Thank you everyone who contributed or stopped by but the window is now closed.
This was only meant to last for an evening and by the looks of it the sun is coming up over Manhattan.
Steven Pine
Saturday, February 13, 2010
à table - le film
ciao
--
steve wells photography
stevewellsphoto@gmail.com
+ 33 6 28 29 64 42
www.stevewells-photo.com
The Uninvited Guests
The Uninvited Guests
This morning Warren woke up from a particularly terrible night of sleep. He had spent the night waking up repeatedly to sounds he would swear he heard coming from his basement. Too tired and cold to bother himself with getting out of his warm bed, he had tried to shrug it off. “If the sounds were important enough to be urgent, they would be louder.” He mumbled into his pillow, “I’ll take a look in the morning.”
Rolling with a groan out of his bed far earlier than he had planned for his Saturday morning, Warren made his way to the basement, his head scanning the floor for the rodent he had decided must have found its way inside. Instead of anything furry, he noticed a small wooden door. No less than a foot high, across from the base of the stairs, this tiny door looked like it should have been six times as high and on the outside of a cottage in the woods. Though the door appeared happy to be as it was.
It was at this moment that Warren became aware of a noise. His brain told him that his ears were trying to say that there were poker chips clattering against each other on a felt table. Warren knew, however, that there was no felt table nor were there any poker chips in his basement, so he turned to see what type of mistake his ears had made.
As it turned out, there had been no mistake. Warren found, much to his surprise, a tiny card table strewn with clay poker chips and playing cards. But that was the least of Warrens concerns. What concerned him most was the group of uninvited guests sitting in miniscule folding chairs putting the table, cards and chips to use. Four short men, average “Joes” no doubt, with the exception of their height, were having a game of five card draw.
“Um, excuse me, but…” Warren was a bit more confused than he might have expected to be when he first descended his basement stairs, so any more intelligent response was a bit beyond his grasp.
All four men turned to look up at him. None of them showed the tiniest sign of guilt or culpability at being caught trespassing in a stranger’s basement for their card game. In fact, they looked up as if annoyed by the interruption. The one with his back to Warren twisted a suspicious scowl and lowered his cards face down toward the table, and the one on the right took a large puff at his cigar.
“Can we help you?” one of the men said.
Warren decided that he had not yet woken up, turned, and without another word returned to bed. It was when he couldn’t get back to sleep that Warren realized he must be awake already, and returned to the basement to try his hand at confronting the poker game one more time.
With much more courage this time, he glided down the stairs, ready to ask his uninvited guests to find a new venue for their card game. It was not that he minded hosting a card game in his basement, but something about the circumstances didn’t feel quite right to him.
His chance was lost, though, as he found the four men lugging the last of their poker game back through the small door. They closed the door as they chatted amongst themselves. “Last time we come here for our game, Sid.” “Yeah, too many interruptions.” With these words, the door closed, and Warren heard small banging sounds behind it. The pointy end of a nail appeared on the wall to one side of the door, followed by another on the opposite side, and then several more at varying heights.
by Steven Hall
by Steven Hall
Friday, February 12, 2010
I heard this once and wrote it down.
I heard this once and wrote it down.
It's worth repeating....
Sincerely,
Candice Abellon (not the author of the proceeding:)
If you want to be important
wonderful. If you want to be recognized
wonderful! If you want to be great, wonderful!
but recognize
that he who is greatest among you, shall be your servent.
That's a new definition of greatness. And this morning the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness it means everybody can be great! because everyobdy can serve.
You don't have to have a college degree to serve. you don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve! you don't have to know about plato and aristotle to serve. You don't have to know einsteins theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need
a heart full of grace. a soul generated by love. and you can be that servant.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/
It's worth repeating....
Sincerely,
Candice Abellon (not the author of the proceeding:)
If you want to be important
wonderful. If you want to be recognized
wonderful! If you want to be great, wonderful!
but recognize
that he who is greatest among you, shall be your servent.
That's a new definition of greatness. And this morning the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness it means everybody can be great! because everyobdy can serve.
You don't have to have a college degree to serve. you don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve! you don't have to know about plato and aristotle to serve. You don't have to know einsteins theory of relativity to serve. You don't have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need
a heart full of grace. a soul generated by love. and you can be that servant.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
http://www.thekingcenter.org/
The Devil’s Holiday
Seriously, I wish I had thought of this first. Hope somebody enjoys my two cents...
