A Stone for the Mother Temple

‘Abdu’l-Bahá arrived in Chicago from Washington on April 29, 1912. The next day He addressed the Convention of the Bahá'í Temple Unity, the body raising funds for a House of Worship, at the Drill Hall; Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání records that the whole audience stood when He entered.

On the morning of May 1 He spoke with the friends at His hotel and sent telegrams to the assemblies of the East. Then He went out to the land that had been purchased for the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár, north of the city at Wilmette on the shore of Lake Michigan. The friends had already assembled and had pitched a large tent for the meeting.

The Master first drove around the site, inspecting its boundaries. Then He entered the tent, where the friends stood all about Him, and spoke on the power of the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh to unite the peoples of the East and the West, and on the Mashriqu'l-Adhkárs of ‘Ishqábád and America.

He went next to the spot where the foundation stone was to be laid. Irene Holmes presented Him with a golden trowel made for the occasion, and with it He dug the earth for the stone. Then, Maḥmúd records, the delegates from the American assemblies took the trowel in turn and continued the digging, followed by representatives of the Eastern friends: Mihtar Ardishír Bahrám Surúsh for the Bahá'ís of Pársí background, Siyyid Asadu'lláh for those of Muslim background, Zia Bagdadi for the Arab friends, and Qudsíyyih Khánum Ashraf for the Bahá'í women of the East. Honoré Jaxon, reporting in Star of the West, adds that an axe and a shovel were brought because the soil was gravelly. When the digging was done, the Master set the stone in place with His own hand. One account records His words as He did so: “The Temple is already built.”

The stone He set was an offering from Nettie Tobin, a Chicago believer who wanted to give something but had little money. In her own account she asked a builder near her home for a stone; he told her the stones in that pile were rejected and she could help herself. With a Persian friend she brought it by streetcar in an old baby carriage, and when the carriage broke down near the site two boys lent them an express wagon to finish the journey. “Imagine my joy,” she wrote, “when ‘the stone refused by the builder’ was received and used by the Master!”

After the stone was laid, He showered His love on the friends and left the site; most of them stayed to share lunch in the tent. The House of Worship built on that land was dedicated in 1953.

A retelling based on Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald, 1998), entry for May 1, 1912, with Nettie Tobin's account as given in Annamarie Honnold's Vignettes from the Life of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and H. M. Balyuzi's 'Abdu'l-Bahá: The Centre of the Covenant. For the fuller account, see the originals.

Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání, M.. (1998). *Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání*. George Ronald.