Walking in a northward direction up Main, otherwise called Whisky Street, we could not but observe the “magnificent distances” of the settlement, which, containing 9000-12,000 souls, covers an area of three miles.THE HOLY CITY. This broadway is 132 feet wide, including the side-walks, which are each twenty, and, like the rest of the principal avenues, is planted with locust and other trees. There are twenty or twenty-one wards or cantons, numbered from the S.E. “boustrophedon” to the N.W. corner. They have a common fence and a bishop apiece. They are called after the creeks, trees, people, or positions, as Mill-Creek Ward, Little Cotton-wood, Denmark, and South Ward. Every ward contains about nine blocks, each of which is forty rods square. The area of ten acres is divided into four to eight lots, of two and a half to one and a quarter acres each, 264 feet by 132. A city ordinance places the houses twenty feet behind the front line of the lot, leaving an intermediate place for shrubbery or trees. This rule, however, is not observed in Main Street.
The streets are named from their direction to the Temple Block. Thus Main Street is East Temple Street No. 1; that behind it is State Road, or East Temple Street 2, and so forth, the ward being also generally specified. Temple Block is also the point to which latitude and longitude are referred. It lies in N. lat. 40° 45′ 44″, W. long. (G.) 112° 6′ 8″, and 4300 feet above sea level.
Main Street is rapidly becoming crowded. The western block, opposite the hotel, contains about twenty houses of irregular shape and size. The buildings are intended to supply the principal wants of a far-Western settlement, as bakery, butchery, and blacksmithery, hardware and crockery, paint and whip warehouse, a “fashionable tailor”—and “fashionable” in one point, that his works are more expensive than Poole’s—shoe-stores, tannery and curriery; the Pantechnicon, on a more pretentious style than its neighbors, kept by Mr. Gilbert Clements, Irishman and orator; dry-goods, groceries, liquors, and furniture shops, Walker’s agency, and a kind of restaurant for ice-cream, a luxury which costs 25 cents a glass; saddlers, dealers in “food, flour, and provisions,” hats, shoes, clothing, sash laths, shingles, timber, copper, tin, crockery-ware, carpenters’ tools, and mouse-traps; a watch-maker and repairer, a gunsmith, locksmith, and armorer, soap and candle maker, nail-maker, and venders of “Yankee notions.” On the eastern side, where the same articles are sold on a larger scale, live the principal Gentile merchants, Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Nixon, an English Saint; Mr. R. Gill, a “physiological barber;” Mr. Godbe’s “apothecary and drug stores;” Goddard’s confectionery; Messrs. Hockaday and Burr, general dealers, who sell every thing, from a bag of potatoes to a yard of gold lace; and various establishments, Mormon and others. Crossing the street that runs east and west, we pass on the right hand a small block, occupied by Messrs. Dyer and Co., sutlers to a regiment in Arizona, and next to it the stores of Messrs. Hooper and Cronyn, with an ambrotype and daguerrean room behind. The stores, I may remark, are far superior, in all points, to the shops in an English country town that is not a regular watering-place. Beyond this lies the adobe house, with its wooden Ionic stoop or piazza (the portico is a favorite here), and well-timbered garden, occupied by Bishop Hunter; and adjoining it the long tenement inhabited by the several relicts of Mayor Jedediah M. Grant. Farther still, and facing the Prophet’s Block, is the larger adobe house belonging to General Wells and his family. Opposite, or on the western side, is the well-known store of Livingston, Bell, and Co., and beyond it the establishment now belonging to the nine widows and the son of the murdered apostle, Parley P. Pratt. Still looking westward, the Globe bakery and restaurant, and a shaving saloon, lead to the “Mountaineer Office,” a conspicuous building, forty-five feet square, two storied, on a foundation of cut stone stuccoed red to resemble sandstone, and provided with a small green-balconied belvidere. The cost was $20,000. It was formerly the Council House, and was used for church purposes. When purchased by the Territory the Public Library was established in the northern part; the office of the “Deserét News” on the first story, and that of the “Mountaineer” on the ground floor. This brings us to the 1st South Temple Street, which divides the “Mountaineer” office from the consecrated ground. In this vicinity are the houses of most of the apostles, Messrs. Taylor, Cannon, Woodruff, and O. Pratt.
