Solomon's Temple in America?

Biblical scholar's dream was to build
a full-scale replica at Philadelphia in 1926

By WILLIAM D. MOORE

How would you like to have the op-
portunity to enter Solomon's Temple?
What would it be like to walk through
the courtyard, pass the columns on the
porch, and approach the sanctum sanc-
torum ?

If John Wesley Kelchner had had
his way, the residents of Philadelphia
and New York would have been able
to experience these moments first
hand. This biblical scholar and Mason
planned to build a full-scale replica as
an attraction at the Sesquicentennial
Exposition in Philadelphia in 1926, and
then hoped to erect a similar structure
permanently in New York City.

At the beginning of this century,
Dr. Kelchner spent approximately 30
years of intensive study determining
the exact specifications and designs for
the temple on Mount Moriah. In his
studies, Kelchner drew upon biblical
and archaeological evidence while he
taught himself Hebrew, Latin, and
Greek so that he could read documents
related to the temple in their original
languages. He painstakingly attemp-
ted to prove scientifically how the tem-
ple was decorated, what the ark of the
covenant looked like, and how the
temple was constructed. Kelchner was
able to draw upon the financial resour-
ces that he had amassed early in life as
a lawyer to finance his research. He
personally spent $500,000 on the en-

In 1923, when Kelchner was con-
vinced that he knew exactly what
Solomon's Temple looked like, he set
about the mission of rebuilding it. He
knew that he needed an architect to
help him with this undertaking and he
sought out Harvey Wiley Corbett, a
noted architect who was made a Mas-
ter Mason in Sagamore Lodge No. 371,
New York City, on February 15,1922.
Corbett, who at the time was the head
of the architecture program at Colum-
bia University, was eminently qualified
for the undertaking. Earlier, he had
been involved in designing a number
of Masonic buildings including the
Masonic Temple in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
and the George Washington Masonic
National Memorial, Alexandria, Va.

Intrigued by the concept of rebuild-
ing one of the most famous buildings
in the history of western civilization,
Corbett, who at the time was a part-
ner in the architectural firm of Hel-
mle and Corbett, set out to make
himself familiar with the historical
building methods of Solomon's time.
He was determined that when the
temple was reconstructed it would
use only methods of construction that
were available to the original
builders.
In conducting his research, Corbett
drew heavily upon the assistance of
William Bell Dinsmore, an associate
professor of architecture at Columbia
University and librarian of the Univer-
sity's Avery Library, one of the na-
tion's finest architectural libraries.

After concluding his own research
and determining how ancient technol-
ogies would affect the design of the
temple, Corbett hired a team of arch-
itects to produce drawings of how the
completed temple would appear. This
team included the noted talents of
Birch Burdette Long, Taler Sears, and
Hugh Ferris, the most well known cre-
ator of architectural renderings of his
generation. Ferris and Corbett had
worked together in the past, and Fer-
ris had produced preparatory draw-
ings for the Scottish Rite Temple in San
Antonio, Texas, and for the George
Washington Masonic National Memor-
ial. Ferris' drawings of the rebuilt tem-
ple show an awe-inspiring edifice
looming majestically over the tiny fi-
gures which inhabit and surround it.

With completed plans and draw-
ings of the reconstructed temple,
Kelchner and Corbett set out to find a
place to build it. They decided that
Philadelphia's forthcoming fair cele-
brating the 150th anniversary of Amer-
ican Independence would be the
perfect place. "We chose that site," ex-
plained Kelchner, "because millions of
people from everywhere will come to
Philadelphia next year to attend the
Sesquicentennial Exposition . . . But
my ultimate hopes are fixed upon a
permanent restoration in my own city,
New York." The reconstruction of the
temple in Philadelphia was estimated
to cost $3 million.

The organizers of the Philadelphia
exhibition were pleased to have Kelch-
ner build his temple on the grounds of
their fair. They presented him with
60 acres of land on which to erect the
proposed structure. In fact, Philadel-
phia Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick
made the presentation of those 60 acres
his first official public act as president
of the Sesquicentennial International
Exposition.

The temple was to be a crowd
pleaser at the Exposition. The plans
called for it to be fully furnished and
for a reproduction of the ark of the co-
venant, guarded by gigantic golden
cherubim, to sit behind a blue, purple,
and scarlet veil within the temple's
sanctum sanctorum. Further, the struc-
ture was to be outfited with a system
of pipes through which smoke and gas
could be forced. This smoke was to en-
velop the entire temple and combine
with other effects to represent the de-
struction of the temple.

All of Kelchner's and Corbett's
plans ended up going unfulfilled. The
Philadelphia Sesquicentennial Exposi-
tion took place without King
Solomon's Temple. "After plans were
well under way," a short note in the
December 1926 issue of New York Ma-
sonic Outlook explains, "a series of com-
plications developed that made it
impossible for the project to go
through." The note mentioned that
Kelchner still hoped to be able to build
a permanent temple in New York City.
These hopes, too, failed to materialize.

Although Kelchner's temple was
never built, his research into the con-
struction and design of Solomon's
Temple was to influence how genera-
tions of Freemasons imagined the
craft's central edifice. In 1926, at the re-
quest of the Committee on Social and
Educational Service of the Grand
Lodge of New York, the A. J. Holman
Company of Philadelphia produced a
Masonic bible featuring Kelchner's
images of the temple. It was success-
fully received by the craft, and has
been reissued continually since then.
Through this medium, Kelchner's tem-
ple, although a house never built with
hands, has assumed a very real form
within the imagination of the fraternity.

The Northern Light  August 1993

