The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 19, May, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 19, May, 1859: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The plan of Salt Lake City is an index to that of all the principal
towns. It is divided into squares, each side of which is forty rods
in length. The streets are more than a hundred feet wide, and are all
unpaved. There is not a single sidewalk of brick, stone, or plank. The
situation is well chosen, being directly at the foot of the southern
slope of a spur which juts out from the main Wahsatch range. Less than
twenty miles from the city, almost overshadowing it, are peaks which
rise to the altitude of nearly twelve thousand feet, from which the snow
of course never disappears. But during the summer months, when scarcely
a shower falls upon the valley, its drifts become dun-colored with dust
from the friable soil below, and present an aspect similar to that of
the Pyrenees at the same season. During most of the year, the rest of
the mountains which encircle the Valley are also capped with snow. The
residences of Young and Kimball are situated on almost the highest
ground within the city-limits, and the land slopes gradually down from
them to the south, east, and west. This inclination suggested the mode
of supplying the city with water. A mountain-brook, pure and cold,
bubbling from under snow-drifts, is guided from this highland down
the gently sloping streets in gutters adjoining both the sidewalks. A
municipal ordinance imposes severe penalties on any one who fouls it.
Young's buildings and gardens occupy an entire square, ten acres in
extent, as do also Kimball's. They consist, first, of the Mansion, a
spacious two-storied building, in the style of the Yankee-Grecian villas
which infest New England towns, with piazzas supported by Doric columns,
and a cupola which is surmounted by a beehive, the peculiar emblem of
the Mormons, although there is not a single honey-bee in the Territory.
This, like all its companions, is of adobe, but it is coated with
plaster, and painted white. Next to it is a small building, used
formerly as an office, in which the temporal business of the Governor
was transacted. By its side stands another office, on the same model,
but on a larger scale, devoted to the business of the President of the
Church. These are connected by passage-ways both with the Mansion and
with the Lion-House, which is the most westerly of the group, and is the
finest building in the Territory, having cost nearly eighty thousand
dollars. Like both the offices, it stands with a gable toward the
street, and the plaster with which it is covered has a light buff tinge.
The architecture is Elizabethan. Above a porch in front is the figure
of a recumbent lion, hewn in sandstone. On each of the sides, which
overlook the gardens, ten little windows project from the roof
just above the eaves. The whole square is surrounded by a wall of
cobblestones and mortar, ten or twelve feet in height, strengthened by
buttresses at intervals of forty or fifty feet. Massive plank gates bar
the entrances. In one corner is the Tithing-Office, where the faithful
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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