The Devil’s Holiday
My slightly serpentine lisp was about the only clue that may have given me away. I was taking a vacation, and I wanted none of the usual trappings to hold me back from relaxing and enjoying myself. The greasy almost curly, almost shoulder length hair under a grey plaid trilby hat and oversized black plastic framed glasses all screamed what would have a few years earlier been called a hipster, but at the time registered in public awareness as little more than a poseur. Nothing worth noticing for long enough than it took to ignore.
That was the plan, anyway. And I’m not the type to have my plans messed with. The constant pressure on the prince of darkness to always “be on” had worn a deep gouge into my awareness. So I packed up and took a little stroll upstairs. The standard picture people carry of me is that I enjoy tormenting lost souls, and that eternity is the only time span quite long enough to sate my need to do it. And they’re right… to a degree. I exist for that very purpose. Mortals the world over look to me as an example of purity. Pure darkness, of course, but purity is purity.
The only problem with that is that it gets rather boring, day in and day out tormenting the same souls into eternity. The vast creativity (no You-Know-Who is not the only one capable of creating) necessary to not go blind raging mad with performing for eternity in front of an eternally growing audience is not as taxing as you might think. It is actually eternally more taxing than you could ever imagine.
And hence, I donned the “I would really rather you ignore me” garb and went on a bit of a holiday. Nobody seemed to notice when I strolled out of the water onto the beach. Of course nobody had kept count of how many had gone into the water in order to later say “wait, too many people came out”.
“Is it really safe to go in there?” A couple who seemed as though they had never seen more water than could fit into their bathtub were quite terrified of the ocean in front of them. I smiled and told them there was nothing to worry about. I was being pleasant. An intriguing change for me.
Of course, I, being the strange loop that sends anything I meet into an infinite regress ending only at uncertainty and suffering, could only do that as a façade. The poor couple wound up eaten by a shark. The same shark I had smiled to and greeted on my way in from the sand bar.
The funny thing is, after I returned home, and resumed my duties, I “went easy on them” and promised never to make them go near any water. I still can’t keep from grinning whenever I consider just how unpleasant an eternity without water must feel for a creature whose very being is composed of the stuff.
My holiday was quite fun. I realized just how much those mortals and I have in common. We both change our appearances, make ourselves up to be whatever we think suits us best, act out our existences just so… and in the end, we all come back to where we started. Things balance up that way. I’ve worn many outfits over the years, some more recognizable than others. Some you would be surprised to find out were me. Of course, when you add it all up, there I’ll be. Just around the corner. Right there in the shadow. Maybe laying out in the sun on the beach. You never know where you’ll find me, but I promise I’ll be there. And I promise not to disappoint.
Steven Hall
www.thepensivepenguin.com
The Devil’s Holiday
My slightly serpentine lisp was about the only clue that may have given me away. I was taking a vacation, and I wanted none of the usual trappings to hold me back from relaxing and enjoying myself. The greasy almost curly, almost shoulder length hair under a grey plaid trilby hat and oversized black plastic framed glasses all screamed what would have a few years earlier been called a hipster, but at the time registered in public awareness as little more than a poseur. Nothing worth noticing for long enough than it took to ignore.
That was the plan, anyway. And I’m not the type to have my plans messed with. The constant pressure on the prince of darkness to always “be on” had worn a deep gouge into my awareness. So I packed up and took a little stroll upstairs. The standard picture people carry of me is that I enjoy tormenting lost souls, and that eternity is the only time span quite long enough to sate my need to do it. And they’re right… to a degree. I exist for that very purpose. Mortals the world over look to me as an example of purity. Pure darkness, of course, but purity is purity.
The only problem with that is that it gets rather boring, day in and day out tormenting the same souls into eternity. The vast creativity (no You-Know-Who is not the only one capable of creating) necessary to not go blind raging mad with performing for eternity in front of an eternally growing audience is not as taxing as you might think. It is actually eternally more taxing than you could ever imagine.
And hence, I donned the “I would really rather you ignore me” garb and went on a bit of a holiday. Nobody seemed to notice when I strolled out of the water onto the beach. Of course nobody had kept count of how many had gone into the water in order to later say “wait, too many people came out”.
“Is it really safe to go in there?” A couple who seemed as though they had never seen more water than could fit into their bathtub were quite terrified of the ocean in front of them. I smiled and told them there was nothing to worry about. I was being pleasant. An intriguing change for me.
Of course, I, being the strange loop that sends anything I meet into an infinite regress ending only at uncertainty and suffering, could only do that as a façade. The poor couple wound up eaten by a shark. The same shark I had smiled to and greeted on my way in from the sand bar.
The funny thing is, after I returned home, and resumed my duties, I “went easy on them” and promised never to make them go near any water. I still can’t keep from grinning whenever I consider just how unpleasant an eternity without water must feel for a creature whose very being is composed of the stuff.
