[8] The nuns of Sarada Convent manage the bookstore, oversee maintenance of the grounds, and facilitate the temple's public activities; including daily worship (i.e. Puja), meditation, and vesper services (i.e. Arati).

[6][10][11] The temple was built on a mostly undeveloped estate donated by linseed oil magnate Spencer Kellogg, Jr., to the Vedanta Society of Southern California in 1944.

During that time, the then 30-acre property was largely covered with thick chaparral shrub, and included a house, a small shrine building, and an art room.

However, he eventually changed his mind on the following account: "But having overheard Kellogg speaking to himself about his grand plan while he swept the path near the shrine–along with an endowment of a lemon orchard–the monk decided it was indeed divinely given.

[12] In 1954, the first Sunday public lectures were given in the living room of the main house, where all of the furniture had to be moved onto the porch beforehand, and the nuns' choir and organist (Brahmacharini Varada) would position themselves behind a curtain within the adjoining kitchen to sing during the service.

However, fourteen years later the grove was sold by the Vedanta Society of Southern California for $45,000, which covered approximately seventy percent of the expenses to construct the new temple.

Vidyatmananda further reflected that Riggs was meticulous in respecting the natural features of the site, its existing trees, as well as the physical characteristics of the materials she worked with; whether they be wood, stone, metal, fabrics, or concrete.

May this temple bind everyone with the tie of brotherhood and love!”In 1957, Lutah Maria Riggs completed her designs for the gatehouse, a rectangular redwood and glass house constructed on wooden stilts upon a concrete platform, and crouched between the naturally surrounding boulders and eucalyptus trees.

[3][6] In 1970, at the request of architect Lutah Maria Riggs, Daniel Donahue (an associated client) donated a large bronze soft-green patina-tarnished Chinese bell to the Santa Barbara Temple.

[10] Here, the pillars within extend the length of the temple in rows along the two side aisles and support a series of laminated arches that create a nave, which terminates above the altar in a rectangular apse.

The temple's exposed construction form and its natural materials serve as aesthetic patterning and render golden tones within the space, where outdoor lighting enters through a series of wooden latticed windows.

[27] The temple's double-peaked tile roof overhangs the porch of the south-facing main entrance in a cantilever, supported by four pillars fitted to the exposed lintels.

The centrally-positioned doorway is accessed by a stairway that extends across the entire width of the building to its outer white plaster walls, in which are embedded additional wooden pillars that are left partially exposed along the sides of the temple.

Surrounding the temple there are rock gardens with native plant species, which were landscaped by Riggs with guidance from renown architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

The temple has thus been described: "Its peaked structure is supported by processions of golden-hue wood columns that were formerly telephone poles made from Oregon pine trees.