Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- The Salt Lake Temple is undergoing a significant six-year renovation, focused primarily on seismic upgrades to ensure its stability in the event of an earthquake.
- This project, considered the largest preservation effort in Utah's history, aims to preserve the temple's historic architecture while more than doubling its capacity to accommodate more visitors globally.
SALT LAKE CITY — 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."
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 underway 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.
Saving the Salt Lake Temple
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.
The biggest preservation project in Utah history?
"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," he said.
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.
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.