My holiday was quite fun. I realized just how much those mortals and I have in common. We both change our appearances, make ourselves up to be whatever we think suits us best, act out our existences just so… and in the end, we all come back to where we started. Things balance up that way. I’ve worn many outfits over the years, some more recognizable than others. Some you would be surprised to find out were me. Of course, when you add it all up, there I’ll be. Just around the corner. Right there in the shadow. Maybe laying out in the sun on the beach. You never know where you’ll find me, but I promise I’ll be there. And I promise not to disappoint.
Steven Hall
www.thepensivepenguin.com
Every Life We Let Slip By
Cool. I love the idea. (I still own this, right?)
Every Life We Let Slip By
Every life we let slip by
Is a sigh, a ghost that haunts, for it should not
Have died. It is a gasp of desire
Spat into the fire with a hiss as it goes,
A dream sucked into the night, gone,
Absolutely gone, yes, that’s a cry for
Freedom, born in assertion, devoted to motion,
Flowing, flying, broken but going,
Whole and entire and all around us here.
We can’t let it go, not so simply. The air
Is full of these: the care and fear
Of lives released into the binding sky:
The sticky web of stars that wraps and entraps
Our fugitive dreams, that thrusts them back to ground
To root like seeds, to be transformed,
Reborn. Tomorrow we will set the house aright.
Eric Butler
Every Life We Let Slip By
Every life we let slip by
Is a sigh, a ghost that haunts, for it should not
Have died. It is a gasp of desire
Spat into the fire with a hiss as it goes,
A dream sucked into the night, gone,
Absolutely gone, yes, that’s a cry for
Freedom, born in assertion, devoted to motion,
Flowing, flying, broken but going,
Whole and entire and all around us here.
We can’t let it go, not so simply. The air
Is full of these: the care and fear
Of lives released into the binding sky:
The sticky web of stars that wraps and entraps
Our fugitive dreams, that thrusts them back to ground
To root like seeds, to be transformed,
Reborn. Tomorrow we will set the house aright.
Eric Butler
Salt Lake City: Patterns in Early Development
1
Salt Lake City: Patterns in Early Development
Glen Olson
The degree of Salt Lake City’s morphological uniqueness has always been matter of debate. Most scholars seek to balance between emphasizing the particular history of a town founded to be a City of Zion, and the consistency of patterns that Utah’s capital shares with other cities.[1] Salt Lake City’s history and geographical expansion can be broken up into several periods, with each demonstrating both the city’s uniqueness and consistency to other American towns. I will limit my study to the years of 1847-1875. Within these twenty-eight years, the city’s population grew from the 1,700 to over 15,000,[2] and adapted to new geographical challenges such as incorporating railroads, and the demand for new spatial arrangements to reflect new economic priorities.
I choose to focus my study to these years for two reasons. The first is that within this period Salt Lake City remained small enough to make an analysis of this length feasible. The second, and far more important reason, has to do with the nature of the city during this time. Mormons made up over 90% of the Salt Lake City’s population in the 1870’’s, with the Church having control over all aspects of administration, including the physical layout of the town.[3] One might expect that with such homogeneity and centralized authority would mean strictness to a set plan, devoid of deviation. Instead, the town continually adapted, in ways which are apparent from studying the morphology of the Salt Lake City’s layout. Examining maps of Salt Lake City will also show the influence of old plans of organization. Salt Lake City in 1875 embodied a combination of tradition and flexibility, even at a time when the residents recognized the authority of the Church in deciding the town’s path.
This analysis of Salt Lake City will be broken up into three sections. In the first section, I will look at Joseph Smith’s plan for the City of Zion (Figure A). Designed by Joseph Smith in 1833, the City of Zion Plat was meant to serve as a model for wherever the Saints chose to live.[4] This plan did not serve as a Platt for Great Salt Lake City, and in fact the Utah town deviated from it in many ways. However, it did serve as a major influence on town planners like Brigham Young, and by looking at the plan, one can understand some the reasons behind Salt Lake City’s early morphology.
The second part of the essay will focus on Salt Lake City at its founding, using a map portraying the city in 1847 (Figure B). This is a map put together by historical geographers at BYU, and is meant to portray the original developments and layout of the town grid. The map is different in character than the others I use, given that it is a secondary source. However, it is a useful source for determining in what directions the city planned to grow, and who was going to be the authority in that growth.
