languages, so that people from African nations and Asian nations and South America and Europe can have that opportunity to come and go through that temple and in that way become part of the church’s story, in a sense, or become part of the temple story, I think we ought to do it.”
Henshaw and Roberts said the pioneers who built the Salt Lake Temple would feel the same.
“I am not a fan of trying to keep the temple frozen in time, which is what people are asking for it to do,” Henshaw said. “I am more a fan of opening the temple to as many members as possible to come in and make those covenants and have that spiritual experience. The reason the temple was built in the first place was so that people can become faithful and active members of the church and go out and further the work. I think that our pioneer forefathers would look at it the same way. I think that’s exactly the message they would give us if they were here to tell us today.”
The Salt Lake Temple has always been a destination for sealings, the marriage of a man and a woman that can last beyond this life. Roberts said the temple was the site of 125 sealings a day in the weeks before it closed for renovation.
“More live sealings are done in the Salt Lake Temple than any other temple,” he said.
Get ready for even more.
“We’ve done more than double the capacity for sealings,” Roberts said. “Some Saturday afternoons out here, they’re going to have 22 different rooms concurrently going with live sealings,” up from 13. The new rooms also are larger.
Otherwise, however, the Salt Lake Temple didn’t have the capacity to be the workhorse that others were over the past several decades.
“Our endowment capacity was never reaching what Provo or Jordan River or other temples did, or even close to it,” Roberts said. “It didn’t have the capacity in order to have the throughput. … Our goal was to try to double the potential output capacity of endowments.”
The Salt Lake Temple’s capacity for the five-room, progressive endowment session was 200 seats. Now, five rooms with 150 seats each will show the film concurrently and start more often.
The baptistry now will have two baptismal fonts instead of one. And Roberts believes the capacity for initiatory ordinances also will double.
Workers have refurbished and restored the artwork that hung in the temple. Not only will those familiar pieces return, but many new ones will be added.
“We’re adding hundreds of new pieces (of art), and the Tiffany glass that was in the temple in certain locations, some of which patrons have never seen because it was never in an area they could see, has been refurbished and will be visible,” Roberts said.
Workers are also adding significant new art glass to entryways and new murals depicting Jesus Christ.
“From an art standpoint, it’ll be an incredible, beautiful building,” Roberts said. “And I think when it comes to carpet and other things, we believe we got as close as we could within reason of what would have been in there during the high time of the pioneers.”
Roberts and Kirby oversaw a study of the temple at its opening. That included stripping layers of paint off the walls to study the original paint.
“The renewal of the temple incorporates those historic details and applies them to a more accessible temple,” Roberts said.
Modern artisans have restored the oxen of the original baptismal font, some original door knobs, original furniture and lighting. The patterns from the temple’s original carpet will return. The interior design will be uniform throughout the building.
Roberts said he hopes millions of people visit the temple during a public open house when the renovation is complete.
“They will walk into the temple and see the colors of the grand staircase, and they’ll see the carpet and for the first time, they will get a glimpse of what the temple would have been like” when the pioneers completed it.
“People will walk into it and it won’t look like Taylorsville, it won’t look like a modern temple. It’ll look like a Victorian Age temple, and it’ll be beautiful and it’ll be beyond their imagination and maybe they’ll say, ‘This is what the temple looked like when the pioneers built and finished it.’”
Kirby said he would love to talk to the pioneer builders and give them a hug.
“It’s so beautiful,” he said. “I appreciate their sacrifice. I would say we’ve done what we think is best to preserve their work and prepare it for people to receive the endowment. That’s what they did it for, too. And I hope that they would feel like that, if they were in my shoes, they would have made similar decisions.”
Roberts said the seismic reports that scared him to death caused teams he was part of to bring renovation proposals to three different church presidents, including President Gordon B. Hinckley and President Thomas S. Monson.
“The timing just wasn’t right yet,” he said of those proposals. “It wasn’t because they weren’t willing. They didn’t have the inspiration to do it then, and we didn’t have the technology to say that we could do it. It took a number of years to get to the point where the president said, ‘We really need to take action on this.’”
His experience reminds him of the pioneer architect of the original construction project, Truman Angell, who worked with Presidents Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff.
“I believe that he was led at that time by a prophet of God,” Roberts said. “And I would say that we have done everything we could to uphold the memory of what he was able to accomplish under the direction of a prophet. We did the same thing. We followed the direction of a prophet, who followed the direction of the Lord. … We were fortunate to have a prophet we could go to and say, ‘Here are your options, president, this is where we’re at.’”
Every time President Nelson gave “us the blessing of leadership.”
“I know this has been a very personal project for [President Nelson], and it’s been exciting to be a part of it.”