American urban history

The "new urban history" was a short-lived movement that attracted a great deal of attention In the 1960s, then quickly disappeared.[8] It used statistical methods and innovative computer techniques to analyze manuscript census data, person by person, focusing especially on the geographical and social mobility of random samples of residents. Numerous monographs appeared, but it proved frustrating to interpret the results. Historian Stephan Thernstrom, the leading promoter of the new approach, soon disavowed it, saying it was neither new nor urban nor history.[9]

Overall urban history grew rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s, stimulated by the surge of interest in social history.[10] Since the 1990s, however, the field has been aging and has had much less attraction to younger scholars.[11]

Historian Richard Wade has summarized the claims that scholars have made for the importance of the city in American history. The cities were the focal points for the growth of the West, especially those along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The cities, especially Boston, were the seed beds of the American Revolution. Rivalry between cities, such as between Baltimore and Philadelphia, or between Chicago and St. Louis, stimulated economic innovations and growth, especially regarding the railroads. The cities sponsored entrepreneurship, especially in terms of export and import markets, banking, finance, and the rise of the factory system after 1812. The rapidly growing railroad system after 1840 was primarily oriented toward linking together the major cities, which in turn became centers of the wholesale trade. The railroads allowed major cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, and San Francisco to dominate ever-larger hinterlands.

The failure of the South to develop an urban infrastructure significantly weakened it during the Civil War, especially as its border cities of Baltimore, Washington, Louisville, and St. Louis, refused to join the Confederacy. The cities were fonts of innovation in democracy, especially in terms of building powerful political organizations and machines; they were also the main base for reformers of those machines. They became the home base for important immigrant groups, especially the Irish and the Jews. Cities were the strongholds of labor unions in the 19th and 20th centuries (although no longer so in the 21st century).[12]

Historian Zane Miller argues that urban history was rejuvenated in mid-20th century by the realization that the cultural importance of the city went far beyond art galleries and museums. Historians began to emphasize "the importance of individual choices in the past and made the advocacy of lifestyle choices a hallmark of American civilization." It was the diversity of the city, and the support it provided for diverse lifestyles, that set it so dramatically apart from towns and rural areas.[13] By the 1990s there was increased emphasis on racial minorities, outcasts, and gays and lesbians, as well as studies of leisure activities and sports history.[14][15]

As Morton White demonstrated in The Intellectual versus the City: from Thomas Jefferson to Frank Lloyd Wright (1962), the overwhelming consensus of American intellectuals has been hostile to the city. The main idea is the Romantic view that the unspoiled nature of rural America is morally superior to the over civilized cities, which are the natural homes of sharpsters and criminals. American poets did not rhapsodize over the cities. On the contrary they portrayed the metropolis as the ugly scene of economic inequality, crime, drunkenness, prostitution and every variety of immorality. Urbanites were set to rhyme as crafty, overly competitive, artificial, and as having lost too much naturalness and goodness.[16]

America's financial, business and cultural leadership (that is, literature, the arts, and the media) were concentrated in the three or four largest cities. Political leadership was never concentrated. It was divided between Washington and the state capitals, and many states deliberately moved their state capital out of their largest city, including New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas and California.[38] Academic and scientific leadership was weak in the United States until the late 19th century, when it began to be concentrated in universities. A few major research-oriented schools were in or close by the largest cities, such as Harvard (Boston), Columbia (New York), Johns Hopkins (Baltimore) and Chicago. However, most were located in smaller cities or large towns such as Yale in New Haven, Connecticut; Cornell in Ithaca, New York; Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey; the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; University of Illinois in Urbana; University of Wisconsin in Madison; University of California in Berkeley, and Stanford in the village of Stanford, California.[39]

Cities played a much less important part in the heavily rural Confederacy. When the war started the largest cities in slave states were seized in 1861 by the Union, including Washington, Baltimore, Wheeling, Louisville, and St. Louis. The largest and most important Confederate city, New Orleans, was captured in early 1862, and Nashville in 1863. All these cities became major logistic and strategic centers for the Union forces. All the remaining ports were blockaded by the summer of 1861, ending normal commercial traffic, with only very expensive blockade runners getting through. The largest remaining cities were Atlanta, the railroad center which was destroyed in 1864, in the national capital in Richmond which held out to the bitter end.[44]

