Bahá'í House of Worship for the North American Continent
Interesting facts
- It is the second Bahá'í House of Worship ever built and the oldest one still standing anywhere in the world.
- Its architect, Louis Bourgeois, died in Wilmette in 1930, twenty-three years before the temple he designed was dedicated.
- Bourgeois's nine-sided design was chosen by delegates at the Bahá'í national convention in 1920, and he spent the following decade building its model.
- The lakeside site was found by the Chicago Bahá'í Corinne True, who chose it for its closeness to Lake Michigan and its natural elevation.
- The Foundation Hall beneath the temple was largely finished by 1922 and served as a meeting place for decades while the building above was completed.
- The steel superstructure went up in 1930–1931, the exterior was finished in January 1943, and interior work began only in 1947.
- John Joseph Earley's cladding used exposed-aggregate concrete, scrubbed to reveal the stone in the mix, a technique he pioneered at Meridian Hill Park in Washington.
- The auditorium seats 1,191 people beneath the dome.
- The Illinois Office of Tourism has named it one of the Seven Wonders of Illinois.
- Before the temple, Bourgeois designed a Hollywood house for the painter Paul de Longpré and won an honourable mention in the 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower competition.
Why it is worth it
On the lakeshore in Wilmette, just north of Chicago, stands one of the most unexpected buildings in America: a white, nine-sided temple whose dome looks as if it were spun from lace. It is the Bahá'í House of Worship for the North American continent. Its foundation stone was laid in 1912 in the presence of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, son of the faith's founder, but money ran short through the Depression and the Second World War, and the building was dedicated only in 1953.
The design is by the French-Canadian architect Louis Bourgeois, who wanted a building that would gather the symbols of all religions into one form. Every surface of the exterior is pierced and patterned — interlacing arcs, stars, tendrils — and on the pillars, if you look closely, are the cross, the Star of David, the star and crescent and the ancient swastika in its original sense, side by side. The intricate cladding was the achievement of the concrete craftsman John Joseph Earley, who from 1932 developed a mix of white Portland cement and two kinds of crushed quartz, cast in panels that catch the light and make the whole temple glitter in sunshine.
The number nine runs through everything: nine entrances, nine alcoves, nine sections of the dome, nine fountains in the gardens that ring the building. Inside, the auditorium rises 138 feet to the crown of a dome 72 feet across, its ceiling lined with the same tracery and centred on the Arabic calligraphy of the Greatest Name, rendered in English as "O Thou Glory of Glories". The temple is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Getting there
The temple stands at the lakeside end of Linden Avenue in Wilmette, about 4 km from central Evanston. Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) is about 21 km away. By public transport, take the CTA Red Line north to Howard and change to the Purple Line, which ends at Linden station; from there the temple is a walk of two blocks east along Linden Avenue.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Chicago Cultural Center 21.7 km · library-building
- Cloud Gate 21.9 km · sculpture
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Baháʼí House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois, is a Baháʼí temple. It is the second Baháʼí House of Worship constructed and the oldest one still standing. It is one of eight continental temples, constructed to serve all of North America.
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