Bartlett Hindu temple

Today I made a trek out to the western suburb of Bartlett, IL, to take a look at a Hindu temple being built there. This temple is the Chicago Regional Mandir of Bochasanwasi Shree Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Santha, a Vedic branch of Hinduism based in the Indian states of Gujarat and Rajastan, north of Mumbai.



The temple is large and ornate and expensive. And it looks very non-Western. And so it has attracted some attention out in Bartlett, where architecture tends more toward the Super-Target big box and the McMansion.

The two enclosed structures on the site are made of marble and teak, which were carved in India and brought here to be assembled. The stone is structural and not merely a facade; there is no steel frame underneath. I took note of the environmental controls, since that's the business I'm in, and I was pleased to see that they're using our products. Modernity meets antiquity.

The design of the temple serves to embody an objective stated in a brochure I was given: "[W]e strive to sustain the roots of Indian and Hindu culture and all the good that it represents."