The overall decline in food supplies, made worse by the inadequate transportation system, led to serious shortages and high prices in Confederate cities. When bacon reached a dollar a pound in 1864, the poor white women of Richmond, Atlanta and many other cities began to riot; they broke into shops and warehouses to seize food. The women expressed their anger at ineffective state relief efforts, speculators, merchants and planters. As wives and widows of soldiers they were hurt by the inadequate welfare system.[45][46]

The eleven Confederate states in 1860 had 297 towns and cities with 835,000 people; of these 162 with 681,000 people were at one point occupied by Union forces. Eleven were destroyed or severely damaged by war action, including Atlanta (with an 1860 population of 9,600), Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond (with prewar populations of 40,500, 8,100, and 37,900, respectively); the eleven contained 115,900 people in the 1860 census, or 14% of the urban South. The number of people (as of 1860) who lived in the destroyed towns represented just over 1% of the Confederacy's 1860 population.[47]

In a horse-drawn era, streets were unpaved and covered with dirt or gravel. However, they produced uneven wear, opened new hazards for pedestrians and made for dangerous potholes for bicycles and for motor vehicles. Manhattan alone had 130,000 horses in 1900, pulling streetcars, wagons, and carriages, and leaving their waste behind. They were not fast, and pedestrians could dodge and scramble their way across the crowded streets. Small towns continued to rely on dirt and gravel, but larger cities wanted much better streets, so they looked to wood or granite blocks.[48] In 1890, a third of Chicago's 2000 miles of streets were paved, chiefly with wooden blocks, which gave better traction than mud. Brick surfacing was a good compromise, but even better was asphalt paving. With London and Paris as models, Washington laid 400,000 square yards of asphalt paving by 1882, and served as a model for Buffalo, Philadelphia and elsewhere. By the end of the century, American cities boasted 30 million square yards of asphalt paving, followed by brick construction.[49] In the largest cities, street railways were elevated, which increased their speed and lessened their dangers. Street-level trolleys moved passengers at 12 miles per hour for 5 cents a ride (with free transfers), They became the main transportation service for middle class shoppers and office workers until they bought automobiles after 1945 and commuted from more distant suburbs in privacy and comfort. The working-class typically walked to nearby factories and patronized small local stores. Big-city streets became paths for faster and larger and more dangerous vehicles, the pedestrians beware. Underground subways were a solution, with Boston building one in the 1890s followed by New York a decade later.[50]

After 1860, railroads pushed westward into unsettled territory. They built service towns to handle the needs of railroad construction and repair crews, train crews, and passengers who ate meals at scheduled stops.[51] Gunfights and disorder characterized the railhead towns that were the target of major cattle drives from Texas. The violence was often exaggerated in dime novels.[52][53] In most of the South, there were very few cities of any size for miles around, and this held for Texas as well. Railroads finally arrived in the 1880s and they shipped the cattle out; cattle drives became short-distance affairs. However the passenger trains were often the targets of armed gangs.[54]

Denver's economy before 1870 had been rooted in mining; it then grew by expanding its role in railroads, wholesale trade, manufacturing, food processing, and servicing the growing agricultural and ranching hinterland. Between 1870 and 1890, manufacturing output soared from $600,000 to $40 million, and the population grew by a factor of 20 times to 107,000. Denver had always attracted miners, workers, whores and travelers. Saloons and gambling dens sprung up overnight. The city fathers boasted of its fine theaters, and especially the Tabor Grand Opera House built in 1881.[55] By 1890, Denver had grown to be the 26th largest city in America, and the fifth-largest city west of the Mississippi River.[56] The boom times attracted millionaires and their mansions, as well as hustlers, poverty and crime. Denver gained regional notoriety with its range of bawdy houses, from the sumptuous quarters of renowned madams to the squalid "cribs" located a few blocks away. Business was good; visitors spent lavishly, then left town. As long as madams conducted their business discreetly, and "crib girls" did not advertise their availability too crudely, authorities took their bribes and looked the other way. Occasional cleanups and crack downs satisfied the demands for reform.[57]

