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[SALT LAKE TEMPLE] An albumen photograph of the nearly-completed Salt Lake Temple with tape on the window glass and ladders leaning from the roof against the spires. Salt Lake City, Utah: Sainsbury & Johnson, Artistic Photographers, no date (but 1892?).
12½ X 21 cm. (5 X 8 inches). Studio logo (2¼ X 1½ inches) printed in red on the back of the card mount. A clear and pleasing image, although taken or printed at a bit of an angle. Corners worn, with small loss of sky area at top corners.
SOLD::postpaid, $175::
ON
THE AFTERNOON of April 6, 1892,
Lorenzo Snow pressed an electric button which lowered the capstone onto the
unfinished Salt Lake Temple, and the statue of Moroni was unveiled. An outdoor
congregation of forty thousand people shouted "hosanna" and voted to sustain
the completion of the temple by April 6, 1893. The next evening (April 7,
1892), the statue and the corresponding center spire at the other end of the
temple were illuminated with electric lights for the first time.
The photograph at hand shows the statue in place atop the temple, but the building still in the final stages of construction. While there is no date printed on the mount, it would seem logical to me that once a more finished view of the building could be taken in 1893, there would have been little reason to continue printing the unusual image offered here. It affords marvelous historical detail, shown in the segments greatly enlarged at left and below . . .
Is that not a workman, standing
on the lower battlement of the further spire?
Frozen in time, unaware that he was being photographed, 110 years ago!
The full card (above), showing corner
wear
and the quaintly crooked angle of the image.
Studio logo on the back (greatly enlarged).