[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.
It is supposed that such a plat when built up will contain fifteen or twenty thousand population, and that they will require twenty-four buildings to supply them with houses for public worship and schools. These buildings will be temples, none of which will be less than eighty-seven feet by sixty-one, and two stories high, each story to be fourteen feet, making the building twenty-eight feet to the square. I say none of these temples will be smaller than this, but of course there will be others much larger; the above, however, are the dimensions of the one the saints were commanded to build first.
Lands on the north and south of the city will be laid off for barns and stables for the use of the city, so there will be no barns or stables in the city among the homes of the people.
Lands for the agriculturist are also to be laid off on the north and south of the city plat, but if sufficient land cannot be laid off without going too great a distance, then farms are to be laid off on the east and west also; but the tiller of the soil as well as the merchant and mechanic will live in the city. The farmer and his family, therefore, will enjoy all the advantages of schools, public lectures and other meetings. His home will no longer be isolated, and his family denied the benefits of society, which has been, and always will be, the great educator of the human race; but they will enjoy the same privileges of society, and can surround their homes with as much refinement as will be found in the home of the merchant or banker.
"When this square is thus laid off and supplied, lay off another in the same way," said Joseph to those to whom the city plat was sent, "and so fill up the world in these last days, and let every man live in the city, for this is the city of Zion."