Page:The House of the Lord.djvu/230

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214
THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

oxen, iron stairs, and all accessories, weighing in all over eighteen thousand pounds, were cast in Salt Lake City and were hauled by team thence to St. George. The entire baptistry equipment was the personal gift of President Brigham Young.

Above the basement there are two stories. In each of these there is one main room ninety-nine by seventy-eight feet inside measurement, with an arched or elliptical ceiling twenty-seven feet from the floor in the center. Flanking this main apartment on either side are a number of smaller rooms used for ordinance work and as assembly rooms for councils of the Priesthood. The large room on the middle floor corresponds in use to the splendid Celestial Room already described as a prominent feature of the Temple at Salt Lake City. In the same way the large room on the upper floor corresponds to the main assembly room on the fourth floor of the Salt Lake City Temple, and is provided with pulpits at both east and west ends, the former devoted to the use of the Higher or Melchisedek Priesthood, the latter reserved for the officials of the Lesser or Aaronic order of Priesthood.

Adjoining the main building is an accessory structure known as the Annex; this is seventy-four feet long by twenty-four feet wide, exclusive of a "lean-to" on the east side, which is forty-three feet by nine feet. The Annex was built in 1882. It contains boiler and engine rooms, apartments for the guard, a refectory for the accommodation of workers, recorder's offices, etc.

The St. George Temple was built by free-will offerings and by appropriations from the tithings of the people. In one year, specifically the year 1875, over one hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars were ex-