Crowds were flocking into Temple Block for afternoon service; yet I felt disappointed by the scene. I had expected to see traces of “workmen in abundance, hewers and workers of stone and timber, and all manner of cunning men for every manner of work,” reposing from their labors on the Sabbath. I thought, at any rate, to find
“pars ducere muros
Molirique arcem, et manibus subvolvere saxa.”
It seemed hardly in accordance with the energy and devotedness of a new faith that a hole in the ground should represent the House of the Lord, while Mr. Brigham Young, the Prophet, thinking of his own comfort before the glory of God, is lodged, like Solomon of old, in what here appears a palace. Nor, reflecting that without a Temple the dead can not be baptized out of Purgatory, was I quite satisfied when reminded of the fate of Nauvoo (according to Gentiles the Mormons believe that they must build nine temples before they will be suffered to worship in peace), and informed that the purely provisional works, which had been interrupted by the arrival of the army in 1858, would shortly be improved.
The lines of THE TEMPLE BLOCK.Temple Block—which, as usual, is ten acres square = forty rods each way—run toward the cardinal points. It stands clear of all other buildings, and the locust-trees, especially those on the sunny south side, which have now been planted seven years, will greatly add to its beauties. It is surrounded with a foundation wall of handsomely dressed red sandstone, raised to the height of ten feet by adobe stuccoed over to resemble a richer material. Each facing has thirty flat pilastres, without pedestal or entablature, but protected, as the adobe always should be, by a sandstone coping. When finished, the whole will be surmounted by an ornamental iron fence. There are four gates, one to each side—of these, two, the northern and western, are temporarily blocked up with dry stone walls, while the others are left open—which in time will become carriage entrances, with two side ways for foot passengers. According to accounts, the wall and the foundations have already cost one million of dollars, or a larger sum than that spent upon the entire Nauvoo Temple.
Temple Block—the only place of public and general worship in the city—was consecrated and a Tabernacle was erected in September, 1847, immediately after the celebrated exodus from “Egypt on the banks of the Mississippi,” on a spot revealed by the past to the present Prophet and his adherents. Two sides of the wall having been completed, ground was broken on the 14th of February, 1853, for the foundation of the building. One part of the ceremony consisted of planting a post at the central point, the main “stake for the curtains of Zion:” every successive step in advance was commemorated by imposing ceremonies, salvos of guns, bands playing, crowds attending, addresses by the governor, Mr. Brigham Young, prayers and pious exercises. The foundations of the Temple, which are sixteen feet deep, and composed of hard gray granite, in color like that of Aberdeen or Quincy, are now concealed from view; and the lumber huts erected for the workmen were, when the Mormons made their minor Hegira to Provo City, removed to the Sugar-house Ward, three miles southeast of the city.
The Temple Block is at present a mere waste. A central excavation, which resembles a large oblong grave, is said by Gentiles to be the beginning of a baptismal font twenty feet deep. The southwestern corner is occupied by the Tabernacle, an adobe building 126 feet long from N. to S., and 64 wide from E. to W.: its interior, ceilinged with an elliptical arch—the width being its span—can accommodate 2000-3000 souls. It urgently requires enlarging. Over the entrances at the gable ends, which open to the N. and S., is a wood-work representing the sun, with his usual coiffure of yellow beams, like a Somali’s wig, or the symbol of the Persian empire. The roof is of shingles: it shelters under its projecting eaves a whole colony of swallows, and there are four chimneys—a number insufficient for warmth at one season, or for ventilation at the other. The speaker or preacher stands on the west side of the building, which is reserved for the three highest dignities, viz., the First Presidency, the “Twelve” (Apostles), and the President of the State of Zion: distinguished strangers are also admitted. Of late, as in the old Quaker meeting-houses at Philadelphia, the brethren in the Tabernacle have been separated from the “sistern,” who sit on the side opposite the preacher’s left; and, according to Gentiles, it is proposed to separate the Christians from the Faithful, that the “goats” may no longer mingle with the sheep.