Church Office Building was originally planned to be 38 stories tall

                      This landmark in Salt Lake City could have been 10 stories taller.

THE  28-story Church Office Building for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints soars above North Temple Street, where it has been the nerve center for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for more than four decades.
However, the 420-foot tall building was originally planned to be much taller.
Although the Joseph Smith Memorial Building directly honors the first president of the church, the Church Office Building was originally envisioned to do so too — with a planned 38 floors, to commemorate the 38 years of Joseph Smith's life.
The 38 floors didn't materialize — for a variety of reasons — or the building would have soared more than 500 feet high.
So what happened to the additional 10 stories?
J. Howard Dunn, who was in charge of project development for the Church's building committee, said in a 1962 Church News article that the plans were changed and eight stories were scrapped to better meet mechanical requirements of the engineering department. Heating and air conditioning for the skyscraper would best be handled in 14-story units, beginning above the first two floors. At that time, the high-rise was to be 30 stories. Later, two more stories were also eventually deleted from that plan.
The building height was reduced for two other reasons as well: First, construction began on the Granite Records Vault in Little Cottonwood Canyon in 1960 and reduced the downtown office building space needed; second, departing missionaries were to be housed elsewhere, again reducing required space.
The original building plans had called for housing space for up to 430 outgoing missionaries in the first few floors of the Church Office Building. As it turned out, missionaries were housed across the street to the north in an old school until the Missionary Training Center opened in Provo in 1978. (Missionaries were fed in the Church Office Building cafeteria in the early 1970s.)
The Church Office Building cost $31.4 million (the equivalent of about $200 million today). The new building led to the substantial widening of North Temple and State streets, too.

              Another Church Office Building view, with the Brigham Young statue nearby.

"The building is designed for immediate and future needs of the church," Mark B. Garff, chairman of the church building committee, told the Deseret News in 1969.
George Cannon Young designed the building, which was under design as early as 1961. The old Deseret Gymnasium, 37 E. South Temple, had to be relocated across the street to where the Conference Center is now. Some Church Business College buildings and other structures also had to be moved to make room.
Work on the three-story, underground, 1,400-space parking structure — Utah's largest building excavation at the time — began first in 1962 and was finished by about 1967. The extracted dirt, 250,000 cubic yards, provided fill material for original I-15 construction in Salt Lake County.
When completed, the Church Office Building also allowed the church to temporarily house all General Authorities there while doing a substantial remodel of the Church Administration Building, 47 E. South Temple.

(Portions of this story taken from an article in the Deseret News on April 1, 2010, written by Lynn Arave and Scott Taylor.)



NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the author's conclusions and opinions only.