were also destroyed, consolidating lots for larger 20th century uses. Even in 1847, it should have been clear to Brigham Young and the early pioneers that the large size of the blocks was unworkable for a city destined to be more than an agricultural village of several hundred. Making do with the size of the lots as given, further subdivisions were common even in the first allotments, despite Young’s directive to keep the lots whole. Although the agricultural village concept was successful in much smaller towns across Utah, at least in the 19th century, Salt Lake City quickly developed into a dense urban area.11 Furthermore, the pioneers had prior experience of town planning in Nauvoo, where the initial platted lots were smaller, as were the blocks and streets. Even these smaller lots were frequently subdivided in the few years that Nauvoo grew into a thriving city. Young himself had visited England and New York City and understood the nature of towns and cities. Joseph Smith greatly admired New York, passed through Cincinnati in the 1830s, and apparently was acutely interested in the creation of a great city.12 The Salt Lake City founders’ persistence in the overly generous and unworkable street, block and lot dimensions is puzzling under these circumstances. The Plat of Zion remains an ideal vision, a compact city surrounded by green fields, all in service to a notion of a close community based on a religiously inspired work ethic, moral code and communal economy. One might also add that, by modern standards, it would also be a sustainable community: walkable, green, self-sufficient and dense. But creating the ideal central place of Zion clashed with the immediate and pressing need to accommodate thousands of new residents. The large lots of an agricultural village were never suitable for either purpose, being perhaps a remnant of Young’s own discomfort with urbanity. Had Brigham Young actually used the Plat of Zion lot dimensions, there would probably have been more orderly development, since those lots were more in keeping with the cottages of the mid‑19th century. We cannot know. Instead, in the Salt Lake City plats, the initial lots were much too large, initiating a frenzy of irregular subdivision that created the internal small streets and irregular buildings of multiple sizes, land uses and orientation. And because the initial development was not very dense, the extent of the new city had to be expanded dramatically in response to immigration. But it has come to pass that what may have been an ill adaptation in the city’s first century and a half may now be called advantageous in certain respects. The unique plan of Salt Lake City offers both flexibility and possibility within its rigid and enormous extent. The blocks and small alleys easily accommodate the tremendous growth in the 21st century. The wide streets have proven adaptable to a range of multiple public uses, and more may evolve to make the place a walkable, attractive environment. Salt Lake City is a very young city in the scheme of things and its evolution is only beginning. On the whole, the plan has offered what all good plans do: a sound framework to guide the evolution of an interesting and varied place. 1. The idea that the city’s street width was related to turning either oxen teams or horse teams is not substantiated in the historical record but likely persists because residents (then and now) need an answer to inquiries about the wide streets. 2. Steve Olsen, The Mormon Ideology of Place: Cosmic Symbolism of the City of Zion, 1830–1846 (Provo, UT: BYU Press and the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter Day Saint History, 2002). 3. Martha Bradley Evans, “Constructing Zion: Faith, Grit and the Realm of Possibilities,” Utah Historical Quarterly 89 (Winter 2021): 63–78; C. Mark Hamilton, Nineteenth-Century Mormon Architecture and City Planning (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 13–14. 4. “Plat of the City of Zion, circa Early June–25 June 1833,” p. [1], The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed January 25, 2022, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/ plat-of-the-city-of-zion-circa-early-june-25-june -1833/1. 5. Richard H. Jackson, “The Mormon Village: Genesis and Antecedents of the City of Zion Plan,” BYU Studies Quarterly 17, no. 2 (1977): 6. 6. Jackson, 10. 7. Stephen William Schuster, “The Evolution of Mormon City Planning and Salt Lake City, Utah, 1833–1877” (PhD diss., University of Utah, 1967), 89. 8. Marilyn Reed Travis, “Social Stratification and the Dissolution of the City of Zion in Salt Lake City, 1847–1880” (PhD diss., University of Utah, 1995). 9. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom. 10. Marilyn Reed Travis, “Social Stratification and the Dissolution of the City of Zion in Salt Lake City, 1847– 1880” (PhD diss., University of Utah, 1995). 11. Lowry Nelson, The Mormon Village (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1952). 12. Richard L. Bushman, Making Space for the Mormons: Ideas of Sacred Geography in Joseph Smith’s America, vol. 2 in the Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture Series (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1997), 9. BUILD YOUR BRAND, CONTACT US TODAY! (855) 747-4003 | sales@thenewslinkgroup.com 19
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