News Item: Temple in Manhatten
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President Gordon B. Hinckley has made good on a promise to LDS Church members in Manhattan earlier this year, with the announcement that the faith's newest temple will be built in New York City.
The new LDS temple in Manhattan will occupy an existing church facility near Julliard.
LDS Church
Formally announced in a press release issued late Wednesday, the new temple will be constructed inside an existing building owned by the church at 125 Columbus Ave., on 65th Street, across the street from the Lincoln Center and the renowned Julliard School. The 20,000-square-foot temple will be housed on the first, fifth and sixth floors of the building.
Scott Trotter, public affairs spokesman for the church in New York, said the six-story building that will become the temple now houses nine different congregations eight LDS wards and a branch for deaf church members. "They call it the 'anthill' because it's so busy on Sunday. If you go in the wrong door, you mess up the traffic flow."
Trotter's office, along with those of other public affairs staffers and missionaries, are also located on the building's second floor, as is a family history center. The building houses offices for the New York, N.Y., stake on the fourth floor and until recently held two separate chapels.
Trotter said the building's entire third floor will remain as it is, "a fully functioning stake center" with a chapel, classrooms and a gymnasium as is typical in areas where church membership is large.
The fifth and sixth floors, which also housed a chapel and meeting rooms, will become the ordinance rooms of the new temple, Trotter said. The baptistry, which is usually housed underground in modern temples, will be located on the building's first floor, which until recently housed two restaurants. The building has an underground parking garage.
The LDS Church completed the present building in 1976 after tearing down a block of row houses that used to be located there. "It used to be a rough area. They even filmed 'West Side Story' here," Trotter said. "Then the Lincoln Center went up, the church came in and the neighborhood started changing after that. It's a upscale area now."
Located about a block from the south end of Central Park, the building and the area are a major activity hub, Trotter said. Interior work on the temple will begin in about two weeks, he said, with exterior work to follow at some point next year. Completion is scheduled for February 2004, Trotter said.
It has been rumored that plans for a rooftop garden, much like the one that now exists atop the Conference Center in Salt Lake City, as well as the traditional steeple topped with a statue of the Angel Moroni are under discussion. But a spokesman at church headquarters could not confirm such plans.
A new entrance will be created on the main floor exclusively for the temple, Trotter said, with a separate entrance for the offices, family history center and other church functions.
President Hinckley told members during a regional conference in the building on March 24 that a new temple would be built in his lifetime in New York. There had been much speculation about whether he was referring to completion of the Harrison, N.Y., temple, about 30 minutes north of New York City, which was announced in the mid-1990s and has since been the subject of protracted legal wrangling.
Wednesday's announcement came so late in the day that by Thursday morning, word was just beginning to spread in the New York area.
Kim Smith, who works in investment banking with Goldman Sachs and serves as stake president in Scotch Plains, N.J., said members of his stake will no doubt be a part of the new temple district.
"We just couldn't be more excited," he said. For those who live and work in the area around Manhattan, "being able to go to the temple at the end of the day will be fabulous." Though he commutes into the city daily, Smith said many members in the New York area don't have private vehicles. Since there is a subway stop directly in front of the building that will house the new temple, transportation worries will evaporate.
Church members in the area are used to renting large passenger vans and traveling to Washington, D.C., about 200 miles and four hours away, to attend a temple. Smith said with 12 stakes and two districts in the area, many church members live on the upper West Side and in New Jersey, making the location ideal. "I expect that it will be an extremely busy temple."
Elder Korey Marsh, a missionary from South Jordan now serving in Harlem, said he got word of the new temple Thursday morning from a mission zone leader who called and told him to spread the news.
"We're excited, but I'm disappointed I'll miss it" being opened. Elder Marsh said he will return home a few months before the temple's scheduled completion. "But all the missionaries here are pumped!"
Trotter said the church has recently acquired three other properties in Manhattan for construction of chapels to house a growing membership. One site is a dilapidated building in Harlem that will be torn down and a new chapel built on site, he said.
The others are a building on 87th Street that has functioned as a dorm building for a Jewish orphanage, and a former convent that was used to house homeless women on 14th Street. Both of those buildings will remain on site and be remodeled for worship space, he said.
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