Joseph Smith said the Church is not fully organized in its proper order and cannot be until the temple is completed;

hence, the building of the temple in Nauvoo,

coming up next on “The Joseph Smith Papers.”

KJZZ Television, in cooperation with the Church History Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, presents this weekly series highlighting the research of scholars and historians as they prepare for the publication of The Joseph Smith Papers. And now your host, Glenn Rawson.

In the October 1840 conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

Joseph Smith directed the Church to build a house of the Lord.

Later, a revelation was received in January of 1841 that ratified that decision and clarified the purpose of the temple.

It also contained a commandment to build another structure in Nauvoo, the Nauvoo House.

Our show today is about the building of those two sacred houses in Nauvoo.

“The proposal here is as follows,”

quoting from the minutes of that general conference, October 3rd, 1840. “The president then spoke of the necessity of building a house of the Lord in this place.”

That’s what they called the Kirtland Temple.

It was the Lord’s house.

“Whereupon it was resolved, that the Saints build a house for the worship of God, and that Reynolds Cahoon,

Elias Higbee, and Alpheus Cutler,” who had been involved in the Kirtland Temple, “be appointed a committee to build the same.

On motion: Resolved, that a commencement be made 10 days from this date, and that every 10th day be appropriated for the building of said house.”

They not only needed the tithing, the cash tithing or the goods of tithing, which is what most people gave, to feed the hired workers and the, and the volunteer workers, the poor.

But also, they needed the manpower.

In order to organize that manpower and to keep the manpower flowing so the work crews

didn’t bunch up, with lots of people one day and almost nobody the next, what they did is they

divided the city of Nauvoo into 10 wards.

And each ward was responsible for providing workers for

one out of 10 days, not counting Sunday.

And so the organization of wards had its genesis

in meeting the manpower needs to build the temple.

They weren’t ecclesiastical units for worship,

they were ecclesiastical units for mobilizing manpower to build the temple.

With the decision to build the temple, there of course had to be an architect,

someone who could design and oversee the building of the structure. The original design of the Nauvoo temple was Neoclassical Greek, and it was somewhat similar to the Kirtland Temple.

What the Prophet did is he invited some of these people to submit ideas. It was, in a sense, an architectural contest.

And he did receive some very nice proposals and sketches and drawings, and the

the winning architect is William Weeks.

The site selected for the temple was right at the center of Nauvoo, if you will.

It is a mile inland from the the farthest point out into the river. It’s a mile south of the northern point of the river, and a mile north of the southern part of the river.

So it's a mile in each of those three directions. And, of course, behind you, you’ve got the prairie.

The first drawing that Weeks came up with was a building that looked very much like a public building of the time. You could almost say it looks like a courthouse.

It had a bell tower. There was a clock up there and a bell, and a standard kind of architectural design.

It had three doors, and it would it would do as a courthouse.

In fact, if you look at the plans for the

capitol building in Springfield,

which is of a very similar size, you can see some echoes there.

There were some similarities, however, with Kirtland.

That is, a hall on the main floor,

with galleries on the side halfway up, and then a hall on the second floor with galleries.

And those galleries in Nauvoo were to be offices for Church leaders.

Joseph Smith made inspired revisions in the basic designs of William Weeks.

The temple's interior was changed to accommodate temple ordinances that had recently been revealed.

The temple's exterior was redesigned to include instructive

symbols.

If you look at the final drawing of Nauvoo Temple,

you will see there those features that we recognize as the temple.

Instead of the, instead of the,

the end now has an attic, which changes the pattern,

and this attic level ultimately became the location for the endowment. It was the temple part of the building,

whereas the lower halls remain places for public gatherings.

Let's talk a little bit about the symbolism of the exterior of the Nauvoo Temple. The

thing that we’re usually most familiar with are

the pilasters, where they have a moonstone on the bottom,

and then there’s a shaft that goes up and there’s a sunstone

on the top of the pilaster, and above the sunstone there’s a star. Now, one of the things that sometimes people

used to interpret those is the idea of the three degrees of glory:

the sun, the moon, and the stars.

The problem with that is that it doesn’t work on the Nauvoo Temple.

The sequence is off. If we use that symbolism, we would go

from the terrestrial world to the celestial world to the telestrial world, and that sequence simply isn’t right.

So there's got to be another explanation.

And if you look at the way the forms are actually placed on the temple, it gives us some insights.

We begin with the moonstone on the bottom.

That moonstone is actually looking down

because it actually has a face on it, like the man in the moon kind of thing.

And it's looking down as the moon would be if we were out in the night sky.

