Essential Temple Tee – with personalizable date (Kirtland)

Location
Kirtland, Ohio, at 9020 Chillicothe Road. The building stands on a bluff about 25 miles east of Cleveland, overlooking the Chagrin Valley.

Status
Not an operating temple. It is preserved as a historic site and open to visitors of any faith at no charge, with guided tours beginning at the adjacent visitors' center. No ordinances are performed there, so it has no temple number, no temple district, and no temple president.

Announced
December 27, 1832. A revelation recorded that day, now Doctrine and Covenants 88, directed the Saints in Kirtland to establish a house of prayer, fasting, faith, learning, glory, order, and God.

Construction Begun
June 5, 1833. The cornerstones were laid on July 23, 1833.

Dedicated
March 27, 1836, by Joseph Smith. The service was repeated several days later for those who could not be seated the first time.

Architecture
No professional architect. The First Presidency of the day, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Frederick G. Williams, reported receiving the design by vision in 1833, and the plan called for an interior 55 feet wide by 65 feet long. The walls are locally quarried sandstone laid as rubble masonry, finished in stucco and scored to imitate cut coursed stone. Roughly 15,000 square feet across three levels. The exterior follows the New England Protestant meetinghouse form with Federal and Gothic elements: lancet windows along the sides, ten small dormers lighting the attic story, and a bell tower over the front.

• The walls were supposed to be brick. Frederick G. Williams supervised brick production from April to September 1833, but the crews had no experience and the bricks were unusable. The effort was abandoned by mid-September, leaving a finished stone foundation with nothing to build on top of it.
• The fix came from Artemus Millet, a Canadian convert with experience on mills, chimneys, and foundations, who reached Kirtland in late October 1833. Noting how much sandstone the local quarries held, he proposed rubble masonry walls under a stucco finish, which is how the temple was actually built. Most retellings credit Brigham Young with recruiting him. Millet's own reminiscence and Hyrum Smith's papers say the written request came from Hyrum.
• Zion's Camp emptied the site in the summer of 1834. Heber C. Kimball later recalled that only ten or fifteen men were left in Kirtland, and that at times no more than five or six were working on the building.
• When the design was presented in June 1833, Hyrum Smith ran home for a scythe to start clearing the wheat field on the building site. Asked by his mother where he was going with it, he said he was "determined to be the first at the work."
• What the temple cost was never settled. Ira Ames took over the building committee's books and found them in disorder. Scholarly estimates range from $30,000 to $100,000, with a figure near $40,000 the most commonly cited.

• This was the first temple the Latter Day Saints completed. Its formal name was the House of the Lord. The word temple was not yet in general use, and Joseph Smith's records also refer to the building as the Chapel.
• The dedication set a pattern later dedications still follow. Joseph Smith read a prayer he had received by revelation, now Doctrine and Covenants 109, the congregation gave the Hosanna Shout, and they sang "The Spirit of God," which William W. Phelps wrote for the occasion. All three became standard elements of temple dedications afterward.
• On April 3, 1836, one week after the dedication, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery recorded a vision at the pulpits in which Moses, Elias, and Elijah conferred priesthood keys. The account is published as Doctrine and Covenants 110, and Latter-day Saints trace the authority for temple sealings and family history work to it.
• The building functioned as a school as much as a meetinghouse. As many as 140 people studied reading, writing, history, geography, and Hebrew grammar in the third-floor rooms during the week.

• A financial crisis struck Kirtland a year after the dedication. A dissenting faction led by Warren Parrish tried to seize the building, an unknown arsonist later tried to burn it, and most of the Saints left Ohio for Missouri in 1837 and 1838.
• In 1880 an Ohio court recognized the heirs of Joseph Smith as holding title. About two decades later the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now Community of Christ, secured ownership through a legal claim of continuous use, and cared for the building from then until 2024.
• On March 5, 2024, ownership transferred to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Discussions had begun in June 2021. The agreement totaled $192.5 million and covered the temple along with historic buildings in Nauvoo, manuscripts, and artifacts, with no value assigned to any single item. Community of Christ stated the proceeds would fund its mission priorities worldwide. The building closed for twenty days and reopened for free public tours on March 25, 2024.

• After the Saints left, the temple served as a venue for private worship and public functions, and was leased for many years as a public school.
• Community of Christ's predecessor restored the building as closely as possible to its original condition after establishing ownership.
• The Historic American Buildings Survey documented the temple and its interior plan in 1934. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969 and designated a National Historic Landmark in December 1976.

• The gilt inscription across the front reads House of the Lord, Built by the Church of Christ, 1834, dated two years before the building was finished.
• The exterior stucco has crushed crockery, china, and glass mixed into it, which makes the walls catch the light. Children gathered the discarded shards. The often repeated story that the women of Kirtland deliberately broke their good china for the purpose has no known historical account behind it.
• Both main halls carry two sets of tiered pulpits, one at each end, lettered in gilt with initials designating priesthood offices. The pews were built with movable benches so a congregation could face either direction.
• Truman O. Angell worked here as a carpenter and joiner. He went on to serve as Church architect and to plan the Salt Lake Temple.