Louisiana Purchase Exposition
At the Louisiana Purchase Exposition it stood within the India pavilion. It was described thus: "The pavilion, a reproduction of the famous mosque of Itmad-ul-Dowlah at Agra, India, was much admired, as were the interior decorations and exhibits. Rising from the center of the court was a Jain temple of teakwood .., being a copy of a white marble temple eight times as large at Palitana, Central India. The reproduction represented two years' work of sixty-five artists and was made expressly for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.” After the exposition, the temple was dismantled, but was not shipped back to India as originally planned.Las Vegas
Hotelier Ben Jaffe, owner of the Castaways, acquired the temple and had it shipped to Las Vegas where it was reassembled by the hotel's pool for its opening on September 1, 1963. It was given the name Gateway to Luck. The image of the temple was widely used in the hotel's postcards. The site is now occupied byIn Los Angeles
The Jain Center of Southern California was established in 1979, with Mahendra Khandar as the President. In 1980, Lalit Shah and Shirish Seth visited Las Vegas and discovered the temple. In 1981, some of the Jains accompanied by Acharya Sushil Kumar and Chitrabhanu saw the temple, and agreed that the temple should belong to a Jain organization. Lalit Shah, then vice-president of the Jain Center of Southern California approached the Castaways manager Bill Friedman. He offered to have the value of the Temple appraised and sell it to them. The Jains instead requested the estate of Howard Hughes to donate it to them. In 1987, Castaways was bought by Steve Wynn. Castaways was demolished to make place for the new 3,044-room megaresort Mirage. The Temple was boxed up again and was acquired by the Jain Center of Southern California through the efforts of Dr. Manibhai Mehta, a former president. In 1995, the 1600 parts were transported to Los Angeles. In 2004, the Southern California Jain Center initiated reconstruction of the 42,000 square feet center. The wood temple has been carefully restored with the assistance of Manubhai Shah and MS International who carefully studied how the temple would be put together again. The coating put on it at Las Vegas was removed to restore the original teak look. The structure is 15 ft x 20 ft x 35 ft high and weighs nearly 10,000 lbs. It now forms the centerpiece of the center. In 2008 the new building was inaugurated.Artistic significance
The 1904 St. Louis temple is not only one of a kind in USA, but is a rare surviving example of Indian tradition of wooden architecture. It has been suggested that it was originally carved at the Ahmadabad Woodcarving Company jointly run by Muggenbhai Hutheesing of Ahmedabad and Lockwood de Forest,An Eastern Fantasia, Asleep for a Century, Mitchell Owens, New York Times, August 24, 2000. a painter, orientalist and interior architect ofLocation
The temple is located within the Jain Center atSee also
* Jainism in America * JAINA * Jain Center of Southern California *References
External links
* {{Jainism topics Indian-American culture in Los Angeles Jain temples in the United States Buena Park, California Religious buildings and structures in Los Angeles Jainism in the United States 20th-century Jain temples Asian-American culture in Missouri Indian-American culture in Missouri 1904 establishments in Missouri Buildings and structures in St. Louis