With its giant mountain of copper, Butte, Montana was the largest, richest and rowdiest mining camp on the frontier. It was an ethnic stronghold, with the Irish Catholics in control of politics and of the best jobs at the leading mining corporation Anaconda Copper.[58] City boosters opened a public library in 1894. Ring argues that the library was originally a mechanism of social control, "an antidote to the miners' proclivity for drinking, whoring, and gambling." It was also designed to promote middle-class values and to convince Easterners the Butte was a cultivated city.[59] Appreciative crowds filled the large, upscale "Belasco" opera house for full-scale operas and top-name artists.[60]

In Chicago and New York, new inventions facilitated the emergence of the skyscraper in the 1880s—it was a characteristic American style that was not widely copied around the world until the late 20th century. Construction required several major innovations, the elevator, and the steel beam. The steel skeleton, developed in the 1880s, replaced the heavy brick walls that were limited to 15 or so stories in height. The skyscraper also required a complex internal structure to solve difficult issues of ventilation, steam heat, gas lighting (and later electricity), and plumbing.[61] Urban housing involved a wide variety of styles, but most of the attention focused on the tenement house for the working class, and the apartment building for the middle class.

The apartment building came first, as middle-class professionals, businessmen, and white-collar workers realized they did not need and could scarcely afford single-family dwellings of the type that low land costs in the towns permitted. Boarding houses were inappropriate for family; hotel suites were too expensive. In smaller cities, there were many apartments over stores and shops, usually occupied by proprietors of small local businesses. The residents paid rent, and did not own their apartments until the emergence of cooperatives in New York City in the 20th century, and condominiums around the country after World War II. Turnover was very high, and there was seldom was a sense of neighborhood community.[62][63]

The Dakota luxury apartment building in New York, view from Central Park, 1890

Starting with the Stuyvesant luxury apartment house that opened in New York in 1869, and The Dakota in 1884, affluent tenants discovered that full-time staff handled the upkeep and maintenance, as well as security.[64][65]

The less-lavish middle-class apartment buildings provided gas lighting, elevators, good plumbing, central heating, and maintenance men on call.[66] Boston contractors build 16,000 "Triple-Deckers" Between 1870 and 1920. They were modern well-equipped buildings with a single large apartments on each floor. Chicago built thousands of apartment buildings, with the upscale ones close to the lake, where it was warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.[67] In every city, apartment buildings were built along the paths of the street railways, for the middle-class tenants rode the streetcar to work, while the working class saved a nickel each way and walked.

The working class crowded into tenement houses, with far fewer features and amenities. They were cheap and easy to build, and filled up almost the entire lot. There were typically five story walk-ups, with four separate apartments on each floor. There was minimal air circulation and sunlight. Until the reforms of 1879, New York tenements lacked running water or indoor toilets. Garbage pickup was erratic until late in the 19th century. Rents were cheap for those who could endure the dust, clutter, smells and noises; the only cheaper alternatives were squalid basement rooms in older buildings. Most of the tenements survived until the urban renewal movement of the 1950s.[68][69]

Jeffersonian America distrusted the city, and rural spokesmen repeatedly warned their young men away.[70] In 1881 The Evening Wisconsin newspaper warned cautious boys to stay on the farm. As paraphrased by historian Bayrd Still, the editor painted a grim contrast:

Pure milk, wholesome water, mellow fruit, vegetables, and proper sleep and exercise are lacking in the city; and the "dense centers of population are unfavorable to moral growth as they are to physical development." Sharpness and deception characterize the city merchant, mechanic, and professional man as well. How different is the situation of the "sturdy farmer removed from the dust and smoke and filth and vice of the crowded city. ... Content in his cottage ... why should he long for the fare and follies of the madding crowd in the Gay Metropolis?