In the third part, two maps will be used. Both are bird’s eye views, drawn five years apart from one another. Augustus Koch’s map was drawn in 1870 (Figure C), while ES Glover’s was drawn 1875 (Figure D). These were critical years for Salt Lake City, as the town’s population expanded, stimulated by a mining boom and being integrated in the national railway network. Even though the drawings are only five years apart, one can perceive differences and growth between them. Also, the drawings take different views of the city, and by looking at both, a viewer can get a better sense of the whole. In concluding, I will ask what the maps teach us as a series about Salt Lake City’s first decades.
Planning the City of Zion
One thing to keep in mind when looking at the Joseph Smith’s plan (Figure A), is that not all of the proposed town’s layout is unique to other cities. Indeed, the grid system, which strikes a viewer immediately, was prevalent in many American cities, as Richard H. Jackson points out in his discussion about the plan.[5] The grid, especially for planned cities like Washington DC or Chicago, was widely deemed to be the most rational way to organize a city. Rather than focus on which parts of the plat are unique, or the influences on Smith, this section will focus on two questions: What are the physical properties of the plan? What kind of city, or rather, what kind of life, does this city try to promote?
Each block in the plan, with the exception of the central three, are broken up into a series of twenty identical plots. Around the plan is a series of instructions, which unfortunately one cannot easily read. Luckily, Harris includes a translation of Smith’s handwriting in his discussion.[6] Each half acre lot was to house a family, and to contain a small garden and a few trees.[7] Each block alternates in the direction its houses face, ensuring that a neighbor would see his neighbor’s garden before one would see a house. Each lot was to only have one house making sure that a lot did not become cluttered with extra families or auxiliary buildings that disrupted the garden aesthetic.
The gardens might produce a supplement to family’s diet, but could hardly serve as its basis. For that, Smith planned to have farms on the boundaries of the town, along with barns, which he forbid placement within the city.[8] Why such a strict separation between men and their animals? One answer might be the waste that animals produce. Another reason might be that Smith was promoting a certain aesthetic, that of a garden city of families, rather than that of a stockyard. The setup also means that farmers will not live on isolate rural locations, but on plots alongside their neighbors. Why do this? Despite wanting to give each family its own space, Smith also wanted to foster a tight knit community, in which all members were included.[9] Implied in this map is a belief that physical space has the possibility to shape the nature of people’s lives. This helps explain why a man who considered himself a religious prophet would be so concerned with the regulation of barns.
Another major characteristic of the plan has to do with streets. Every street is proscribed to be 132 ft wide,[10] a considerable width for a street in a pre-automobile era. Smith was planning for the layout of new city, and therefore was expecting to have plenty of empty space at hand with which to work. Still, it is important to note that every street was to be the same width, not just avenues that were expected to become major arteries. Unlike a place like Topeka, Smith was not expecting the City of Zion to be a place through which to herd cattle. Instead, the size of the streets would prevent congestion, and allow stage coaches to turn around.[11] The wideness of streets could also help lend to the aesthetic of s garden city by avoiding the close grouping of buildings.
The two central squares with numbers on them were supposed to be the city temple, schools, and other public buildings that all residents would have easy access to.[12] The square to the viewer’s left is according to Smith is for “store-houses for the bishop and to be devoted to his use.”[13] Supposedly, storehouses of this scale would contain the supplies for the entire town, since there is no other place marked on the map for such a purpose. The quotation helps answer a question: Where is the space for the commercial activity of the town? If every plot a viewer of the map sees is meant to have one house, where are the stores? Smith was not designing towns with an economic raison d’être. This town plat is meant to emphasize the communal, at the expense of individual commercial activity. By placing the storehouses in the middle, and under the control of a bishop, Smith was ensuring that economic life of a town would be subordinated to the religious community.
Another important item of note is the cap which Smith places on the population of the City of Zion. The town is meant to house 15,000-20,000 people; after that, the excess population of Saints is supposed to move on and settle a new town.[14] It should be noted that this size is hardly small by the standards of a mid-nineteenth American town; in fact the plan shows a high degree of optimism on Joseph Smith’s part. Indeed, Salt Lake City did not reach the lower level of this limit until the 1870’s, over two decades after that city’s founding. Why would Smith want to cap a city’s growth? Why would he want to ensure that the City of Zion would not become a major city? Perhaps he believed that the central square model would not be feasible after this population point. The plat demands a high degree of centralized activity, including the need for residents to walk to the central part of the city to fulfill a good deal of their economic activities. As a city expands outward, this commute to the center demands more and more time and the setup becomes more unwieldy.
The City of Zion Plat was not completely followed in any Mormon city, including Salt Lake City. Still, as discussed in the following section, it did have a profound influence on what Young planned for Utah, and how the town developed in its first years.
