Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have gathered on this block since the 1850s to worship and make sacred covenants. After President Brigham Young selected the site, construction began on a meetinghouse in 1856. Designed by Church architect Truman O. Angell, it served worshipers until it was razed in 1919, and members of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers and the Sons of Utah Pioneers preserved its lintel stone. In the late 1870s, a baptistry was built west of the meetinghouse, and when it was uncovered during an archaeological dig in 2012, its font revealed the site as a place where Latter-day Saints historically made sacred covenants with the Lord. As the community outgrew the meetinghouse, Church leaders commissioned William H. Folsom to design the larger Utah Stake Tabernacle, begun in 1883 and completed in 1898. For more than one hundred years the tabernacle hosted worship services, community gatherings, and cultural events, until a fire on December 17, 2010, consumed all but its outer shell. Ten months later, President Thomas S. Monson announced that the building would be restored and used as a temple, and Church members continue to gather at this historic place to make sacred covenants with God through the ordinances offered in the House of the Lord.