Mormon Tabernacle - Salt Lake City, UT
Posted by: bluesnote
N 40° 46.225 W 111° 53.584
12T E 424631 N 4513655
A civil engineering landmark located in Temple Square.
Waymark Code: WMX5KY
Location: Utah, United States
Date Posted: 11/30/2017
Views: 7
Taken from the guidebook, "I. The TABERNACLE (open when accompanied by guide), centering the west section of the block, a mammoth oval auditorium seating 5,000, 250 feet long and 150 feet wide, resembles the gray back of a huge tortoise. Unique and serve in design, it is a pioneer among structures employing the self-supported, vaulted type of roof, which was designed as an ellipsoid with a focal point at either end; this together with the unbroken inner ceiling surface, accounts for the unusual acoustics of the building. A pin dropped at either focal point, when the building is vacant, can be hear at the opposite end, more than 200 feet away. Forty-five gray-painted buttresses of red sandstone mark the circumference of the building. Upon them rest giant wooden arches, ten feet thick, making a span of 150 feet, 70 feet high at the center. The timbers still in perfect condition-the building was begun in 1864-are braces with attic-like cross-members, fasted with wooden thole pins and rawhide thongs, since reinforced by nails. A gallery, thirty feet wide, extends around there sizes of the interior. Of offset construction, separate from the Tabernacle walls, it is supported by columns, and there is a space of two and half feet between gallery and wall."
Book: Utah
Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 238
Year Originally Published: 1941
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