Ninth and Centerish, Provo, Utah

At ninth east, just south of center in Provo, there's an older red-brick church. The steeple is touched-up and a little worn, which makes me think that 'the church' is thinking about changing something, but it's a nice, traditional building against a pretty backdrop.
And look at the real steeple room. I wonder what mysteries await...

Brighton, Utah

This one comes from up Big Cottonwood Canyon, just north of Brighton Ski Resort.

Way back in the early nineties was the last time I attended this one with a group of my dearest friends and wife; it's survived pretty much the same since then, as far as I can remember.

Pretty simple and unique, this is one I've not seen the like of anywhere else.

Lyman, Utah

From the highlands of Wayne County comes this little chapel; Lyman is a little town between Loa and Bicknell, both tiny in their own rights.
Who knows what lies beneath that aluminum siding, or what the original building looked like, but I'm fairly sure what remains isn't anything like what existed fifty years ago.

As each year passes, less people remember what the old church was like, and I doubt very many much concern themselves with that thought.

Mona, Utah

In central Utah, just north of Nephi is a little village called Mona.  They make electricity out of natural gas, bullets from various elements in the earth, and extraordinarily expensive herbal extractives to sell via multilevel marketing, and also happen to have a little church in town undergoing some sort of work.
A nice little warehouse about the size of that down further south in Antimony. It ooks like it's been upgraded a few times over the years, hodgepodge- style.

Springville, Utah

A chapel from around the late nineties here; the church was settling into the cookie-cutter architecture of the 2000s,  but the steeple and steeple room are relatively special.
Two faux windows, tinted in a sort of purply hue, a copper-clad, svelte steeple, and more detail and care than those pasted onto preformed chapels these days.
Too bad that attention to form isn't adhered to currently, in either the construction of LDS houses of worship or the brand of religion professed within them.

Delta, Utah

This design seems to crop up quite a bit in medium-sized rural town around Utah; a nice design with some feeling of craft and grace.

That steeple room has actual windows and light coming from all four sides; I wonder if there's a way to get in there. I'm sure someone has to go inside and clean the glass inside that bell-less space...

At least it is a space into which some light enters and exits again, rather than a fiberglass void.

Ephraim's Northwest Side

A local chapel here; a new one in Ephraim.It might as well be in Sandy, Utah, or Bellingham, Washington for all its local flavor and local participation in  construction.
Ah, the 'global' corporation does quite a job of keeping the church comfortable and homogenous...

Antimony

Went down to the Escalante Plateau with the family and pulled to the side to photograph this architectural anomaly in Antimony. The chapel build seems to have gone in three phases over a span of at least seventy five years judging from the additions and materials.
Some geometric parallelism between that Park City model below and this lowly steeple, no?
Beautiful place, Antimony, on the whole.

I wonder what's in that grand old steeple room...

Over from Snyderville, Utah: Upscale...

Up Park City way, there's a wee church that the LDS church constructed with a little more panache than those usually foisted upon the locals. They couldn't make people with a median income at least four times as high as Saints in West Valley put up with a normal 'Hetritage' edition chapel with a fiberglass steeple from some sweatshop on the west side of Salt Lake Valley, so they got some architectural extras thrown into their Rameumptom...

Did I mention that I'm pretty much the foremost authority on LDS Steeple Rooms?

Cottonwood, Utah: Gothic Arches

Up on the east side of the Salt Lake Valley is this Neogothic mid-twentieth century beauty. One of my favorites, though I don't have any experience in anything like it inside.

There are probably sputnik-style light fixtures and all manner of art-moderne flourishes within its impregnable cinderblock shell.
Wouldn't mind 'guesting' in there.

Holladay, Utah

Here're a couple of golden oldies from around 45th south in Holladay, Utah; relatively 'old' if you live the relatively short-lived and expansionist Mormon culture of Anglo Utah and the American Intermountain West.

 

Odd if you've never seen them or are used to the fiberglass simulacra of the present, but when I was a kid in the sixties and seventies, they were the face of Mormon wardhouses on the march forward into the future.

Boston Temple

Because of a lawsuit filed by neighbors of the temple site, the Boston Massachusetts Temple was dedicated without the planned steeple. President Hinckley remained optimistic and said the temple work would commence with or without a steeple. His optimism was rewarded when the Supreme Court of Massachusetts ruled in favor of the Church the following May. Previously, a judge had ruled that the building's steeple was not a "necessary element of the Mormon religion." Therefore, under the law the building height limit could be enforced. But the Supreme Court overruled the earlier ruling saying, "A rose window at Notre Dame Cathedral, a balcony at St. Peter's Basilica, are judges to decide whether these architectural elements are 'necessary' to the faith served by those buildings?" The judges concluded that, "It is not for judges to determine whether the inclusion of a particular architectural feature is 'necessary' for a particular religion." On September 21, 2001 the steeple with the famous angel Moroni was set in place, completing the temple.

Boston Massachusetts Temple, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 20 June 2010. Web. 20 June 10.

And what a colonial-style fiberglass steeple it is. So perfectly matched to its base. And...
...just look at that steepleroom! What a grand addition in both form and function! O, the blacked-in faux windows with fiberglass filigree and prairie-style panes ala Frank Lloyd Wright! They match so well with the odd, geometric, step-style massive granite building. Who needs a bell in what is traditionally and functionally a bell tower, anyhow? "Look at us!" says the church, "We make great big, amazingly confused and expensive buildings!"
I'm so glad that the church prevailed in court, spending gobs of money so it could spend some more money on this fine example of usable space.

Inauguration

This is the inaugural post for this blog which features steeples, "steeple rooms", steeple 'spaces', and LDS 'architecture'.
Watch here for more examples and scintillating commentary on these subjects in the future.
I'm pretty much the leading expert on Mormon steeple lore...