On October 4th, 1814, Philip Gunckel filed a plat plan for the Village of Germantown in the records of Montgomery County. It laid out a unique design of eight blocks, each twenty perches, or 330 feet, square, running from Mulberry Street to Walnut Street and from Market Street to Back (Warren) Street. Each block was divided by a diagonal alley system centered on an open space about 66 feet square. Although Philip Gunckel's rationale was not recorded, the plan appears to reflect the precise and methodical preferences of the village's German settlers, with building fronts close to uncluttered streets, buggies parked and horses stabled in the rear, and the central square serving both as a turn-around space and as a place where children gathered to play.