Temple (Latter Day Saints) - Unsuccessful Attempts at Building Temples

Unsuccessful Attempts At Building Temples

During the life of Joseph Smith, Jr., a few years before the Kirtland temple was built, Smith dedicated a location in Independence, Missouri for the building of a special temple, which was to be the center of a New Jerusalem. However, hostile action by non-Mormon citizens resulted in the expulsion of all Latter Day Saints from the area in 1833, and the planned temple was never begun. As of 2011, the lot for this temple is owned and maintained by the Church of Christ (Temple Lot). The Temple Lot church endeavored to construct a temple beginning in 1929, as a result of a revelation that Apostle Otto Fetting of that organization claimed to have received from John the Baptist. A hole for the proposed temple basement was excavated, and architects' drawings were done, but no further work was completed due to a chronic lack of funding and the expulsion of Fetting and his followers (about one-third of the Temple Lot organization at the time) from the mainline Temple Lot church. Eventually the City of Independence had the hole filled in, in 1946, and the lot today is mostly covered with grass, with the Church of Christ's meetinghouse and a few trees at the northeast corner. Today, the Temple Lot church has no plans to build a temple of its own, but rather sees itself as the steward of the Lot until the various Latter Day Saint factions unite around the time of Jesus Christ's Second Coming.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Strangite) endeavored to construct a temple in the mid-1840s in Voree, Wisconsin, according to a rather elaborate plan devised by their prophet James J. Strang. Poverty and factional infighting among the Strangites prevented the temple from progressing beyond the planning stage. The church has made no attempt to build temples since Strang's death.