Salt Lake City-1847
The events that brought the Mormons to Utah need not be discussed here. In this section, I wish to focus on Figure B, a historical map of Salt Lake City in its initial years. From this map, we can both see the influences of the City of Zion Plan, and evidence of the Mormons adaptations to the geographical challenges their chosen site presented. In other words, for the purposes of this analysis the importance is less on how the saints got to the valley and rather what they did once they got there.
The small map in the northwest corner of Figure B, showing water supplies and mountains, gives us some idea of why the Mormons town grew out of the northeast corner of the Salt Lake Valley. From the map we can see that mountains surround much of the valley, and the lake closes off the city to the northwest. The darkened shape of the city is right on a couple of freshwater sources from the mountains, vital for both drinking and irrigation. In this way, the high Wasatch Mountains are a geographical advantage to Salt Lake City’s growth, because they mean a ready source of freshwater, as precipitation catches in the high mountains and channels its way down.[15] We can see from the small map in the corner that there are fewer streams toward the western part of the valley, which is one reason for the city’s lack of growth in that direction.
The lake may also serve as an indicator why the city wasn’t platted further to the Northwest. The Great Salt Lake’s natural salinity makes it useless as a freshwater source, and the depth is too shallow to provide any kind of harbor or commercial advantage. Surrounding the lake are marshes, which go out at length from the shore. Such salty marshes would have been a barrier to any town planning due sanitation and water supply problems. The lake also has a propensity to flood, a problem that has haunted the area for most of its history.[16]
Established in 1847 as Great Salt Lake City, the layout of is a grid system. The grid is based around the cardinal directions, like Chicago. Like Chicago, this may have happened for two reasons. First, the patch of ground that the original city is built on is relatively flat, meaning that the street system didn’t need to be orientated over a hill or other topography. Second, Salt Lake City was not designed around a railroad, and it was to be over two decades before the city was connected to a rail network. As a result, the city would take an organizational system separate from the railroad, which would continue even after the city became connected by way of Ogden. The north-south, east-west grid system would also be the basis of the city’s street names; each street would be given a name 3rd South Street, with each axis originating from the temple square.[17]
The streets were to be wide, the same 132 ft that Joseph Smith had proscribed in the City of Zion Plan. Each street would also be widened by twenty feet of sidewalk space, a detail that wasn’t covered in Smith’s plan.[18] The sidewalks might have developed both as a safety measure and a realization of how muddy the streets would be for pedestrians. Along the city streets irrigation channels were dug. Water from City Creek, shown on the map, was diverted through the ditches, which meant that every town block had a fresh water supply. This irrigation system would be considered a marvel by visitors for decades to come.[19]
As in Smith’s plan, the blocks were broken up into equal plots, each to house one family. Unlike Smith’s plan however, each block was broken up into eight lots of 1.25 acres instead of twenty ½ acre lots. Why is there this degree of change? The answer may have been as simple as that the space was available, so Brigham Young saw no reason not to use it. This increase would give families additional room to grow vegetables and to build larger homes. There was also no rule against the placement of a barn on property, giving the possibility of families to have mini farms within the town.[20] Brigham Young did mandate that houses be built twenty feet away from the street. This was probably not due to any suspicion that the city might need to expand its streets in the future, given how wide they were already. Instead, the reason was probably to create a natural aesthetic, since the first thing any viewer would see of a residence would be a garden or orchard.
The map of 1847 Salt Lake City displays much larger blocks to the south. These blocks are integrated into the town grid system, but seem to have a different purpose than the northern residential blocks. The southern blocks were meant to be the farmland for the settlement.[21] From the map we can tell that the area has streams for irrigation. We also can tell, from one of the best features of this map, who owned this soon to be developed land. Most of the names, including Orson Pratt, the original surveyor of the city, were leaders of the church. By having so much of the land under church control, the church would have a wide degree of control over both the food supply and the direction that the town would take in its growth.
The plotting of the land in the south also points to the direction in which church leaders thought the city was going to expand. It is easy to understand why this may have been the case. To the west there are small mountains and less water. To the north, marshes from the Great Salt Lake cut off any desirable residential land. In the east the land starts to become rocky, which would make the extension of the city’s structural grid system difficult. This planning also points to a move away from Smith’s ideal. In that plan, the city has the shape of a square, to prevent the growth of neighborhoods away from the core. Given that the topography of Utah would not allow for the settlers to extend equally in all directions, the Mormons adapted to new circumstances while drawing on much of Smith’s plan.
The 1847 map also shows us the location of the city’s public buildings. As already noted, the streets emanate from the Temple Square. Being a city founded on religion, the temple would be the center point of the city’s layout. Around the temple square, we can see that church leaders are once again the main owners of property. The choice of the city’s elite near the Temple Square points to the idea that this was the desirable place to live. This is understandable, since travel to the temple would become more difficult the further a family lived away from it.
