For 35 years, Church Office Building has been symbolic Mormon headquarters, operational center for church growth

SALT LAKE CITY — It's a symbol of church headquarters, and to church leaders it's even a miracle maker.

The mountainous, 28-story Church Office Building soars above North Temple Street, where it has been the nerve center for the tremendous growth of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the nearly 35 years since its dedication.

"The Church Office Building has served very, very well for 35 years as kind of a symbol of church headquarters," Bishop H. David Burton, presiding bishop of the church, said in a recent interview with the Deseret News.

"What do you see when you come into the valley?" he said. "You certainly see most prominently the lovely Capitol building and some of the buildings downtown, but this building is very visible and very symbolic, that this is the international headquarters of the church. More than any other single thing, that established the international aspect of the church — here was the spot from which the church would go forward around the world. What has happened in the 35 years since has been a miracle."

The towering, 420-foot-high building, which houses the administrative support staff for the LDS Church, turns 35 on July 24, having been dedicated in 1975, though it was in partial use by 1972.

"It has served well, indeed," Bishop Burton said. "It has been a great blessing. I don't know if there are very many people around who could remember that period of time, but church entities were spread to virtually all four corners of this city — spread out and housed in 20 to 30 different locations. The opportunity of bringing together the operational aspects of the church into a single place brought a lot of synergism, a lot of efficiency — and it also brought a togetherness not formerly possible with people so spread out, particularly the General Authorities."

Although the Joseph Smith Memorial Building directly honors the first president of the church, the Church Office Building was originally envisioned to do so too — with a planned 38 floors, to commemorate the 38 years of Joseph Smith's life.

The 38 floors didn't materialize — for a variety of reasons — or the building would have soared more than 500 feet high.

So what happened to the additional 10 stories?

J. Howard Dunn, who was in charge of project development for the LDS Church's building committee, said in a 1962 Church News article that the plans were changed and eight stories were scrapped to better meet mechanical requirements of the engineering department. Heating and air conditioning for the skyscraper would best be handled in 14-story units, beginning above the first two floors. At that time, the high-rise was to be 30 stories. Later, two more stories were also eventually deleted from that plan.