The moon’s looking down on us. And then

above the moon is the sun, and beyond the sun are the stars.

So what we have is not a description of three degrees of glory.

What we have is a microcosm of the universe.

Why does this matter? Because one of the reasons that Nauvoo is so significant for us is that it is,

it is the foundation of much of what eventually happens in Salt Lake.

Symbols are a very versatile and effective means of teaching.

Often a single symbol can have multiple meanings,

as is the case with some of the symbols that are carved into the exterior of the Nauvoo Temple.

At the top are five-pointed stars with the long point downward, which is a symbol of Christ.

The sunstones also have two other elements that are quite interesting. You have kind of chevron patterns underneath this

big face of the sun. And we learned from Brigham Young,

it’s written in the, in the “History of the Church,”

he refers to those chevron patterns as clouds.

So the sun is breaking through the clouds.

And that was a symbol; it was quite common in the early Restoration.

It shows up most most dramatically in the poetry of Parley P. Pratt

in that wonderful anthem, “The Morning Breaks, the Shadows Flee.”

So the idea the sun is a symbol of the Restoration of the gospel breaking through clouds of confusion and discord. And that’s a symbol on there. In addition to that, there are two hands coming down like this holding trumpets.

And once again, that’s a, that’s a symbol of announcing the Restoration, the trumpets proclaiming the Restoration of the gospel.

Symbols can and often do change over time,

from the Nauvoo Temple to the Salt Lake Temple,

some architectural symbols have evolved.

Another thing that we're quite familiar with with the Nauvoo Temple in terms of symbols is that wonderful weather vane of the flying angel, and

and he’s dressed in his priestly robes,

he has a trumpet announcing the Restoration of the gospel,

and he’s holding the book,

I imagine the Book of Mormon, announcing the Restoration of the gospel. Now sometimes people look at that as Moroni.

Actually, the idea of an angel on top of the temple being Moroni takes a long time,

a long evolution to get to that interpretation.

The early interpretation was this was the angel of the Restoration,

as in Revelations [14:6],

“And I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven.”

What shows up as symbolism expressed by pulpits

in Kirtland and in Nauvoo, in Salt Lake are expressed by towers on the exterior. So we have towers on

the west end and towers on the east end.

The towers on the east end are a little higher, and

they represent the Melchizedek Priesthood, and they represent

the general leadership of the Church.

And the west end represents the Aaronic Priesthood and the localized leadership of the Church.

And that’s why the west end, the towers are slightly lower.

But it's also why the towers are designed so that they have three levels going up like this.

And you have three horizontally across like this to represent the presidencies, just like you had three going across to represent the presidencies for the pulpits in Nauvoo and Kirtland. Except now we have made it externally visible.

Though the Saints may not have initially understood it,

the temple in Nauvoo was to be a different kind of a temple in some respects than the one in Kirtland.

The October conference had seen the temple as a house of worship and a house of the Lord.

But there was more there in that temple.

We're talking about here about the endowment and the sealing ordinances. “And verily. I say unto you, let this house built unto my name that I may reveal mine ordinances herein unto my people.”

They commence the construction of the temple,

but the work progressed slowly.

While the Saints labored with all they had to build the temple,

they also had to survive. Joseph anxiously urged the work along.

And that effort to build a temple was a long and tedious prospect.

The building season was from spring to fall,

and guess what was happening in spring to fall?

That was also the time when you build houses, and contractors and builders were needed there.

That’s when you plowed and planted and harvested,

and the farmers were busy there.

So that's one of the reasons it took so long to get the temple out of the ground and up.

Interestingly, at the general conference of the Church on the 2nd of October in 1841, in fact the same day the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House was laid,

Joseph made some comments about the importance of building the Lord’s house, the Nauvoo Temple,

and he said, “There shall be no more baptisms for the dead until the ordinance can be attended to in the font of the Lord’s house;

and the Church shall not hold another general conference until they can meet in said house. For thus sayeth the Lord!”

End of quote. Although Church leaders continued holding conferences, none was designated a general conference until October 1845,

when they could indeed hold the conference within the walls of the temple.

Among those who played a significant role in the building of the temple at Nauvoo were those converts, immigrants from the British Isles.

Peter Maughn was one of the British stonemasons who helped build the Nauvoo Temple,

and this was an important component of what was going on in Nauvoo. Rather than factories,

the tendency was to combine efforts for the temple,

for the Nauvoo House,

for some of these endeavors that Joseph Smith promoted very heavily. And so they were able to contribute to this in important ways. They had those skills.