Also marked on the map are two blocks delineated as Public Squares. The squares are diagonal from each other, meant to serve different sections of the town. This indicates that areas of the city were to have their own workings and public space, despite the town leaders’ desire to have most city life centered around the religious center. The city was broken up into wards, meant to be both political and religious units.[22]
What BYU’s map of 1847 map tells us is that the Church under Brigham Young was establishing a city they thought would expand quickly, in the direction of the south, towards more plentiful farmland. The map shows a clear focus point for the city, the site of temple, and a plan that shows strong influences from the Plat of Zion. However, the city in these initial stages is being influenced by its geography, taking on new forms, a tendency which will continue as we look at maps from later dates.
Salt Lake City in the 1870’s
Both the maps showing the city during the 1870’s are birds-eye views. Both are very detailed, to the level of individuals walking on the streets. Augustus Koch, the creator of the 1870 map, was a German born cartographer who had learned many of his skills in his service to the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, Koch was commissioned to draw bird’s eye views by cities all over the west, from Houston to Seattle. Likewise, ES Glover drew maps for Los Angeles and Olympia, as well as many other Utah cities.[23] Both men were probably commissioned by local elites, religious or economic, to draw Salt Lake City. As a result, both maps are supposed to show off the city, putting it in its best light.
There are possibilities that the maps exaggerate Salt Lake City’s magnitude. For example, Glover’s 1875 map (Figure D) states in the left hand corner that the city’s population is 30,000 people. Salt Lake City’s population was barely half of that in 1874, just a year before the drawing.[24] Why such a margin of error? Salt Lake City was experiencing a population explosion during that period, due to both a mining boom and the recent connection of the city to the railroad network. Also the city was the entrepot for Mormon immigrants coming from places as diverse as Scandinavia and the British Isles. Most of these immigrants would move on to the many satellite settlements that Brigham Young and other church leaders promoted in the region, but at any time some would be staying in the city. With the city in constant flux, one could see why it would be difficult to get an accurate number.
Still, a 100% percentage of error is a bit difficult to excuse. Another reason may have been that without being explicit about it, Glover may be including all the residents of Salt Lake County, which was 18,000-20,000 in 1875, slightly closer to the estimate on the map.[25] Even if this is the case, it’s clear that Glover wishes to stress, to the point of exaggeration, the importance of the city. He calls Salt Lake City a ‘metropolis.’ Drawings like these can be seen as advertisements for a city, a form of boosterism. The image could both promote a feeling of pride in the city’s residents, and show outsiders what a booming place like Salt Lake City was to do business. Even if the numbers of population is off, perhaps we can expect a higher degree of accuracy in the physical depiction of the map. A resident of the city might not care about the reported population, but would not appreciate not recognizing his business on the map.
First we will focus on Augustus Koch’s 1870 map (Figure C). One major change which this map shows is the railroad on the western side of the city. The intercontinental railroad was completed in 1869 to the north at Ogden, and within two years a track had been extended to the south. Despite Salt Lake valley’s initial appeal to the Mormons due to its geographical isolation, by the 1860’s Brigham Young was a major ally of the railroad industry. He recognized that the railroads would both bring economic advantages to the city and help converts come to Utah. Once the intercontinental line was completed, the Utah Central Railroad was constructed, mostly financed by local Mormon merchants.[26]
The line was completed in January of 1870, which means that Koch’s map was published at most months afterward. It’s not hard to imagine that a contemporary viewer’s eye would go to the left side of the map, to see the artist’s rendition of the city’s new life line to the wider world. The railroad goes directly down Forth West Street, illustrating that the city did not have to change its street pattern in order to accommodate this first railroad. The map displays how the wide streets benefited the railroad, since there was no need to demolish buildings in order for the tracks to reach far into the city. The wide streets, a distinctive feature of Mormon settlement morphology, was in this particular case a benefit to economic transformation
Despite the railroad’s importance to the city, it is not the area which Koch decided to center his drawing on. The Temple dominates the cityscape, both in being near the center of the city and in being far larger than anything else. To the left of the Temple we see the Tabernacle, a gathering place which demonstrates the block’s centrality of function.
One of the advantages to a bird-eye view is that it gives a viewer an idea of the scale of different buildings. Turning away from the Temple, a viewer can see that the most continuous strain of tall buildings runs down on East Temple Street. In 1870, this must have been the commercial heart of the town. From the map, it appears that the concentration of religious activity for the city went hand in hand with the economic life of the city. Streets like First South and Second South also have a share of tall buildings near east temple, showing how economic life was emanating from a core area. Given that no other section of the city has a similar cluster of tall buildings, it seems that Salt Lake City has decided at this stage on one Central Business District, as opposed to multiple nuclei.
