The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has opened the new Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Temple — first to media tours on Monday, Aug. 12, and later this week to visitors in an extended public open house.
Welcoming members of the media were Elder James R. Rasband, a General Authority Seventy and assistant executive director in the Church’s Temple Department; Elder Mathias Held, a General Authority Seventy and first counselor in the North America Northeast Area presidency; Young Women General President Emily Belle Freeman; and President Chris Hoke of the Pittsburgh Pennsylvania North Stake and a former member of the Pittsburgh Steelers NFL team.
In conjunction with Monday’s media events, the Church released interior and exterior images of the Pittsburgh temple. The photos were first published on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Following Monday’s media tours, invited guests will tour the temple through Thursday, Aug. 15. The public open house begins Friday, Aug. 16, and runs through Saturday, Aug. 31, excluding Sundays.
Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will dedicate the Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Temple in two sessions on Sunday, Sept. 15, at 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. EDT. The dedication will be broadcast to all meetinghouses within the temple district.
Once dedicated, the temple will be the Church’s 196th operating house of the Lord, one of the 350 total temples dedicated, under construction or announced.
Pittsburgh temple background and features
“We regard a temple as the most sacred structure in the Church,” said Church President Russell M. Nelson at the April 2019 general conference. “As we speak of our temples old and new, may each of us signify by our actions that we are true disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. May we renovate our lives through our faith and trust in Him.”
A year later, President Nelson announced a temple for Pittsburgh during the April 2020 general conference, one of eight locations he identified on April 5. The site location and accompanying exterior rendering were released on Jan. 19, 2021.
The 5.8-acre site is at 2093 Powell Road, Cranberry Township, in western Pennsylvania. The rendering reflected plans for a single-story temple of approximately 32,000 square feet with a center spire.
The Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Temple is one of three houses of the Lord in the state and will be the second to be dedicated and operating. The first — the Philadelphia Pennsylvania Temple — was dedicated Sept. 18, 2016. A temple for Harrisburg was announced in April 2023.
The Pittsburgh temple’s design motif centers on the mountain laurel — Pennsylvania’s state flower — and the pink and white blossoms of the dogwood tree.
Outside, the steel-frame structure is enveloped in granite cladding, with the stone from Portugal.
The interior stone is crema ella marble from Turkey, accented by Inca gold, azul mauba, emperador kight, costa esmerelda and safran marble. The carpet throughout the temple is soft gold and green patterned, with solid green pile in administration areas and white sculpted broadloom in the sealing and celestial rooms. The bride’s room features wall-to-wall rugs in the dogwood motif.
Art glass designs present the dogwood tree and flowers in golds, purples, pinks an greens. Crystal chandeliers are found in the sealing and celestial rooms.
The Church in Pennsylvania
More than 53,000 Latter-day Saints in 107 congregations reside in Pennsylvania, where many significant events in Church history occurred on the eastern side of the state. Much of the Book of Mormon was translated in the town of Harmony (now Oakland Township) with the first members of the Church baptized in the Susquehanna River in in May 1829.
After The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized in New York in 1830, revelation directed that the Church’s headquarters be relocated to northeast Ohio, where they were located from 1831 until 1838 in Kirtland, 135 miles from Pittsburgh. Membership during that time went from 680 to nearly 18,000, and Kirtland was home to the Church’s temple, which today is a historical monument rather than an operating house of the Lord.
Prominent Church members — including Brigham Young, an early apostle who later was the Church second president and prophet — served as missionaries in western Pennsylvania and southeast Ohio in the 1830s and 1840s. Branches were established in Pittsburgh and other locations in the area, although most members migrated west to the Salt Lake Valley in the 1840s and 1850s.
In the 1880s, missionaries returned to the area, resulting in new branches and smaller congregations throughout the area.
And in 1943, the West Penn District was formed, with three branches in the Pittsburgh area — in the city itself, in Wilson (Pittsburgh’s South Hills) and Washington — as well as smaller congregations in outlying areas, from Johnstone on the east to Punxsutawney on the north to Waynesburg on the south.
In 1959, a branch was added in State College, with 750 members total in the district in all of western Pennsylvania and into western New York. A decade later, the Pittsburgh branch itself had grown to almost 1,000 members. Other districts were the Northern Ohio, Erie and Fairmont districts.
The temple district today includes 10 stakes, some 80 congregations and 29,000 members in western Pennsylvania, northeastern Ohio and northern West Virginia. Members in the area today have had to travel at least three hours to the nearest temple.
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Temple
Location: 2093 Powell Road, Cranberry township, Pennsylvania 16066.
Announced: April 5, 2020, by President Russell M. Nelson.
Groundbreaking: Aug. 21, 2021, presided over by Elder Randall K. Bennett, a General Authority Seventy and then president of the North America Northeast Area.
Public open house: Aug. 16-31, 2024, excluding Sundays.
To be dedicated: Sept. 15, 2024, by Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Property size: 5.8 acres
Building size: 32,240 square feet
Building height: 125 feet, including the spire.
Additional photos
