The Sunstones of Nauvoo

The original Nauvoo Temple was adorned with some of the most distinctive architectural carvings in American religious history: massive sunstones, moonstones, and starstones that decorated the pilasters of the building's exterior. Designed by architect William Weeks under the direct guidance of Joseph Smith — who said the design came to him in a vision from the Lord — these celestial symbols represented the three degrees of glory described in Latter-day Saint theology.

Each of the 30 pilasters featured a sunstone at the top, a moonstone at the base, and starstones in between. The sunstones, the most dramatic of the three, were carved limestone faces roughly two and a half feet tall, depicting a human face surrounded by radiating sun rays. They were unlike anything in the classical architectural vocabulary and marked the Nauvoo Temple as a uniquely Latter-day Saint creation.

When the temple was gutted by arson in 1848 and toppled by a tornado in 1850, the carved stones were scattered. Over the following decades, they were carried off as souvenirs, incorporated into other buildings, or simply abandoned. Several sunstones survived and eventually found their way into museums: one is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., another at the Nauvoo Museum, and a third at the Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City.

When the temple was rebuilt in 2002, sculptors painstakingly recreated all 30 sets of celestial stones from the original architectural drawings — the same drawings that had been lost for a century before being miraculously returned by William Weeks's non-member grandson in 1948. Today, the reconstructed sunstones, moonstones, and starstones glow against the Alabama limestone of the rebuilt temple, a link across 150 years to the original vision.