As the temple’s public open house begins this week (it starts on October 16 and ends on November 20, excluding Sundays), the 104-year-old Frost is excited for the temple’s December 12 rededication.
“I look forward to it,” said Frost, who served in the Mesa Temple for more than two decades. “I hope I get to go. The feeling you get in there [is] probably the same feeling you get when you go to heaven.”
Free open house tickets can be reserved at mesatemple.org/open-house.
The first photographs of the interior have also been released.
“We dedicate the best materials and craftsmanship to His house. It signifies the sacred nature and the special nature of a temple. It’s a sacred place on Earth where we can go to commune with God. That process really needs the best materials we can provide.”
Inside this house of the Lord are new heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. In such a hot climate, said Dawson Stewart of Porter Brothers Construction, “if we do not improve the HVAC and the comfort level of this building, it won’t matter how nice everything else looks.”
The temple’s interior beauties, colors and motifs stay true to the colonial revival era. Design cues popular in 1920s America are found throughout. The classical grand hall, built of gray granite, looks just as it did when the temple was first built.
More than 50 decorative paints from the original 1920s color palette were used to bring this room back to its original luster. Checkerboard marble flooring from Turkey and Spain and marble wainscot and base from the original quarry in Birdseye, Utah, are some of the other materials used.
