Provo Tabernacle

In Thomas Bullock’s notes, now part of the Journal History of the Church, for 19 September 1849, one reads that on Monday, 17 September 1849, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards [the then presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints], and others

“rode out from Fort Utah in three carriages, accompanied by five men on horseback, to look out a location for a town.

“They found a very eligible place, about two miles southeast of the Fort, where it was decided to build a city a mile square, to be laid off in blocks of four acres each, divided into eight lots of half an acre each, reserving the center block of four acres for a chapel and schoolhouses, the streets to be five rods wide...”
By reason of its being about “two miles southeast” of the presumed location of Fort Utah, it would appear that the present location of the Tabernacle was the “center block.”

However, it was at the present location of Pioneer Park, what was then called the “Public Square”, at the present-day address of 500 West and Center Street, that ground was dedicated and broken for the first Provo meeting house under the direction of Apostle George A. Smith, then acting president of the Provo Stake. Later, after the foundations had already been laid, work on it was abandoned on advice from Brigham Young.