Nauvoo Temple Ruins

NAUVOO TEMPLE RUINS In connection with the article, "Nauvoo in 1846," copied from Charles Lanman's "A Summer in the Wilderness," and contributed to the Improvement Era by Harrison C. Dale, Washington Uni- versity, St. Louis, Missouri, it seems very appropriate to repro- duce, as a frontispiece, a drawing of the Nauvoo Temple, and a cut of the ruins as they appeared in 1853. The latter picture is a photo after a steel engraving from the sketch of Frederick Piercy, found in that rare book of travel entitled "The Route from Liver- pool to Great Salt Lake Valley," edited by James Linford, and published by Franklin D. Richards, in Liverpool, England, 1855. It is roproduced for the Era through the courtesy of A. Win. Lund, of the Church Historian's office. Mr. Lanman's article is a vivtd description of the deserted city and temple, written on the whole in a sympathetic vein. It will prove interesting to the read- ers of the Improvement Era because it gives the thought of a prominent writer of the period, who recorded his impressions while the temple was still standing as it had been left by the fleeing Saints. The Temple was constructed of easily-cut, light-gray limestone, close-grained and durable, and said to have been almost as hard as marble. It was 128 by 88 feet, and 65 feet to the square, the height of the tower, from the ground to the top of the spire (which bore the figure of a flying herald sounding a trumpet) being 165 feet, as stated by Dr. Talmage, in The House of the Lord. It was two and a half stories high. It had thirty hewn pilasters, at the bases of which were crescent moons. The capitals of these pilasters were formed by suns in the shape of human faces, in bold relief, ornamented with rays of light sur- mounted with two hands holding trumpets. Pictures of these stones have appeared on several occasions in the Era. Above the capitals was a cornice or frieze of thirty star-stones. The building faced the west, and above the center door appeared the inscription "The House of the Lord. Built by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Holiness to the Lord." The Temple was be- gun in 1841, completed in 1846, and is said to have cost upwards of one million dollars. It was partly destroyed by fire in 1848, and gradually fell into decay and ruin, until most of the walls were leveled by a tornado, in the fall of 1850, the ruins which we pre- sent in this number being all that was left in 1853. The stones of which it was built were used by the settlers, and are found to this day in buildings along the Mississippi between Burlington and St. Louis, not one stone being left upon another on the orig- inal site. Edward H. Anderson.

THE NAUVOO TEMPLE From a drawing by \Y. Murphy, copyrighted and published in 1868, and in Tal- mage's House of the Lord, in 1912.