The response came from a Milwaukee newspaper editor in 1871, who boasted that the ambitious young man could not be stopped:

The young man in the country no sooner elects for himself his course, than he makes for the nearest town. Scarcely has he grown familiar with his new surroundings, when the subtle attractions of the remoter city begin to tell upon him. There is no resisting it. It draws him like a magnet. Sooner or later, it is tolerably certain, he will be sucked into one of the great centers of life.[71]

Historians have developed an elaborate typology of reformers in the late 19th century, focusing especially on the urban reformers.[72]

The Mugwumps Were reform-minded Republicans who acted at the national level in the 1870s and 1880s, especially in 1884 when they split their ticket for Democrat Grover Cleveland.[73] The "Goo Goos" were the local equivalent: the middle-class reformers who sought "good government" regardless of party. They typically focused on urban sanitation, better schools, and lower trolley fares for the middle-class commuters. They especially demanded a nonpolitical civil service system to replace the "spoils of victory" approach by which the winners of an election replaced city and school employees. They often formed short-lived citywide organizations, such as The Committee of 70 in New York, the Citizens' Reform Association in Philadelphia, the Citizens' Association of Chicago, and the Baltimore Reform League. They sometimes won citywide elections, but were rarely reelected. Party regulars laughed at them for trying to be independent of the political party machines by forming nonpartisan tickets. The ridicule included suggestions that the reformers were not real men: they were sissies and "mollycoddles".[74]

By the 1890s, when historians call "structural reformers" were emerging; they were much more successful at reform, and marked the beginning of the Progressive era. They used national organizations, such as the National Municipal League, and focused on broader principles such as honesty, efficiency, economy, and centralized decision-making by experts. "Efficiency" was their watchword, they believed one of the problems with the machines was that they wasted enormous amounts of tax money by creating useless patronage jobs and payoffs to mid-level politicians.[75]

Social reformers emerged in the 1890s, most famously Jane Addams Enter large complex network of reformers based at Hull House in Chicago.[76] They were less interested in civil service reform or revising the city charter, and concentrated instead on the needs of working class housing, child labor, sanitation and welfare. Protestant churches promoted their own group of reformers, mostly women activists demanding prohibition or sharp reductions in the baleful influence of the saloon in damaging family finances and causing family violence. Rural America was increasingly won over by the prohibitionists, but they rarely had success in the larger cities, where they were staunchly opposed by the large German and Irish elements.[77] However, the Women's Christian Temperance Union became well organized in cities of every size, and taught middle-class women the techniques of organization, proselytizing, and propaganda. Many of the WCTU veterans graduated into the woman's suffrage movement. Moving relentlessly from West to East, became the vote for women in state after state, and finally nationwide in 1920.[78][79]

School reform was high on the agenda, since local machine politicians used the jobs in the contracts, promote the party interest, rather than the needs of the students. After examining late 19th century reform movements in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San Francisco and Chicago, historian David Tyack concludes that "what the structural reformers wanted to do, then, was to replace a rather mechanical form of public bureaucracy, which was permeated with 'illegitimate' lay influence, with a streamlined 'professional' bureaucracy in which lay control was carefully filtered through a corporate school board.[80]

Sanitary conditions were bad throughout urban America in the 19th century. The worst conditions appeared in the largest cities, where the accumulation of human and horse waste built up on the city streets, where sewage systems were inadequate, and the water supply was of dubious quality.[81] Physicians took the lead in pointing out problems, and were of two minds on the causes. The older theory of contagion said that germs spread disease, but this theory was increasingly out of fashion by the 1840s or 1850s for two reasons. On the one hand it predicted too much— microscopes demonstrated so many various microorganisms that there was no particular reason to associate any one of them with a specific disease. There was also a political dimension; a contagious theory of disease called for aggressive public health measures, which meant taxes and regulation the business community rejected.[82] Before the 1880s, most experts believed in the "Miasma theory" which attributed the spread of disease to "bad air" caused by the abundance of dirt and animal waste. It indicated the need for regular garbage pickup. By the 1880s, however, European discovery of the germ theory of disease proved decisive for the medical community, although popular belief never shook the old "bad air" theory. Medical attention shifted from curing the sick patient to stopping the spread of the disease in the first place. It indicated a system of quarantines, hospitalization, clean water, and proper sewage disposal.[83] Dr Charles V. Chapin (1856–1941), head of public health in Providence Rhode Island, was a tireless campaigner for the germ theory of disease, which he repeatedly validated with his laboratory studies. Chapin emphatically told popular audiences germs were the true culprit, not filth; that diseases were not indiscriminately transmitted through the smelly air; and that disinfection was not a cure-all. He paid little attention to environmental or chemical hazards in the air and water, or to tobacco smoking, since germs were not involved. They did not become a major concern of the public health movement until the 1960s.[84] The second stage of public health, building on the germ theory, brought in engineers to design elaborate water and sewer systems. Their expertise was welcomed, and many became city managers after that reform was introduced in the early 20th century.[85][86]