On the northeast side of the map is a new area that had not been platted in 1847. From the drawing we can see that the blocks are smaller and the streets narrower. This neighborhood, called the Avenues, started to develop in the 1850’s as the city expanded and grew to have more of economic life separated from farming. Built on rockier land than the original parts of the city, the area was not suited for large ten acre blocks. Also, the homes were mostly built for merchants and tradesmen who did need space to grow food and required proximity to the central business district.[27] The streets were narrower in part to accommodate smaller blocks, and in part because the wide streets had proven unnecessary for neighborhoods where commercial activity was absent.[28]
From the map we can tell that the Avenues are in a stage of development; trees on the blocks closer to the west and south ends, closest to East Temple Street, have more grown trees and more houses. People who moved to this neighborhood wanted to be as close to where they worked as possible. We can also tell that that topography places severe limitations on how far this neighborhood can expand. On the northern side, Mountain Street is aptly named, since the Wasatch Mountains stop any more development in the direction. As the neighborhood runs east, it becomes narrower, and soon the development runs close to the mountains.
What the Avenues show is how town growth happened in different ways than the Church had originally planned. As the city become more industrialized, the previous grid system worked well in some cases, such as the path of the railroad, and demanded adaptation in others, like changing the block layout of the avenues for the increased numbers of non-farmers. What the Avenues also demonstrate is a willingness on the part of the planners to adapt, and to veer further away from the guidelines set out by Joseph Smith. During this period, the last years when the population was overwhelmingly Mormon, the Church still controlled town growth. This centralized decision making did not stop adaptations from taking place.
Yet Koch’s map also shows the persistence of old patterns in the development of new neighborhoods. The blocks which had been built in the south still adhered to the ten acre block system and wide street scheme. This could have been that these neighborhoods were expected to have commercial activity on them eventually, and the wide streets would then prove a boon, as they had in areas near Temple Square.[29] Railroads were expected to development on the southern fridges of the city, and with that would come more business. Also, many of the people who moved to such areas would be groups that didn’t need to be close to the downtown merchants, like farmers. To such people the extra land for farming would be welcome. More likely though, is that the southern blocks represent inertia in urban planning, with new blocks being built so consistency is maintained in the overall pattern.
On the mountainside near the meadows, we can see that the city built a cemetery. The logic of this location is that it an area that can house no living residents, being too steep in inclination. Other public space includes the two squares that were labeled in the 1847 map, by Koch’s time named Union and Washington square. On the map they are the only such places, with no spaces being put to such use of the eastern side of the city. Perhaps the town planners thought the city already had enough of a rural aesthetic.
Augustus’s Koch’s map does not display all of Salt Lake City. A good chunk of the eastern part is cut off, including the section which includes Fort Douglas, built in 1862.[30] Perhaps Koch did feel like highlighting the existence of an army post whose intention was to watch over a restive Mormon population. Parts of the west are also caught off, which limits our ability to see how the railroad was shaping growth. Still, Augustus Koch’s drawing is a wonderful depiction of a city starting to accelerate in expansion and adapting to new economic challenges.
ES Glover’s map (Figure D), demonstrates how quickly the city became a hub point for the regional rail network. On the west side of the city, or the lower left corner of the map, the Utah Western Rail Road has been built. There is a Utah Southern Line which extends down Third West Street. It should be noted that both railroads make use of the city’s wide streets.
All the drawn rail lines are in the western half of the city, and they all converge to the old terminus of the Utah Central Railroad, now labeled Union Depot. This indicates that unlike major cities such as Boston or New York, Salt Lake City quickly rationalized its railway system to have one central point. The fact this central point is at southern end of the first railroad shows the persistence of urban planning; once one spot was designated the center of railroad activity, all future railroads were built with it in mind. Salt Lake City also had an easier time uniting its track than other cities both because the street system did not present a major challenge to railroad and because it was far less developed than a Boston.
One major difference between Koch and Glover’s drawings is that in Glover’s drawing the viewer sees much more smoke coming from tall chimneys. Such smoke indicates industry, something an artist would want to highlight in a city’s advertisement. While smoke is visible all over the map, it does stick in two places: the west and the areas outside the city. The western part of the city was quickly becoming the industrial heart of the city. Located near the railways, and away from where the upper class lived, the area developed to be a place of mills and the few factories Salt Lake City had in the 1870’s.[31] Unfortunately the map does not show the economic spatial differentiation that was also happening during this process, as the western part of the city grew to be the neighborhood of poor industrial workers, often immigrants.
