Baha'i Temple

The story of the Baha’i House of Worship is one of how very few believers in a new faith built the “Great Bell” of the North Shore.

Sitting on the shores of Lake Michigan, just five miles north of Chicago, the Baha’i House of Worship’s story begins with the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. Inspired by news of the first Baha'i¬ Temple in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, members of the Chicago Baha'i¬ House of Spirituality drafted a petition in 1903 asking for permission to begin their own. Fifty years later, in 1953, a completed Baha'i¬ House of Worship was dedicated in Wilmette. With archival photographs, readers can see the complete timeline of the temple from the Great Depression and World War II years up to the present, including ongoing restoration projects preserving the beauty of the “Temple of Light.”