Review
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Title: Building Zion: The Material World of Mormon Settlement
Author: Thomas Carter
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Genre: Non-fiction
Year Published: 2015
Number of Pages: 322
Binding: Hardcover/Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-8166-8956-9
Price: $112.50 (library hardback); $37.50 (paperback)
Reviewed by Craig S. Smith for the Association for Mormon Letters
Have you ever considered why the temples built in Utah outside of Salt Lake City during the nineteenth century were constructed outside of the towns, even though the original plans for the City of Zion called for them to be in the town’s center? Thomas Carter, in this important study, argues that the decision to put them outside of the towns marks a significant change in Latter-day Saints’ conceptualization of Zion during the latter part of the nineteenth century. He sees the temple and the town as two sides of the Mormon landscape – the temple is the sacred space representing the otherness of Mormon religious identity and the town is the secular space allowing them to seamlessly become Americanized.
Carter explores this dichotomy and other aspects of the built landscape to present an interesting and different approach to understanding nineteenth century Latter-day Saints. He takes the existing historic landscape as left by the early inhabitants including their town plans, houses, commercial buildings, meetinghouses, and temples—the end product—and in conjunction with journals and other written records, works back to uncover the ideas and causes behind their material culture. He notes that Mormon belief and value systems are reflected in their material world and at the same time the built landscape provided an ideological foundation and defined what it meant to be a nineteenth century Mormon. The style, or “the way in which something is done, produced, or expressed,” of the built landscape sheds light on their thought process.
In contrast to many other historians, Carter sees the Latter-day Saints as Americanizing themselves in many aspects of their everyday lives. He describes the nineteenth century Mormon landscape not as a static construct but evolving, especially when Mormons’ individualism, gospel of works, and continuing revelation are considered. The Saints had to adapt to serve both their spiritual and entrepreneurial sides. According to Carter, the critical date of 1870, when the decision to construct temples outside of the towns was made, marks the time when the Mormon landscape begin to change from sacred and undifferentiated to a sacred/secular and differentiated space. After 1870, the Mormon built landscape became increasingly divided into discrete sacred and secular zones.
Carter’s study of the historic Mormon landscape focuses on the Sanpete Valley of central Utah. He examines this landscape history in seven chapters including the design of towns, the distribution of resources, domestic architecture, the architecture of polygamy, the architecture of Main Street, meetinghouses, and the temple or mansion on the hill.
The chapter on town design deals with the history of the settlement of the valley. One of the more obvious aspects of the Sanpete towns as elsewhere in the Mormon West is that towns were the focus of settlement where the population was concentrated in towns from which they traveled daily to and from their fields.
This pattern contrasts with the more common dispersed settlement where everyone lived on family farms, and towns served only as commercial centers. Mormon towns consisted of a symmetrical grid street pattern with fairly large individually owned lots. Although much of the settlement organization of the Sanpete Valley was from the top down, Brigham Young actually only selected three of the town locations in Sanpete Valley. The locals choose the other town sites, even though in the end the spacing of the towns conformed to that as requested by Salt Lake City.
Carter considers in the chapter on the distribution of resources how a social organization based on class was maintained that was similar to the world they left behind. He notes that Mormon society lacked equality of wealth and the leadership and elite were allocated the best and larger land parcels and control of the water resources. Their town lots were typically grouped together in the better locations near the town center. The towns were also divided by ethnic group. During the settlement of the towns, Carter found a “collective spirit facilitated by individualism.”
The chapter on domestic architecture provides an interesting summary on the design of houses constructed by the nineteenth century Saints. They generally built houses with a neoclassical symmetrical facade with a door in the middle and windows on each side. Carter argues that this house style was popular, not so much because the Saints from many different areas developed a unified cultural identity around their commitment to Mormonism, but rather was due to the global popularity of the style. However, subtle differences did occur among the various ethnic groups. House design was also differentiated by class with the wealthy building larger houses with better materials. He concludes that houses from the start displayed an unmistakable worldliness.
For his discussion on polygamy and houses, he notes that the majority of polygamous households had houses that were of a similar style as those of non-polygamous households that were then modified for multiple wives. Polygamous families chose two general patterns of occupation. One was that the husband and wives lived together in a single house and the other was that each wife had her own house. These living patterns were not fixed and families would chose one or the other or both at different times depending on circumstances. Carter summarizes that even with the difference of polygamy the built landscape had qualities similar to a typical American town.
The chapters on nonresidential architecture and meetinghouses offer Carter’s strongest arguments for his thesis that at around 1870 the Mormon built landscape evolved from sacred and undifferentiated space to differentiated space with sacred and secular zones. Prior to 1870, nonresidential architecture in the towns was characterized by its homogeneity with mostly hall-type buildings regardless of building function. This architectural sameness changed after 1870 to a distinction of building types based on function where buildings were recognizable as stores (both co-ops and private businesses), schools, civic buildings, tithing offices, social halls, and churches. This shift was also evident in the Mormon meetinghouses. Beginning in the late 1860s and into the early 1880s the design of meetinghouses was dramatically transformed. They changed from meeting halls with multiple functions consisting of gabled-front rectangles to recognizable churches with a tower and spire, similar to normative American forms. Carter proposes that these transformations were the result of a transition from a corporate community to one with emphasis on the individual and from “millennial idealism” to “pragmatic permanence.” In conjunction with these transitions was the larger restructuring of the landscape with sacred (temple) and secular (town) zones.
The final chapter concerns the temple, the sacred space within the Mormon landscape. Carter begins the discussion with a brief survey of the architectural history of Mormon temples focusing on their changing design to reflect the evolution of temple function and ritual. He then examines the construction of the Manti temple as a public works project and in the final section considers how the temple ritual and the passage through the endowment rooms (as detailed in Talmage’s “House of the Lord”) reconfirms the importance of “works righteousness” as reflected in the overall landscape. He also compares the temple’s Celestial Room with such French mansions in Salt Lake City as the Gardo House, again suggesting how the two promote a “works doctrine.” Though interesting, I felt this final chapter did not connect as well with his thesis as some of the other chapters.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the nineteenth century Mormons of Utah. His novel approach of using evidence from built landscape studies contributes valuable insights to the understanding of this history.