PROVO TABERNACLE RESTORATION: TEN GRIM EXPENSIVE REALITIES

Even as the Provo Tabernacle burned up Friday, local citizens and media commentators started speculating about rebuilding the wreckage into a restored Tabernacle. That will be a popular idea, especially if the LDS Church picks up the tab from its general funds and the locals do not have to pay anything by way of donations. However, we have to look at ten facts about the Provo Tabernacle, both now as a wreck and in its glory days as a meeting hall.

1. The Tabernacle provided crucial public meeting space in the days when Provo had little meeting space. Today, each Provo and Orem stake has a big stake center with seating in chapels and cultural halls. Big meeting spaces are available at the Brigham Young University Marriott Center and the Utah Valley University Activities Center. Those universities provide other big rooms and venues. Within a couple of years the Utah Valley Convention Center will provide further meeting spaces. The Tabernacle’s meeting space proved useful, but in the 21st century, it took its place among many places suitable for community and stake gatherings.

2. The LDS Church tore down many tabernacles in the mid 20th century because they became costly to maintain, heat, and cool. They also did not accommodate the modern automobile age.

The Provo Tabernacle displays those problem points. It was a 19th century structure in a 19th century location in the 21st century. It owns a tiny private parking lot and must rely on street parking and the indulgence of NuSkin to lend tabernacle patrons its parking terrace at NuSkin’s convenience. NuSkin’s parking terrace received construction money that stipulated the terrace would be a public parking terrace after hours. That is better than nothing, for sure; but not exactly a real parking solution.

Ideally, the Church should replace the park north of the Tabernacle with a planter box garden. Underneath it should construct a two or three level underground parking garage with an entrance at its northeast corner (on Center Street), with an exit at its southwest corner (on University Avenue), and elevators and staircases lining the west and south walls.

3. Had it not burned, the Church would have faced a desperately-needed seismic refit of the Provo Tabernacle foundation – and soon. The Church built the structure in 1883 - 1898 at a time when neither scientists nor city building planners knew anything about plate tectonics. The Tabernacle sits within three miles of The Wasatch Fault; we do not wonder if an earthquake could affect Provo; we know someday a major earthquake will affect Provo. The question is when. If the Tabernacle had not burned, if seismic refit springs had not been fitted under the foundation, the building could collapse like a house of cards in a major earthquake.

The exterior walls would have proven troublesome even if the Tabernacle had not burned. Now the damage makes them even more troublesome. The Church decided back in the 1890s to built the exterior walls in local brick, soft local-19th-century-bricks. In an earthquake, brick buildings may very well shed their bricks like snakes shedding their skins during the molt.

4 Provo’s earthquake probabilities require a rebuilt Tabernacle with reinforced foundation and steel beams in the walls. It will need seismic reinforcement as well. All of this will make the building safer but it makes the building more expensive to construct.

5 This brings us to the unhappy, somewhat complex issue of the exterior walls. Brick walls are impractical in earthquake zones. When the big one hits, brick walls will go down like proverbial topsy. The Tabernacle’s walls consist of 19th century brick products fired in ways not consistent with modern building codes. Therefore, in the interests of safety, the restored Tabernacle should be accented with bricks but built out of some sort of 21st century stone product.

5. The Church should tear down the old heating plant building between the NuSkin parking terrace and the Tabernacle’s west facade and replace it with more modern heating and cooling equipment, preferably in some sort of new fire resistant mechanical basement space under the Tabernacle. Tearing down the plant will free up more space for parking and the new Tabernacle.

More building space will be crucial: a restored Tabernacle must meet modern codes and regulations, and that means elevators. And handicap accessibility. And heating and cooling up to code. And smoke and heat detectors. And fire doors in the staircases. And a sprinkling system.

6. It needs bigger restrooms. Our pioneer ancestors must have had the containment of camels. From 1973 to 2010, I have attended many conferences when, during the singing intermission, the Saints lined up in the halls waiting for their turn to go to come.

I would not say the Tabernacle’s men’s room was the smallest, most-primitive facility where I ever peed, but it is close. The Church must somehow increase Tabernacle rest room facilities. .

7. The Church should replace the Tabernacle wood rafters with steel trusses.

The original roof design of Provo Tabernacle architect William Folsom comes down through history as a classic example of an architectural concept that was ahead of its time and available technology. That original roof featured the four pointed conical roofs on top of the corner circular staircases and a huge witch’s hat of a central tower located where the roof crosses came together. From 1898 to 1917, the tabernacle had five towers.

In the second decade of the 20th century, the roof started sagging under the weight of the central tower. The roof problem made the whole building unsafe; so down came the tower, but the tower box stayed. That solved the problem for twenty years, and then the roof started to sag again. Again the roof made the Tabernacle generally unsafe. In 1949, the roof got redesigned again. So the attic represented three design processes and wood ranging in age from 110 plus years to 60 plus years. All heavy, high-quality very dry wood. No wonder the whole structure went up in smoke in a few minutes.

8 The new roof / attic should feature steel trusses, fire proofing, and fire walls. The roof / attic should have received those features as part of the renovation in the 1980s, but that is another issue as to the institutional LDS Church’s stewardship. With steel in the roof, and with the coming of lighter 21st century building materials, the Church should rebuild the central tower on the Tabernacle. The tower could even have sky lights to bring more light into the central space.

9. The heating plant building has beautiful brick work in its chimney, but it is an eyesore anyway. The chimney stands as tall as the west towers and detracts from the Tabernacle. The chimney should go. I suppose it was a good idea that the heating plant is separate from the building so that if it catches fire, the tabernacle does not catch fire. Oh wait — that is irrelevant now. The antebuilding should go as well.

10. The pews in the Tabernacle were proof positive that our pioneer ancestors were Munchkins with butts of iron. If any of the pews survived the blaze, it will go down in church history as a modern miracle. Our pioneer craftsmen built some curved benches for the balcony. Those will prove prohibitively expensive to reproduce nowadays. The new tabernacle will need more leg room and individual upholstered padded theater seating.