The chief mason on the temple

was from England, the chief carver of the sunstones was from Great Britain.

A lot of our skilled craftsmen came from there.

As mentioned, the Lord commanded that two houses were to be built in Nauvoo. The Nauvoo House was to be a hotel,

a place where weary travelers could rest while they contemplated the Lord's establishment of Zion.

The revelation that Joseph received on the 19th of January 1841, that we now know is section 124 of the Doctrine and Covenants, described

the necessity of building two buildings: one, the house of the Lord, the temple in Nauvoo, the second being the Nauvoo House.

And I'd like to read from portions of verses 56 and 60 that talk about building the Nauvoo House, a commandment to build this house.

“And now I say unto you, as pertaining to my boardinghouse which I have commanded you to build for the boarding of strangers,

let it be built unto my name, and let my name be named upon it,

and let my servant Joseph and his house have place therein,

from generation to generation. And let the name (of the house) of that house be called ‘Nauvoo House’; and let it be a delightful habitation for man and a resting place

for the weary traveler, that he may contemplate the glory of Zion

and the glory of this, the cornerstone thereof.”

Now, the Nauvoo House is a boardinghouse. It’s a hotel.

When these kings and governors visit,

the Lord wanted a place for them to stay, a pleasant place,

a place which was decent,

not just put them up in an old log cabin.

And there wasn't a public hotel.

There wasn't a public house there, if you will.

And therefore, section 124 commands them to “build a house unto my name,” which would be a boardinghouse for visitors— all visitors, not just dignitaries.

This was a huge undertaking.

The building design was four stories high; it would have a lot of accommodations.

So there is a real need to have a place so that visitors coming to Nauvoo will get the best impression possible of the Church and of their experience there, so that they will have

a real opportunity to ponder the more important things—

the doctrines of the Church that they are hearing for the first time—and to partake of the spirit of the place as much as anything else. When the revelation commanded that two houses be built, well

that meant in Joseph’s mind that the building of the Nauvoo House was as much an imperative as the building of the Nauvoo Temple.

This is on, from the 21st of February 1843. The source is Joseph’s journal.

“The building of Nauvoo House is just as sacred, in my view, as the temple. I want the Nauvoo House built. It must be built. Our salvation depends upon it.

When men have done what they can or will for the temple,

let them do what they can for the Nauvoo House.”

Willard Richards recorded those words in Joseph’s Nauvoo journal.

This is from the 6th of April 1843 conference:

“It is important that this conference gives importance to the Nauvoo House, as a prejudice exists against the Nauvoo House in favor of the Lord’s house.

There is no place where men of wealth and character and influence can go to repose themselves, and it is necessary we should have such a place.” Again,

a similar statement on the 19th of April 1843,

Joseph speaking to the Twelve: “Don’t be scared about the temple. Don’t say anything against it.

But make all men know your mission is to build

the Nauvoo House.”

Special conferences were held to encourage the Saints to build the Nauvoo House. The Quorum

of the Twelve Apostles were appointed as special collectors of tithes for that purpose.

But in the end, with limited time and resources,

the Nauvoo House never rose beyond the first floor.

Both buildings were being worked on, but as more Saints were moving in from Europe with very little means, and as,

as the Saints’ neighbors in Illinois were becoming

a little more excited about some of the things going on in Nauvoo politically,

the tensefulness of the situation made it clear that they probably wouldn't be there forever, in Illinois, and when push came to shove, one building had to be favored over the other. Right, and it was just a matter of resources then as ...

It was. OK. All right. After the Saints left, it was converted into a boardinghouse.

Emma Smith’s second husband,

Bidamon, purchased it privately and took the bricks down and created a smaller footprint for it,

one story, and that that part of the building still remains to this day.

When it became obvious that both houses could not be built,

the Nauvoo House and the temple, emphasis shifted to the temple

and to the completion of another smaller house that would serve the purpose of a hotel or a tavern, as it was called at that time.

That structure was called the Mansion House,

and it became the final home of Joseph and Emma Smith.

An entry from the 31st of August 1843 in Joseph’s journal makes this clear. “About these days was moving into the new house.” That’s

the house that would become to be known as Joseph’s Mansion House, “on the diagonal corner,”

meaning opposite his current home.

Also another entry from the 3rd of October 1843:

Approximately 100 couples dined, quote, “at the Nauvoo Mansion as an ‘opening’ to the new house.”

The Nauvoo House that was directed to be built in section 124 was,

when there wasn't enough resources to continue laboring on that building, Joseph’s own home—obviously not large enough to support a number of visitors—

I think that a temporary solution at least.