During the Progressive Era a coalition of middle-class reform-oriented voters, academic experts and reformers hostile to the political machines introduced a series of reforms in urban America, designed to reduce waste and inefficiency and corruption, by introducing scientific methods, compulsory education and administrative innovations.

The pace was set in Detroit Michigan, where Republican mayor Hazen S. Pingree first put together the reform coalition.[88]

Many cities set up municipal reference bureaux to study the budgets and administrative structures of local governments. Progressive mayors were important in many cities,[89] such as Cleveland (especially Mayor Tom L. Johnson); Toledo, Ohio;[90] Jersey City, New Jersey;[91] Los Angeles;[92] Memphis, Tennessee;[93] Louisville, Kentucky;[94] and many other cities, especially in the western states. In Illinois, Governor Frank Lowden undertook a major reorganization of state government.[95] Wisconsin was the stronghold of Robert La Follette, who led a wing of the Republican Party. His Wisconsin Idea used the state university as a major source of ideas and expertise.[96]

One of the most dramatic changes came in Galveston, Texas, where a devastating hurricane and flood overwhelmed the resources of local government. Reformers abolished political parties in municipal elections, and set up a five-man commission of experts to rebuild the city. The Galveston idea was simple, efficient, and much less conducive to corruption. If lessened the Democratic influences of the average voter, but multiplied the influence of the reform minded middle-class.[97] The Galveston plan was quickly copied by many other cities, especially in the West. By 1914 over 400 cities had nonpartisan elected commissions.[98] Dayton, Ohio Had its great flood in 1913, and responded with the innovation of a paid, non-political city manager, hired by the commissioners to run the bureaucracy; mechanical engineers were especially preferred.[99][100]

The Garden city movement was brought over from England and evolved into the "Neighborhood Unit" form of development. In the early 1900s, as cars were introduced to city streets for the first time, residents became increasingly concerned with the number of pedestrians being injured by car traffic. The response, seen first in Radburn, New Jersey, was the Neighborhood Unit-style development, which oriented houses toward a common public path instead of the street. The neighborhood is distinctively organized around a school, with the intention of providing children a safe way to walk to school.[101][102]

Urban America had enjoyed strong growth and steady prosperity in the 1920s. Large-scale immigration had ended in 1914, and never fully resumed, so that ethnic communities have become stabilized and Americanized. Upward mobility was the norm, in every sector of the population supported the rapidly growing high school system. After the stock market crash of October 1929, the nation's optimism suddenly turned negative, with both business investments and private consumption overwhelmed by a deepening pessimism that encouraged people to cut back and reduce their expectations. The economic damage to the cities was most serious in the collapse of 80 to 90 percent of the private sector construction industry. Cities and states started expanding their own construction programs as early as 1930, and they became a central feature of the New Deal, but private construction did not fully recover until after 1945. Many landlords so their rental income drained away and many went bankrupt. After construction, came the widespread downturn in heavy industry, especially manufacturing of durable goods such as automobiles, machinery, and refrigerators. The impact of unemployment was higher in the manufacturing centers in the East and Midwest, and lower in the South and West, which had less manufacturing.[103]

Huts and unemployed men in New York City, 1935.

