Provo Tabernacle: From Ruin to Temple
Near Provo, Utah
The Provo Tabernacle was one of the grandest meeting halls in Utah Territory when it was dedicated in eighteen ninety-eight. The red-brick Gothic Revival building on Provo's main block hosted community gatherings, church conferences, and civic events for more than a century. Then, in December twenty ten, a fire gutted the interior, leaving only the outer walls standing.
What happened next was unusual. Rather than demolish the ruin, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced it would rebuild the structure from the inside out and convert it into a full temple, one of the faith's most sacred building types. The Provo City Center Temple, as it became known, was dedicated in March twenty sixteen.
The historic exterior walls were preserved and restored, enclosing a completely new interior. It is one of the few buildings in LDS history to undergo this kind of transformation.