I don’t think that they had,

well, I’m sure that they had not permanently given up on the Nauvoo House at that point, but a temporary solution was to build the, what we call the Mansion House that would be an operable hotel, larger than Joseph’s current home, that his family could live in, but that also had rooms for other visitors to Nauvoo to stay at.

So Joseph, they built the Mansion House, which was Joseph’s home,

but then Joseph opened it up as a hotel to fulfill the purpose of what the

the Nauvoo House was going to be temporarily.

At least temporarily,

and the Mansion House that was being built was built with the intent not only of being Joseph’s home but of a hotel.

Remember that Joseph knew his time as well as the Saints’ time in Nauvoo was limited. By early 1844, then, all efforts went into the completion of the Nauvoo Temple.

The final real mark of the change in direction, where we are no longer working on building both buildings, where we have to focus on one,

is probably best shown in a 4th of March 1844—

so now, shortly before the martyrdom—meeting of the First Presidency, the Twelve Apostles, and the temple

committee. I quote from Willard Richards’s account of that meeting as copied into Joseph’s Nauvoo journal.

“President Joseph said he did not know,

but it was best to let the Nauvoo House be till the temple is completed.

We need the temple more than anything else.

We will let the Nauvoo House stand till the temple is done,

and we will put all our force on the temple,

turn all lumber towards the temple,

stock the lumber we want for the temple, cover it this fall.”

We’ve talked about the Nauvoo Temple,

the Nauvoo House, and the Mansion House,

but there was one other structure that's seldom discussed.

It was designed but never built, at least not in Nauvoo.

The plan in Nauvoo was to build a tabernacle directly west of the temple, practically touching the front of it.

It was to be a grand oval building.

It was actually a canvas structure, a giant tent.

And they raised

hundreds and hundreds of dollars to buy canvas for this, they sent Orson Hyde back to buy the canvas.

He brought the canvas back to Nauvoo.

And it was designed so it would hold between eight [8,000] and 10,000 people. And the size of the

proposed canvas tabernacle that was to be pitched, should we say,

in Nauvoo in front of the temple

is almost exactly the size of the Salt Lake Tabernacle—

the proportions, even the shape.

The Nauvoo Temple was only up to the first floor when Joseph was killed in June of 1844.

After his death, the work continued to go forward,

and ordinance work was performed in the temple even before it was completed.

Then, in February of 1846,

the leadership of the Church walked away from the temple

and set out for the West.

Many valuable lessons went with them from the Nauvoo Temple.

There are some things that we learned

about how to build a temple when we built Kirtland and Nauvoo, from a structural standpoint.

The Kirtland Temple did not have foundations that were thick enough and deep enough, and they started to fail,

even in the early days.

And the Nauvoo Temple,

they built the floors in there before they had the ceiling in place,

and they got rain and snow on it and eventually rotted some of the timbers,

and some of them kind of cracked. And they had to replace things.

Everything was built very, very strong in the temple. I mean, we hear about the Salt Lake Temple and its walls that are what, 16 foot at

the foundation; they taper to what is it, 8 feet at the top.

So they were

very conscious about building something permanent that the temple had to be permanent. And we learned.

And you could say it was overbuilt,

but it still looks great. And it’s still strong. And so

we learned line upon line, precept upon precept.

And we incorporated those into the physical design of our buildings.

And that’s why we’re meticulous

in the building of temples about trying to build them with the best materials and an excellent craftsmanship.

Temples were built for a singular purpose with an inspired design. And they were intended to influence

eternal matters.

Well, that’s the knowledge of antiquity stuff:

design with a style that doesn’t go out of date so quick,

it isn’t a fad. And then the second issue is build for the eternities. And when a temple is about the eternities,

the ordinances we do there have efficacy, you know, forever.

And the building should visually say what the ordinances are doing.

It should look forever and permanent.

And we learned from Kirtland and Nauvoo how to build better buildings, better temples.

At least structurally,

They weren't going to start collapsing in their own lifetime.

You see, a temple has to remain permanent, elegant, and dignified,

and, using historical styles,

preserve us and save us from fads that have a short life span.

And a temple has to keep being elegant, dignified, and beautiful.

We’ve learned in this series that the Restoration of the gospel didn’t come all at once. The doctrines, ordinances, and even scripture came a little at a time, line upon line, precept upon precept.

It was as late as Nauvoo that another book of scripture was published to the Saints.

Next week on “The Joseph Smith Papers”: the Book of Abraham.

I’m Glen Rawson. Thanks for joining us.