Outside the city we also see places of industry. One of the great advantages of Glover’s map is that he depicts Salt Lake City’s hinterland, which includes both farms and industry. Along the eastern Wasatch mountain range different canyons are marked, described on Glover’s reference key as being sites of mills, smelting works, and breweries. Clusters of houses are around some of the mills, small industrial towns that had popped up as Utah’s mining sector increased in size. The closest cluster of houses accompanying a smoke stack, to the south east, must be a depiction of Sugar House, an area which in the following decades would be absorbed by Salt Lake City. Despite its name, the mill there only made molasses. The houses near the smokestack would have been for workers, showing how such neighborhoods and towns were organized around one business or industry.
One development of the city can be seen on Second West Street: a street car being drawn by a horse. Salt Lake City’s street car system began in 1872, and expanded across most of the city over the next few decades.[32] Another street car line can be seen running across East Temple Street, an area that is still the heart of the city, even if the temple is less striking than the 1870 map. A good section of East Temple Street is now labeled Main Street by Glover, marking this as still the commercial heart of the city. In Figure F, a picture of Main Street decades later, one can see the tracks of an electric street car system.
One section that has grown slightly in the 1875 map is the area to the north of the Temple. In 1870, Center Street is roughly the border of a residential zone, and on the east side had the city arsenal. In 1875, the east side of Center Street now has a series of small blocks with narrow roads, similar to that of the Avenues. The reason for these small blocks being built is probably the same as the Avenues, people who needed to be near the downtown’s business and without the need for land to grow food.
Both Glover and Koch’s maps are remarkable in the amount of detail they can show. They do have limitation, such as not being able to display any demographic data about the residents of other neighborhoods. Like any maps, as mapmakers they chose what to highlight and label, a choice of interpretation which necessitates a limit of data one can get from the maps. Still, in their amount of detail and skill, I do not believe I have exhausted their worth in this discussion.
Conclusion
Beginning in the 1870’s, Salt Lake City would experience a mining boom which would bring large amounts of Gentiles into the city. As a result, the church would have less and less influence over town planning. This left a power vacuum, as it would take decades for a strong city government to emerge, which in turn led to very decentralized and local decision making about spatial arrangements, although old patterns still exerted a great influence. Salt Lake City would continue to be known for its wide streets (Figure F), grid system, and other patterns which could be traced back to the city’s early days.
That influence can be seen by looking at Smith’s City of Zion Plat, which shows the type of city the Church hoped to create wherever it settled, In Utah, the Church adapted to a series of challenges, like the geographic ones presented in the 1847 map. In the bird’s eye views from the 1870’s, one can see the Church responding to changing economic circumstances, as Salt Lake City was connected to the railroad network and began to become a mining center of the region.
[1] Thomas G. Alexander and James B Allen, Mormons and Gentiles: A History of Salt Lake City (Boulder, Colorado: Pruett Publisher Company 1984) p. 3
[2] Paul A Wright, The Growth and Distribution of the Mormon and Non-Mormon Populations in Salt Lake City (Master’s Thesis: University of Chicago 1970) p 15.
[4] S Kent Brown, Donald Q Cannon, and Richard H Jackson, editors. Historical Atlas of Mormonism (New York: Simon & Schuster Inc, 1994), 44.
[5] Richard H Jackson. “Religion and Settlement in the American West: the Mormon Example.” In Geographica Relgionum, Band 2 Relgion und Siedlungsraum (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag 1986), 247.
[13] From translation of Smith’s handwriting, Jackson. Religion and Settlement in the American West: The Mormon Example, p 251
[15] Chauncey Harris. Salt Lake City: A Regional Capital. Dissertation. University of Chicago 1940. p 23. Harris calls this geographical advantage the secret of salt Lake City’s success.
[16] Thomas G. Alexander and James B Allen, Mormons and Gentiles: A History of Salt Lake City) p. 314
[19] For a picture of the streets and irrigation, see Figure E. EV Fohlin, Salt Lake City: Past and Present. (Salt Lake City: Self Published) 1908.
[22] Workers of the Writers’s Program of the Works Project Administration for the State of Utah, Utah: A Guide to the State, ( New York: Hastings House 1941) p. 94
[23] Both men have maps included in the Regenstein collection. As far as I can tell, between them they drew a good portion of the panoramic maps we have of western cities during the period.
[24] Paul A Wright, The Growth and Distribution of the Mormon and Non-Mormon Populations in Salt Lake City (Master’s Thesis: University of Chicago 1970) 15.
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