Salt Lake Temple at Temple Square on a spring day by drone on April 3, 2022

The Salt Lake Temple at Temple Square will reopen in 2025 tentatively. The Salt Lake Temple was first announced to be built on July 28, 1847. The groundbreaking of the temple was on February 14, 1853. The Temple site dedication took place on February 14, 1853. The first public open house of the Salt Lake Temple was on April 5, 1893. The Exterior finish of the temple is made of quartz monzonite, which is very similar to granite, and this was quarried from Little Cottonwood Canyon, only 20 miles southeast of Salt Lake City. The temple's architectural features have six attached spires with an angel Moroni statue. Currently, the temple has five instruction rooms, a separate veil room, twenty-three sealing rooms, and two baptistries. The total square feet of the temple was 253,015 feet and is increasing to 403,000 square feet. The renovation announcement for the Salt Lake Temple was announced by the Prophet Russell M. Nelson. The temple officially closed on December 29, 2019, and will be closed for about five years because of extensive renovations to the Temple and Temple Square. With the Salt Lake Temple dedicated in 1893, it is the sixth temple completed by the church, requiring 40 years to complete, and the fourth temple built since the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1846. The walls of the Salt Lake Temple are nine feet thick at the base and six feet thick at the top. Brigham Young had originally favored building the walls from adobe with a thin veneer of stone, which would require very thick walls, but the decision was later made to use solid hand-carved pieces of granite of the same thickness. The Salt Lake Temple was the only temple dedicated by President Wilford Woodruff. The building of the Salt Lake Temple was seen as a fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah's prophecy: "And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it" (Isaiah 2:2). The Salt Lake Temple is the first temple to feature a standing angel Moroni statue, which is 14-feet tall and attached to a rod that extends 27 feet into the tower, terminating with a 4,000-pound counterbalance to keep the statue immovable. The angel was created by Paris-trained sculptor Cyrus E. Dallin and built in Salem, Ohio. The Salt Lake Temple is the first temple to have the addition of a second baptistry announced, replacing the former cafeteria. It was announced on March 12, 2021, during an extensive renovation of the temple and Temple Square. Some of the upgrades on the outside of the Salt Lake Temple will have portions of the solid wall that currently surrounds Temple Square will be replaced with decorative fences, providing much better views and access to the temple from the north and south. Temple Square will have two smaller visitor pavilions that will not obstruct views of the temple from the south. The plaza and landscaping south of the Church Office Building will be repaired and renovated to place greater emphasis on the international presence of the Church and improve the visitor experience. Structural reinforcements to the walls and roof of the temple will work in conjunction with a base isolation system installed under the massive foundation to mitigate the impact of seismic activity. Temple will have more modern mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems that will replace the aging and outdated equipment located throughout the temple. Two smaller patron pavilions will replace the annex, and the sealing room wing will be rebuilt slightly wider and more true to the design of the exterior wall that it extends. The recommend desk will be located underground, featuring expansive skylights with generous views of the temple above. This area will be accessible from the patron pavilions through a grand hall or by way of a patron tunnel from the Conference Center parking facility. The historic interior of the temple will be restored and refreshed, returning to a Victorian-inspired palette of dark woods, rich colors, and patterned fabrics. Temple will have two more instruction rooms, ten more sealing rooms, and a second baptistry will be added to increase the capacity of the temple. The new instruction rooms will replace the former baptistry, and two new baptistries will be built on the lower level of the north annex. The progressive room-to-room presentation of the endowment by live actors will be replaced by single-room video presentations. The instruction room murals will be photographed, documented, and permanently removed. There are three towers, the twelve pinnacles rising from the towers, castle-like battlements, earthstones,
moonstones, sunstones, cloudstones, six-pointed starstones, Upside-down five-pointed stars, large upright five-pointed stars, he small upright five-pointed stars, Big Dipper. My Official website is TempleScoop.com