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The Seventies Hall Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division

The Seventies Hall in Nauvoo was created as a meeting place for the Seventies, a quorum organization in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that focuses on missionary work. It was built in 1844 on land donated by Edward Hunter, a member of the LDS faith in Nauvoo.

During construction of the hall, a tornado leveled one of the walls. Brigham Young instructed the workers to rebuild the wall, making it one additional brick thicker.¹ After it was completed in late July 1844, the hall also became the first library in Nauvoo, housing many books brought from abroad by returning missionaries. When the Saints moved to Utah, the books were removed from the Seventies Hall and used to establish the first library between Missouri and California. The main floor was also used as a lecture hall and as a chapel for church meetings, while the second floor contained the library and office for the seventies. The hall was dedicated by Brigham Young in December 1844, although it had already been in use for several months. In early August 1844, it was in the Seventies Hall that Sidney Rigdon presented to the other leaders of the Church his claim that he should be a "guardian" over the Church.²

After the Saints left Nauvoo to travel west, the Seventies Hall became the meeting place for another denomination before the second floor was removed and the structure used as a schoolhouse. Sometime before 1897, the building was leveled. In the 1960s, the site was bought by Nauvoo Restoration, Inc., and in 1971-72, a replica of the original building was erected on the original foundation. Today, a museum of Nauvoo artifacts resides on the second floor, and the main floor has been restored to as it appeared in the 1840s.

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SOURCES

¹ Arnold K. Garr, Donald Q. Cannon, Richard O. Cowan, eds., Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History, (Deseret Book Company: Salt Lake City, Utah, 2000), 1091.

² Stanley B. Kimball, "Heber C. Kimball and Family, the Nauvoo Years," BYU Studies, Vol. 15, Number 4, Summer 1975, 471.