One visible effect of the depression was the advent of Hoovervilles, which were ramshackle assemblages on vacant lots of cardboard boxes, tents, and small rickety wooden sheds built by homeless people. Residents lived in shacks and begged for food or went to soup kitchens. The term was coined by Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee, who referred sardonically to President Herbert Hoover whose policies he blamed for the depression.[104]

Unemployment reached 25 percent in the worst days of 1932–33, but it was unevenly distributed. Job losses were less severe among women than men, among workers in nondurable industries (such as food and clothing), in services and sales, and in government jobs. The least skilled inner city men had much higher unemployment rates, as did young people who had a hard time getting their first job, and men over the age of 45 who if they lost their job would seldom find another one because employers had their choice of younger men. Millions were hired in the Great Depression, but men with weaker credentials were never hired, and fell into a long-term unemployment trap. The migration that brought millions of farmers and townspeople to the bigger cities in the 1920s suddenly reversed itself, as unemployment made the cities unattractive, and the network of kinfolk and more ample food supplies made it wise for many to go back.[105] City governments in 1930–31 tried to meet the depression by expanding public works projects, as president Herbert Hoover strongly encouraged. However, tax revenues were plunging, and the cities as well as private relief agencies were totally overwhelmed; by 1931 men were unable to provide significant additional relief. They fell back on the cheapest possible relief, soup kitchens which provided free meals for anyone who showed up.[106] After 1933 new sales taxes and infusions of federal money helped relieve the fiscal distress of the cities, but the budgets did not fully recover until 1941.

The federal programs launched by Hoover and greatly expanded by president Roosevelt's New Deal used massive construction projects to try to jump start the economy and solve the unemployment crisis. The alphabet agencies ERA, CCC, FERA, WPA and PWA built and repaired the public infrastructure in dramatic fashion, but did little to foster the recovery of the private sector. FERA, CCC and especially WPA focused on providing unskilled jobs for long-term unemployed men.

The Democrats won easy landslides in 1932 and 1934, and an even bigger one in 1936; the hapless Republican Party seemed doomed. The Democrats capitalized on the magnetic appeal of Roosevelt to urban America. The key groups were low-skilled ethnics, especially Catholics, Jews, and blacks. The Democrats promised and delivered in terms of beer, political recognition, labor union membership, and relief jobs. The city machines were stronger than ever, for they mobilize their precinct workers to help families who needed help the most navigate the bureaucracy and get on relief. FDR won the vote of practically every group in 1936, including taxpayers, small business and the middle class. However the Protestant middle class voters but turned sharply against him after the recession of 1937–38 undermined repeated promises that recovery was at hand. Historically, local political machines were primarily interested in controlling their wards and citywide elections; the smaller the turnout on election day, the easier it was to control the system. However, for Roosevelt to win the presidency in 1936 and 1940, he needed to carry the electoral college and that meant he needed the largest possible majorities in the cities to overwhelm the out state vote. The machines came through for him.[107] The 3.5 million voters on relief payrolls during the 1936 election cast 82% percent of their ballots for Roosevelt. The rapidly growing, energetic labor unions, chiefly based in the cities, turned out 80% for FDR, as did Irish, Italian and Jewish communities. In all, the nation's 106 cities over 100,000 population voted 70% for FDR in 1936, compared to his 59% elsewhere. Roosevelt worked very well with the big city machines, with the one exception of his old nemesis, Tammany Hall in Manhattan. There he supported the complicated coalition built around the nominal Republican Fiorello La Guardia, and based on Jewish and Italian voters mobilized by labor unions.[108]

In 1938, the Republicans made an unexpected comeback, and Roosevelt's efforts to purge the Democratic Party of his political opponents backfired badly. The conservative coalition of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats took control of Congress, outvoted the urban liberals, and handed the expansion of New Deal ideas. Roosevelt survived in 1940 thanks to his margin in the Solid South and in the cities. In the North the cities over 100,000 gave Roosevelt 60% of their votes, while the rest of the North favored the GOP candidate Wendell Willkie 52%-48%.[109]

With the start of full-scale war mobilization in the summer of 1940, the economies of the cities rebounded. Even before Pearl Harbor, Washington pumped massive investments into new factories and funded round-the-clock munitions production, guaranteeing a job to anyone who showed up at the factory gate.[110] The war brought a restoration of prosperity and hopeful expectations for the future across the nation. It had the greatest impact on the cities of the West Coast, especially Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.[111]

Economic historians led by Price Fishback have examined the impact of New Deal spending on improving health conditions in the 114 largest cities, 1929–1937. They estimated that every additional $153,000 in relief spending (in 1935 dollars, or $1.95 million in year 2000 dollars) was associated with a reduction of one infant death, one suicide, and 2.4 deaths from infectious disease.[112][113]

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