The Trumpet Stone: Door

At the top of this post I've included three pictures of temple doors, all with stars. On the left are the Portland Oregon Temple doors. In the middle are the Manhattan New York Temple doors. Finally on the right are the Bern Switzerland Temple doors. These are the three temples I found with just stars on their doors. There are probably some I've missed. Please tell us about them in the comments. The Washington D.C. Temple also has a star panel and a panel with the big dipper and north star on its doors. I'd like to focus on the three doors pictured above.

The Portland Oregon Temple is breathtakingly beautiful. It has a lot of symbolism (borrowed from the Salt Lake Temple) and adds the symbolic star doors. So what do they mean? Well to figure this out we should first notice that these stars are the same style as those on the eastern three spires (no stars are on the western three spires). This means the stars are high on the temple. On the Salt Lake Temple, the star stones can represent heaven. High on the eastern three spires of the Salt Lake Temple there are forty 5 pointed stars which "may refer also to God's gift of priesthood to guide us, in that they may represent the great and noble spirits in premortality whom God assigned to be rulers in his kingdom." according to the book Sacred Walls by Gerald E. Hansen Jr. Because the Portland Oregon Temple door stars match those on the three eastern spires I would interpret them to mean that the temple is heavenly, the path to heaven, and a place of priesthood. They also sort of remind me of depictions of The Star of Bethlehem so they could also signify that the temple leads us to Christ.

The star doors on the Manhattan New York Temple and the Bern Switzerland Temple look a little different but probably have a similar meaning of representing heaven and heavenly guidance. The stars are eight pointed however so they may have an additional meaning.

Well there you have a little discussion about Latter-day Saint temple star doors. Please comment.

Temple doors tend to be nice, but a few excel. For instance, the Salt Lake Temple doors are more ornate than most and include symbols. I was going to write about all temple doors with symbols, but have decided to just write about the Washington D.C. Temple doors.

Washington D.C. Temple southeast doors.

Washington D.C. Temple northeast doors

Washington D.C. Temple main entry doors

I'll start with a little background. When The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints decided to build a temple in Washington D.C. (started 1968, completed 1974) they decided that it needed to be easily recognizable as a Latter-day Saint temple. They decided that mimicking elements of the Salt Lake Temple would accomplish this. To the church's credit, it didn't just make a copy of the Salt Lake Temple but rather made a very modern interpretation of it. So while the temple has 2 sets of 3 symbolic towers with tiers, they don't look like those on the Salt Lake Temple. Similary, the temple has a priesthood assembly hall which echos the form of the Salt Lake Temple assembly room while being unique. The Washington D.C. Temple was also given a statue of the Angel Moroni (This wasn't standard then as only L.A. and Salt Lake had these statues at the time) but the statue wasn't a copy of the Salt Lake statue but instead a unique sculpture.

Looking at the Washington D.C. Temple from afar you'd think it lacked most of the symbolism seen on the salt lake temple - namely sun, moon, star and earth stones, the big dipper, etc. Indeed the stone facade lacks these ornaments; however, they are still present on the Washington D.C. Temple. They show up on the doors.

These doors have eight symbols. (Please click on the links to see the full doors) On the left side from bottom to top we see a star, a planet, concentric circles representing eternity, and the sun complete with a face. On the right side we have from bottom to top: the big dipper and north star, the earth, seven concentric pentagons representing seven dispensations, and the moon. I really like these doors because they are beautiful art done in a unique style. Each of these symbols have special symbolism.

The sun medallion essentially combines the Nauvoo Temple sun stone (which had a face) and the Salt Lake Temple sun stone style (which incidentally was shown to have a face at one point) while at the same time being a unique symbol. The moon medallion is round like the Salt Lake Temple’s but it has a crescent shape vaguely reminiscent of the Nauvoo Temple moon stones. The concentric circles is an adapted form of similar Salt Lake Temple symbols. The Salt Lake Temple doesn’t have the pentagons or planets, but early plans did call for Saturn stones. The Salt Lake Temple does have earth stones, however the decision to make the temple out of granite means that they have no detail, so it is nice to see an Earth medallion with details on the D.C. Temple. The bottom two symbols are also borrowed from the Salt Lake Temple which has many stars (which can represent heaven, a degree of glory, Christ as the morning and evening star, people who rely on the light of Christ, and several other things depending on context) as well as the big dipper which is used to imply the north star or us getting our bearings on life and charting a course for eternity. It is nice that these doors have the north star included. (The north star can also be a symbol of eternity as it is unchanging).

I really appreciate the detail, symbolism, beauty, artistry, artistic style and uniqueness of the Washington D.C. Temple doors. I like how they adapt (and add) symbols and brought them from stone to metal. Another advantage of these doors is that the symbols are brought to a level where you can see and contemplate them easily (In other words they are at eye level). Other temples have been given symbolic doors and I hope we will from time to time see these unique details in temple designs.

This is an addition to the original post

The artist who created the Washington D.C. Temple doors is Franz Johansen. He also made the large relief sculpture on the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City.

Here is a new picture of the door handles. The interior doors have door handles made to look like the east and west sides of the temple with a central tower and two flanking towers, but the exterior door handles look like this.

Washington D.C. Temple exterior door handles

Here are pictures of each of the door medallions. Each set has the medallion from the main entry doors on the left and the medallion from either the northeast or southeast doors on the right. I noticed that the symbols are organized. The top level has the sun and moon, major sources of light in day and night. The next level has concentric circles and concentric pentagons in circles, so it is where shapes are put. The next level has the planets and the earth, so it is dealing with planets. The bottom level has stars on one side, and the big dipper and north star on the other (in an eight pointed star). So the bottom level is filled with stars. The organization is nice and suggests that considerable thought went into these doors.