The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-12-25

tabernacle attract thousands of tourists
every year.
With these natural and acquired attrac-
tions it remains but to make the city beau
tiful and it will become the home of hun
dreds of thousands Of the classes 1 have
enumerated
There are but three things that go to
make a city beautiful. Nature supplied
the first in these majestic mountains and
beautiful valleys. Man supplies the
other two factors, houses and streets.
1t is the province of the corporate
citizens to built the streets and Of in
dividuals to build the houses. Tn
only trust in the hands of the city authori-
ties is the streets, and it is more important
that at the outset the con igurations be
laid out to contribute the handsomest land
scape than thai the paving material be of
good quality, as when the roadway be-
comes out of repair it can be relaid, but the
width of the roadway when once adopted
arbitrarily sets the curb-stones for the
future. If the city is to have parked streets
that fact must be determined now for all
time.
In this climate where the sky is seldom
cloudy during the long summer, the heat is
best mitigated by shade trees and 1 would
not only plant an additional row on either
side of the street but one in the middle, as
the transparent sky and little humidity in
the atmosphere permits tha use of much
more shade here than where the atmos-
phere is heavier and the sky less clear. A
cross-beam could be easily attached to the
trees from which to suspend electric wires,
thus doing away with. unsightly poles for
the street cars. While too much shade is
injurious in lower attitudes, owing to the
foliage shutting out the light which is es-
sential to prevent mould and decay, here it
is difficult to get too little light as the pow
erful reflection of the sky causes as much
light to pass through square foot of glass
as is admitted in four times the space in
the east With two rows of trees
on either side of the street,
and row in the middle, it would be pos
slble for one to travel over the entire ty
during the hottest day of the year without
any discomfort. In this climate the atmos-
phere always becomes cool and invigorat-
ing when the SUMS rays are removed. For
this reason the nights during the entire
summer, are cool and refreshing. In the
fall of the year, When there is no further
need or these canopied awnings, Dame
Nature kindly comes and plucks of the
leaves, letting in the genial sunlight.
Wide streets unrelieved by trees dwarf
the buildings, making the finest edifcss
look small and destroying the grandest
off
the middle of the street would correct this
defect.
Taking Engineering Doremus' estimates
OF the cost of paving East Temple and
State streets with stone blocks and asphalt.
every mile of pavement laid in this CITY
under the present specifications will cost
S23l ,6l9, or ten times more than it costs to
build railroad. Omaha boasts of eighty
miles of paved streets, and it is not unrea-
sonable to predict that there will be laid 100
miles of pavement in this city within the
next ten years. To construct this pave
ment to the full width of ninety
two feet between the curb lines.
(Which is the adopted standard) it will cost
the city and property holders the enor-
nous sum of 1913, 161, 900 to pave the streets.
Under the present law this expense will be
distributed as follows: Auditing property
holders, Sl4, los, 800; city Cfor street inter-
sections), s4,4S3. 800; street railways (esti-
mating double track on each street,,
81. 619,6O0. Then there is the cost of main
tenance to be added to this great sum.
Is it not suicidal to undertake such
an impossibility! 1t will strain all the re-
sources of this city to pave it's streets to
the conventional width of forty feet. I
know of no city, except Washington.
which has accomplished such feat, and
the money for this came from the treasury
of the United States.
The roadway on the streets of this CITY
can be reduced from ninety-two feet to
forty feet, and the expense of paving re-
duced five-ninths. making saving to the
city and property-own Of S12, S67, 7go, or