Smithfield Tabernacle-Youth Center

About this property

The Smithfield Tabernacle is a historic Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) tabernacle and present-day recreation facility in Smithfield, Utah. It is one of 42 surviving LDS tabernacles out of 92 built. The building was a notable construction for a settlement of Smithfield's size, and it served as a geographic and symbolic center for the early town, functioning as an important religious and public space. Land for a tabernacle was set aside early in 1860 on the town's central square. By 1880, the Smithfield Ward had outgrown the three-room building in which it was meeting, and in 1881, Bishop George L. Farrell and his counselors Preston T. Morehead and James Mack decided the time had come to erect a tabernacle. The tabernacle was designed in a Victorian Gothic style by Logan resident James Quayle of architecture firm Cannon and Mullen. Preston T. Morehead of the Smithfield Ward bishopric served as the chief engineer, superintending the construction. Morehead may also have collaborated in the design. Unusually for an LDS tabernacle, it was constructed and financed by the small Smithfield Ward rather than being a stake project. Stone for the foundation was salvaged from the abandoned building site of a nearby church meetinghouse. The building was constructed of approximately 220,000 yellow bricks distinctive to Smithfield and manufactured locally by Lars Mourtisen in his clay-pit brickyard near the Bear River. In some places, the masonry was layered up to seven wythes thick. Construction spanned roughly 20 years. One twenty-first century news report stated the building commenced in 1881, but the tabernacle's own datestone and other early or expert sources indicate it began in April 1883. It was completed in December 1902 at a cost of approximately $77,000, though it had been in use in its partially-completed condition for some years. For example, LDS Church President Wilford Woodruff noted in his diary on 3 August 1890 that he "went to the New Tabernacle & Attended a meeting with the people the House was crouded G Q Cannon spoke 40 Minuts & W Woodruff 38 M[inutes]." One much later news report suggested the building was finally dedicated in 1906, but the Smithfield Historical Society and the earliest surviving sources indicate the tabernacle was dedicated on 19 February 1905 by LDS apostle Rudger Clawson. The interior space was dominated by a chapel with an overlooking balcony, but the tower also featured an upper-story prayer circle room. The tabernacle's north and south walls each housed six tall pointed-arch windows with rectangular lights of varigated green. The front elevation included a large central pointed-arch window flanked by a smaller, similar window on either side, below which matching transom windows capped the two sets of entrance doors. Above the central window, the square tower featured the inscription "HOLINESS TO THE LORD L.D.S. CHURCH," a notable deviation from the faith's usual practice of reserving the phrase to mark its temples. Datestones to either side of this inscription mark the construction of the building. A rose window and a second smaller round architectural embellishment (possibly originally a window, but one that had been bricked over long before other windows were covered) appear in the upper half of the square tower. The only architectural voids on the rear elevation were two small doors.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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