Salt Lake 18th Ward Chapel - White Memorial Chapel

This Chapel is a replica of the Salt Lake 18th Ward Chapel built during the early 1880's, but it was not at this location. The original building was dismantled in 1973 and reconstructed at this new location on Capitol Hill in the late 1970's. The chapel was rebuilt on land donated by the Utah State Legislature in celebration of the nation's 200th birthday. Original parts include the steeple, gothic windows, doors, and benches. The building is now a non-denominational chapel used for civic purposes including weddings and concerts. Some significant events happened at the building including the churches Junior Sunday School program first launched at this location, and it served as the founding location for the first Boy Scout troop in Utah. It was the first chapel in the valley to have a steeple, and many prominent families went here including the Brigham Young family, the Heber C. Kimball family, and the Newel K. Whitney family. The ward was organized on February 14, 1849 with the first members of the Eighteenth Ward being Lorenzo Dow Young (Brigham Young's brother) and Harriet Decker Young, they built one of the first houses in the area. The ward at first (one of the nineteen original wards in the Salt Lake Valley) was not large so they met in Brigham Young's schoolhouse. By 1880, there was a need for a chapel. Don Carlos Young, a son of Brigham Young, donated a parcel of land on Second Avenue and A Street for the construction of the chapel. The designer of the Assembly Hall on Temple Square (Architect Obed Taylor was appointed to design the building. The location was initially inside of the walled property of Brigham Young's estate and some remnants of the wall can still be seen in a parking lot on 1st Avenue, east of State Street, adjacent to Brigham Young Historic Park. In 1973 the L.D.S. church wanted to demolish and build a much larger chapel at the location but luckily a group of people with the Cornerstone Foundation were able to salvage many parts of the structure. The Utah State Legislature awarded Cornerstone with the new site for reconstruction of the building with the condition that the chapel was to be used as a nonsectarian meeting place.

Wilford Woodruff was President of the Church in 1892. It had taken the Saints thirty-nine years to raise the granite walls of the Salt Lake Temple, and much work remained to be done. During this time, some workers felt that the temple could never be completed in time for the proposed dedication date in April 1893. Some even proposed finishing the spires in pine, stained to look like granite, rather than of granite itself.

President Woodruff called a meeting in the Eighteenth Ward building and shared his feelings on the matter with Church leaders. He related that on the evening of July 6, 1841, six years before the Saints came west; he was in the Lafayette Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, serving a mission. That evening he had a dream in which he was shown the future. He saw the Saints migrate to the Rocky Mountains, build a temple, and dedicate it, and "at the dedicatory services Elders were set apart to go among the Gentile nations to bind the law and seal the testimony." Now, some fifty years later, on October 7, 1891, in this meeting with "the Presidents of stakes and bishops in the 18th Ward School House" (the Eighteenth Ward Chapel), President Woodruff shared what he had seen regarding the construction of the Salt Lake Temple. The First Presidency, Council of the Twelve and Presiding Bishopric were also in attendance.

President Woodruff related the dream he had had fifty years earlier and said that he knew the granite temple would be finished in time for the dedication. It was his talk that night in the Eighteenth Ward Chapel that motivated the Saints to go forward with their might and complete the temple of granite as had been originally planned. One of the construction miracles of the Salt Lake Temple is that the roof, the floors, and all the interior work were finished in one year and the temple was dedicated on April 6, 1893, precisely as Wilford Woodruff had been shown.