| OCR Text |
Show .. Halford: Neuooo -- The City Beautiful 39 The building was never completed but using temporary floors and benches allowed the Saints to meet there in the fall of 1845 The only large gathering, five thousand people, met there on October 5, 1845. After an unsuccessful attempt to sell the Tem ple and the other public buildings to the Catholic Church, the self-assured Saints arched inside the door of their sacred shrine for the mob which they knew would soon desecrate it, "The Lord has beheld our sacrifice, come after us." - The social center of Nauvoo and the upper Mississippi Region was the Nauvoo Mansion, a splendid twenty-two room hotel built by and operated by J oseph and Emma Smith. The luxuriant interior was planned with discrimminating taste sparing no expense to provide the finest furniture and furnishings. Cherry, maple, and mahogany furniture with carved and inlaid surfaces, marble topped tables, and rich red carpets added elegance. From the tall candlesticks and the crystal chandeliers with dangling prisms blazed hundreds of candles. Huge dinner parties, cotil lion parties, gay masquerades, and drinking bouts were held there. All prominent visitors were met at the "wharf" by the host and escorted to the Mansion House. Sunday preaching services, funerals, public celebrations, and political rallies were often held at the Grove, a vacant area on the Temple site where a few bleachers had been erected. Usually the participants brought boxes or blankets to sit on. It was open so snow and rain often led to the postponement of the gathering. It could accomodate fifteen thousand people as it did on the gala Fourth of July celebration in 1843. The Masonic Hall, the largest and best in the western states, the Seventies Hall, the Nauvoo Concert Hall, and the office over Joseph Smith's brick store were other meeting and amusement halls. Two visitors-Charlotte Haven who visited the city in 1843 and Reverend Samuel A. Prior describe the citythus: "At eleven o'clock we came in full sight of the City of the Saints, and charmed with the view. We were five miles from it, and from our point of vision, it seemed to be situated on a hill, and to have a dense population, but on our approach and while passing slowly through the principle streets, we thought our vision had been magnified, or distance lent enchantment, for such a collection of miserable houses and hovels I could not have believed existed in one place. Oh, I thought, how much real poverty must dwell here."2 were "The buildings, though many were small and of wood, yet bore the marks of neatness which I have not seen equalled in this country." 'Haven, Charlotte, "A Girl's Letters from Nauvoo," Overland Monthly, XVI. p. 617 lMillenial Star, IV, 7, Nov. 1843, 107. ' - |
