More inviting? Less grand? What Utahns are saying about the latest LDS renovation of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

If you stroll into the lobby of the repurposed Joseph Smith Memorial Building in downtown Salt Lake City, you will see few remnants of the once dazzling Beaux Arts masterpiece, the Hotel Utah. Instead, it has the look of, well, a combination church meetinghouse foyer, internet cafe and cafeteria.

And that’s very much by design.

Indeed, some of the feedback leaders with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints heard before the COVID-19 pandemic was that the lobby “felt oppressive and dark and a lot like a library,” says Melody Riches, the project’s lead interior designer. “There was not a lot of seating for people who wanted to come with a lot of children.”

Thus, the designers sought to redo the historic space with more modern — “and wipeable” — furniture and fabrics, she says, “nothing that was ostentatious or stuffy.”

Though the gorgeous antique furniture, covered in silk and mohair fabrics, could have been replicated, Riches says, “you are never going to put your 3-year-old with a candy cane on a silk chair.”

Instead, they chose sturdier couches and washable fabrics in muted colors to appeal to families. The lobby also sports long tables with charging stations, where church employees from upper floors can munch their 8,000-calorie giant cinnamon rolls (or the much lighter Lion House rolls) from the adjacent Garden Restaurant.

The redesigned lobby has places to eat, places to gather, places to rest — and “renewed energy,” Riches says. “It will cater to so many more people.”

Outside every Latter-day Saint building is a “visitors welcome” sign, the designer notes, “and that is what this space is meant to signal.”

The new lobby can become what the Hotel Utah was built to be, she adds, “the hospitality center of Salt Lake City.”

Unsurprisingly, not all visitors or preservationists agree.

“It’s like replacing [Shakespeare’s] Globe theater with Century 16,” says Micah Christensen, a Salt Lake City art historian and collector. “I hate to see Styrofoam cups in that once-glorious space.”

He adds: “It is no longer the aspirational place it once was.”

When form can’t follow function

It’s had a makeover before.

The Hotel Utah, sitting on the edge of Temple Square, was once the jewel of Salt Lake City, a symbol of beauty, elegance and unity.

It was the brainchild of several prominent Latter-day Saints and non-Latter-day Saints who approached church President Joseph F. Smith in 1909 with a proposal for a “luxury hotel” in the heart of the city that would attract significant guests from across the country and the world.

The New York Times called it a “palace” in the desert.

It had grandeur and eloquence. Prophets, presidents and politicians, musicians, movie stars and moguls, artists and artisans all stayed in its well-appointed splendor. While some reportedly boasted that the historic hotel housed “the largest and finest bar in the West,” by the late 1980s it no longer promised such a staple of hospitality: booze.

The church prohibits alcohol among its members and refused to allow its flagship hotel to have a liquor license, according to a United Press International report in 1987. “The 494-room hotel faced stiff competition from the city’s Hilton, Sheraton and other hostelries, which could offer swimming pools and the one key amenity that the Hotel Utah could not — a cocktail lounge.”

That prompted the Salt Lake City-based faith to close their prized hotel and turn it into an office building for church employees.

Going forward, it would be renamed the Joseph Smith Memorial Building — and featured a 9-foot-tall statue of the structure’s namesake and Mormon founder.

Still, Gordon B. Hinckley, then in the governing First Presidency and later church president, pledged that the faith would preserve historic details in the reception rooms and especially the lobby.

“Crowned by a huge Czechoslovakian crystal chandelier weighing more than half a ton, and framed by 12 marble columns and a mezzanine,” UPI reported, “the lobby was the hotel’s showpiece.”

Hinckley beseeched the public, many of whom had signed petitions against closing the hotel, to trust church leaders.

“We ask only one thing, that you have confidence in us, who, with you, love this community and who have done very much to make the core area of the city a place of unmatched beauty, recognized by visitors from far and near,” Hinckley said in the UPI account. “That beauty will not be diminished in the action to be taken with this treasured and gracious place of warmth and hospitality.”

For the most part, Hinckley kept his promise. Even so, it was almost impossible to keep the form, while changing the function.

“There is a spirit that went with the hotel,”' Michael J. Stransky, an architect who led a historic landmark committee, told The New York Times. ‘’And if the building is no longer a hotel, that spirit is yanked right out of the community.’’

‘No reason to restore anything’

The building’s earlier makeover was done “so perfectly,” says Latter-day Saint designer Aubrey Conner, “there was no reason to restore anything in the next hundred years.”

The current model looks so “institutional,” says the Millcreek designer, who has worked on several Latter-day Saint temple interiors. “They removed the Joseph Smith statue, and the artwork is horrible.”

Conner was so upset, he fired off a stern letter to the church’s Presiding Bishopric, which supervises the faith’s material holdings.

In the present incarnation, “the warmth, the grandeur, the nobility, the beauty, the heritage and historic integrity have been stripped away,” he writes. “The magnificent hand-forged, scrolled iron railings, the French chandeliers, the hand-knotted rugs, the gold-leafed appointments that had been applied to the pleaser relief carving, the celadon faux marble columns and pillars, the beautiful arts and mirrors, as well as the furniture that had been upholstered in mohair …all removed.”

Conner contrasts that with the exquisite Empire Room down the hall, which he worries will be next in line for renovation.

However, Riches, the lobby designer, confirms that stunning space will remain largely unchanged.

Despite the losses, some valued artistic elements have been restored.

The “impressive white-ivory structure,” which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, “has been thoughtfully updated while preserving many of its historic features, including the original stained-glass ceiling in the lobby, plaster detailing throughout the interior, and mosaic tile patterns from the building’s hotel era,” Preservation Utah says on its Facebook page. “In addition to these preservation wins, the renovation also brought seismic and energy-efficiency upgrades, enhanced accessibility, and modernized public spaces.”

A different option

About three years ago, Diane Stewart, a Salt Lake City art collector and gallery owner, was at the final meeting of the church’s ad hoc art committee — which had reviewed all art that was being proposed for one of the faith’s temples worldwide — before it was disbanded.

At that session, members were asked for their opinions about what to do with the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.

“Some of us who are more outspoken suggested the church return it to being a hotel — refreshed and renewed,” Stewart says, “and let folks in the business like the Marriotts run it.”

The church “had a moment for the former hotel to be an inclusive star on the hill, where everyone can come together, where Mormons can shine in a beautiful way,” she says. “Instead, they made it complicated and nebulous. Even members are asking: ‘What is it now?’”

It was “once a downtown [draw] for everyone; sadly, it’s not that anymore,” Stewart says. “The church has turned inward instead of outward.”

‘Pomp and ceremony’

The Hotel Utah was supposed to be “a place of pomp and ceremony,” says Christensen, the Salt Lake City art dealer, “where visitors could learn the history of the church in the most grand place.”

His grandfather, Duncan Davis, a convert to the church from South Carolina, was a security guard there for 40 years. One of his church assignments was to “home-teach” church President David O. McKay, who lived at the hotel during his final years.

Davis would tell Christensen how marvelous it was to work in a “world-class building every bit as sophisticated as the people they hosted there.”

Like others, Christensen bemoans the lost legacy.

Most visitors, though, are embracing the lobby’s “evolving purpose,” says church spokesperson Candice Madsen.

The faith surveyed “hundreds of guests to ensure they were having a positive experience” after the latest renovation, she says, and “nearly 90% rated their experience as positive or extremely positive.”

No matter what some preservationists think, the debate may be over. The people have spoken.

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