We visited the Newport Beach California Temple on Day Two of our California Temple Trip. We first went to the Las Vegas Temple, then to the Redlands Temple, then the San Diego Temple, and lastly to Newport Beach in the evening.
Click on the images to enlarge.
The Newport Beach California Temple is the 122nd temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The temple was announced on April 21, 2001 and dedicated by Gordon B. Hinckley on August 28, 2005. It is the sixth operating temple in California.
Jake and Rick outside the Newport Beach Temple
Like its sister temple in Redlands, the temple in Newport Beach uses interior and exterior architectural themes consistent with what was used in the Spanish missions of the early Western US and Mexico.
In response to opposition from residents of the surrounding community, the LDS Church made several modifications to the original design. The exterior was changed from white marble or granite to a more pink granite, considered more appropriate for Orange County. The steeple was lowered from 124 feet to 90 feet, and the exterior lighting is turned off each night at 11 o’clock.
The temple is topped by a cupola holding the traditional statue of the angel Moroni. Here is a little history of the statue of Moroni. In the first version of Moroni, the left arm is hanging at his side, slightly outstretched with his fist clenched. A few renditions later, the figure was slightly modified to incorporate the gold plates. In his version of Moroni for the Hill Cumorah Monument, Torlief Knaphus placed gold plates in Moroni’s left arm. For his version for the Los Angeles Temple, sculptor Millard Malin followed Knaphus’ design and kept the plates in Moroni’s left arm; so did Avard Fairbanks, who sculpted the version for the Washington D.C. Temple. (Replicas of Fairbanks’s plate-holding Moroni stand atop the Seattle Washington, Jordan River Utah, and Mexico City Mexico Temples.) When Karl Quilter designed his version of the figure, he eliminated the plates and then spent a great deal of time making sure the left arm hung in the proper position—not too rigid, not too limp, but showing slight forward movement. (New Era)
As with many contemporary LDS temples, the Newport Beach California Temple is built on the grounds of an existing stake center and shares parking with it.
The temple has a total of 17,800 square feet, two ordinance rooms, and three sealing rooms and is located near the campus of the University of California, Irvine.
Photos by Rickety. Text from Wikipedia.
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