The Missouri PersecutionsRoberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
History
The Missouri Persecutions
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Latter Day Saints -- Missouri -- History -- 19th century
Having given a description of the land of Zion and the town of
Independence, it may be interesting to learn something concerning
the city of Zion that shall yet stand there to the glory of God. Of
necessity the description will be imperfect, as the available materials
for such description are very meagre. While the prophets have written
much concerning Zion and her future glory, their rapturous effusions
do not furnish matter for a definite description of the city. In June,
1833, however, Joseph Smith and the elders in Kirtland, Ohio, sent a
plat of the city to the brethren in Missouri. We have been unable to
find the plat, but an explanation of it is recorded in the history of
Joseph Smith,[A] from which we learn the following:
[Footnote A: Millennial Star, Vol. 14, p. 438]
The city plat is one mile square, divided into blocks containing ten
acres each--forty rods square--except the middle range of blocks
running north and south; they will be forty by sixty rods, containing
fifteen acres, having their greatest extent east and west. The streets
will be eight rods wide, intersecting each other at right angles.
The tier of blocks forty by sixty rods will be reserved for public
buildings, temples, tabernacles, school houses, etc.[B]
[Footnote B: By this arrangement, it will be observed that the blocks
in the city cannot be uniformly forty rods square (if the middle range
of blocks running north and south are made forty by sixty), as the
plat east and west would lack twenty-eight rods, and north and south
eight rods, of being sufficient for such an arrangement. Either the
outside tier of blocks must be less than forty rods square, or the city
plat must be more than a mile square. It must be three hundred and
forty-eight rods east and west, (instead of three hundred and twenty)
by three hundred and twenty-eight north and south.--B. H. R.]
All the other blocks will be divided into half-acre lots, a four rod
front to every lot, and extending back twenty rods. In one block the
lots will run from the north and south, and in the next one from the
east and west, and so on alternately throughout the city, except in
the range of blocks reserved for public buildings. By this arrangement
no street will be built on entirely through the street; but on one
block the houses will stand on one street, and on the next one on
another street. All of the houses are to be built of brick or stone;
and but one house on a lot, which is to stand twenty-five feet back
from the street, the space in front being for lawns, ornamental trees,
shrubbery, or flowers according to the taste of the owners; the rest of
the lot will be for gardens, etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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