Walking around Temple Square, it’s nearly impossible to grasp how imaginative and inventive the early Saints had to be in order to construct some of the buildings that are still standing today. But in an episode of Fox Business’s TV show, “American Built,” we get a glimpse of how marvelous the construction of the Salt Lake Tabernacle truly was. The episode explains the history of the Tabernacle and points out what an impressive feat the building is when you consider how few materials the Saints had to work with in the barren Utah desert.
“Building a great tabernacle in a remote desert … that takes imagination, improvisation, and a community of volunteers dedicated to an improbable cause,” says host Stuart Varney as the episode begins.
But despite the difficulty of the task, Brigham Young was determined to have a place where all who gathered would be able to hear the words of the Apostles and prophets. The episode includes clips of an interview with Church historian Emily Utt, who explains the interesting scenario in which Young came up with the idea for the architecture.
“Brigham Young is at breakfast one morning eating an egg, and has this idea that if we build our tabernacle like an egg, it will structurally stand up, but it will [also] give us the sound that we want,” Utt says. “So he takes that idea to [engineer] Henry Grow and says, ‘Henry Grow, build me an egg out of wood.’”
Learn more about interesting facts about the Tabernacle and the sacrifices that went into building the episode clip below.
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