_The old Tabernacle_: At first this building was known as the Tabernacle; since the erection of the present building bearing that name, the earlier structure has come to be known as the Old Tabernacle. It was one hundred and twenty-six feet in length by sixty-four feet in width, and occupied the site of the present Assembly Hall in the south-west corner of Temple Block. For its day and time it was a large and pretentious building. As to its seating capacity, we read that at the time of its dedication during the April conference of 1852, there were twenty-five hundred persons present at one session. Its ceiling was {203} arched and was supported without pillars. Many of the posts and poles of the Old Bowery entered into the construction of the Old Tabernacle.[2] _The Tabernacle_: The building now so known was distinctively designated the New Tabernacle at the time of its construction. It was begun in July, 1864, and was so far advanced as to permit the holding of the general conference beneath its roof in October, 1867. This remarkable structure was planned and erected under the direction of President Brigham Young. For it no claim of architectural beauty is asserted; the general appearance is that of a huge inverted bowl resting on pillars. It is in truth a vast elliptical dome supported at the edge by massive sandstone walls and buttresses. The buttresses measure nine feet in width or depth and three feet in thickness. The space between the buttresses is occupied by doors, windows, and walls; the doors open outward, thus affording ready means of exit. The building measures two hundred and fifty feet in length and one hundred and fifty feet in width at the center. The ceiling is seventy feet from the floor in the middle; and from the ceiling to roof the distance is ten feet. A capacious gallery, thirty feet wide, extends along the inner walls and is broken at the west end only, where it gives place to the grand organ and the seats reserved for the great choir. In contrast with the usual methods of construction this enormous {204} gallery is not continuous with the walls. At intervals of twelve to fifteen feet great beams connect the gallery with the wall buttresses, but between these beams the gallery is set forward two and one-half feet from the inside of the walls and the open spaces are guarded by a high railing. It is believed that the surprising acoustic properties of the building are due in part to this feature of construction; the great dome is, in fact, a colossal whispering gallery, as the hundreds of thousands of visitors who have inspected the building know. When it is emptied save for the few, the fall of a pin dropped at the focal point of the ellipse near one end of the building may be heard at the corresponding point near the other end. The convenient seating capacity of the building, including that of the gallery, is nearly nine thousand, though under conditions of crowding, congregations much larger than this have assembled.