Essential Temple Tee

Location
Salt Lake City, Utah. The temple stands on the 10-acre Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City, at 50 West North Temple Street, at an elevation of 4,335 feet. Status: closed for renovation since December 29, 2019; a public open house is scheduled for April 5 to October 1, 2027, and no rededication date had been announced as of August 17, 2026.

Temple Number
The Church's fourth dedicated temple in operation.

Announced
July 28, 1847, when Brigham Young designated the site four days after the pioneer company entered the Salt Lake Valley.

Groundbreaking
February 14, 1853. Brigham Young presided and broke ground, and Heber C. Kimball dedicated the site. Cornerstones were laid April 6, 1853.

Dedicated
April 6, 1893, by President Wilford Woodruff, in the first of 31 dedicatory sessions held through April 24. Sessions ran twice daily, with special sessions for children.

Architecture
Truman O. Angell, Church architect, designed the temple in collaboration with Brigham Young; after Angell's death in 1887, Joseph Don Carlos Young completed the spires and interior, incorporating a steel frame, electric lighting, steam heating, and elevators. Six-spire design faced in quartz monzonite from Little Cottonwood Canyon, 20 miles southeast of the site. The footprint measures about 119 by 181 feet, with walls nine feet thick at the base tapering to six feet at the top. The east center spire rises 210 feet, and 222.5 feet to the top of the 12.5-foot angel Moroni statue. With more than 253,000 square feet of floor area, it is the Church's largest temple.

Ordinance Rooms
As reconfigured in the current renovation: five instruction rooms seating 150 each, where the endowment is presented by film in a single room rather than the live, room-to-room presentation used before the closure; a separate veil room; ten added sealing rooms, for an announced total of 23; and two baptistries, the second added during the renovation.

First Temple President
Lorenzo Snow, called as the temple's first president for its 1893 opening. He served until becoming President of the Church in September 1898.

• Defects discovered in the original foundation forced workers to remove and replace portions of the basement walls, delaying construction by about five years. Brigham Young set the standard in 1863: "I want to see the temple built in a manner that it will endure through the Millennium."
• For the first two decades, stone was hauled 20 miles from Little Cottonwood Canyon by wagon team; the railroad's arrival in the 1870s finally gave builders a faster and more reliable way to move it.
• The capstone was laid April 6, 1892, before an estimated 40,000 people, with Lorenzo Snow leading the Hosanna Shout with waving white handkerchiefs in the form still used at temple dedications. The angel Moroni statue was placed on the east center spire at the same ceremony.
• The dedication followed exactly one year after the capstone, with the temple's ornate interior finished in that single intervening year.

• Carved stones ascend the buttresses in sequence: earthstones at the base, each weighing about 3.5 tons; moonstones depicting the moon in its phases, which Orson Pratt sketched from his observatory on the temple block; and sunstones cut with 52 points, one for each week of the year.
• The west center tower carries a carving of the Big Dipper, its pointer stars indicating the position of the North Star.
• The center towers bear carvings of clasped hands and the all-seeing eye, and two cloudstones on the east center tower show rays of light breaking through dark clouds.
• Cyrus Dallin's 12.5-foot angel Moroni, hammered from copper and overlaid with 22-karat gold leaf, crowns the east center spire; a heavy counterweight suspended inside the spire allows the statue to sway slightly in the wind.

• The temple closed from July 29, 1962, to May 21, 1963, for extensive updating, and an annex opened in 1966.
• On April 19, 2019, President Russell M. Nelson announced the current renovation; the temple closed December 29, 2019, for structural and seismic work centered on a base isolation system, with new north entry pavilions and a skylit grand hall through which patrons will enter.
• A magnitude 5.7 earthquake on March 18, 2020, shook the trumpet from the angel Moroni statue's hand and displaced some smaller spire stones. The statue and capstone, about 5,000 pounds together, were removed by crane on May 18, 2020, and the refurbished statue returned to the spire on April 2, 2024.
• In March 2021, the First Presidency announced the move from live endowment sessions to single-room film presentations, along with the added instruction rooms, sealing rooms, and second baptistry.
• Renovation completion is projected for the end of 2026. President Nelson announced the public open house on February 14, 2025; it runs April 5 to October 1, 2027, with free tickets available on TempleSquare.org beginning September 1, 2026. No rededication date had been announced as of August 17, 2026.

• After 40 years of construction, the masonry was so precise that the south wall differed in height from the north wall by one-eighth of an inch across the temple's 181-foot length.
• On April 5, 1893, the evening before the dedication began, about 5,000 invited guests, most of them not Church members, toured the finished temple.
• The 1892 capstone held a time capsule that was opened in 2020, 128 years after its placement, following the statue's removal.