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Renovation work continues on the Salt Lake Temple, a key site for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Recent efforts have focused on restoring the “Holiness to the Lord” panel, located above the east center tower and below the angel Moroni statue. This phrase, taken from Exodus 28:36, appears on every temple exterior of the Church and was recently regilded.
Anne Domenech, an artist with Evergreen, led the restoration. “The technical process was to clean the plaque because it had been destroyed by the weather,” she said. Domenech described how climate changes and sunlight made surface preparation and gold application challenging.
The project held special meaning for Domenech after learning about John Rowe Moyle, who originally engraved the panel in the 1800s. “I was told about the story of the sculptor, and that moved me to the bottom of my soul,” she said. “I was there, putting gold leaf on what [John Rowe Moyle] had touched and engraved and sculpted in the wall of the temple. From that moment, everything became almost holy.”
Moyle was an English convert and stonecutter who traveled to Utah with a handcart company. He regularly walked 22 miles from his home in Alpine to work on the temple each week. After losing his leg in an accident, he crafted a wooden replacement and returned to finish engraving “Holiness to the Lord” on the building.
Other renovation milestones include removing scaffolding from the large assembly room on the fifth floor—a space used for gatherings and meetings among Church leaders—where finishing work is now underway.
In addition, significant construction is progressing in a new north sealing wing attached to the temple’s north wall. This expansion will add 12 sealing rooms where marriages and other family ordinances are performed by priesthood authority within temples.
Chandeliers have been installed in these new sealing rooms, while altars are being gilded. Workers are also completing stonework and window trim throughout this area.
Latter-day Saints believe sealings unite families eternally through ceremonies performed only in temples. According to “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”: “The divine plan of happiness enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for individuals to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.”
