Bahá'í House of Worship for the North American Continent

About

The Bahá'í House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois speaks quietly and eloquently of the Bahá'í conviction that humanity's many faiths share a single divine source. Its architect, Louis Bourgeois, born in French Canada in 1856, spent years shaping a design that braids together motifs drawn from traditions across the world. Carved into the ornate concrete pillars, one finds the cross of Christianity, Judaism's Star of David, the Islamic crescent and star, and the swastika as it appears in Hindu and Buddhist sacred art. A nine-pointed star crowns each pillar, signaling the Bahá'í Faith itself.

The number nine pervades the building's geometry. In Bahá'í understanding, nine, the final digit before numbers cycle back, carries a sense of completion and perfection; it also corresponds numerically, in the Abjad system, to Bahá, the Arabic word for glory. So the auditorium receives worshippers through nine entrances, the dome is articulated into nine sections, and nine alcoves line the interior walls. Overhead, the dome soars 138 feet from floor to ceiling, its interior measuring 72 feet across. Below it, 1,191 seats are arranged in a space designed less for congregational ownership than for universal welcome.

The cladding that gives the building its luminous, lace-like surface is a specialized casting of Portland cement blended with two distinct varieties of quartz. Words of Baháʼu'lláh, the religion's founder, are set into the material above each entrance and within the alcoves. Nine fountains and gardens spread across nearly seven acres around the structure, extending its geometry outward to the landscape.

Bahá'í Temples are not envisioned as the property of any single congregation. They are devotional sanctuaries for all who come, regardless of the tradition from which they arrive, and the Wilmette Temple has welcomed visitors of every background since its dedication.

History

Chicago Bahá'ís first discussed building a House of Worship in 1903, and 'Abdu'l-Bahá, then head of the Bahá'í Faith, laid a symbolic cornerstone during his visit to Wilmette in 1912. Construction under architect Louis Bourgeois's design began in earnest in the 1920s but stalled repeatedly through funding shortages, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. The exterior cladding was finished in January 1943 and the interior detailing completed after the war, and the Temple was formally dedicated on 2 May 1953 before more than 3,500 people, among them 91-year-old Corinne True, who had championed the project from its earliest days.

Significance

As the second Bahá'í House of Worship ever built and the oldest surviving example, the Wilmette Temple occupies a founding place in the faith's architecture, its pillars carved with the cross, the Star of David, the crescent and star, and other sacred symbols as a literal expression of the Bahá'í teaching that all religions share one divine source. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 and is recognized by the Illinois Office of Tourism as one of the Seven Wonders of Illinois.

Architecture

Bahá'í Temple architecture by Louis Bourgeois uniting decorative motifs from many of the world's religions, cast in concrete cladding of Portland cement and quartz over a nine-sided domed plan