Introduction

Life in the City

America’s transition to city life began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, posing both risk and opportunity. Crowded living arrangements necessitated closer attention to hygiene and sanitation. Widespread poverty was countered by heartfelt compassion. Capitalism and industry fostered ingenuity. New cultures emerged within the cities, and new diversions occupied urbanites leisure time.
It is our hope that you will better understand some of your own history on these pages, as we look back to the new beginnings of life in the city.


Picture:
New York Tenement c. 1900-1910
Retrieved on July 12, 2010 from
http://knickerbockervillage.blogspot.com/2010/02/wash-day-1900.html

What About the Kids?

By: Lissa G.

Life in the city, especially New York City, back in the late 1800's and early 1900's was extremely over-crowded. Immigrants were coming into the city everyday from overseas. To manage the over crowding, the city came up with buildings called tenements.

"Structurally, New York City tenements were generally of two types: smaller houses of three or four floors that may have originally been one family and were converted into three or four family dwellings-larger buildings constructed as tenements that were typically five or six floors with four families to a floor"(Maggies Blanck, N.D.).

Sometimes there were ten to twelve people living in a 10x10 room. The adults took to drinking after their long shifts at the factories. The kids, dubbed "street rats", took to the streets to beg and steal for food. "In such rookeries where dozens of families live in the same nest and each one is in the other one's way, there is a continual round of evil communication, foul talk, thieving, brawls, fights and often murders... the children frequent the alley's and the gutters rather than the schools"(New York City Tenement Dwellers, early 1900's).

These children took to the streets to barter and try to work for pennies. They sometimes formed gangs that would fight and steal. "Sometimes they seemed to me, like what the police call them, "street rats", who gnawed the foundations of society, and scampered away when light was brought near them... to sleep in boxes, or under stairways, or in hay-barges on the coldest winter nights, for a mere child was hard enough; but often to have no food, to be kicked and cuffed by the older ruffians and shoved about by the police..."(Loring-Brace, 1880).

Thankfully, there were people who cared and one of those was Charles Loring Brace. He started the Childrens Aid Society in New York City in 1853. This well-known reformer sent kids out to farms to learn how to be productive and to grow up in a living, nurturing environment, instead of shoving them into an assylum or an orphanage.

My great grandfather, Adolf Mahler, was one of those children in 1901. He had come over from Austria and became homeless. He was 14 years old at the time and got help from the Children's Aid Society and was sent to a farm in upstate New York. As a Jewish teenager, that grew up very wealthy, this was probably a huge culture shock. He eventually converted to Christianity and became a Pastor. He also met my great grandmother, Mabel on that farm!! I'm so thankful to Charles Loring Brace for being a loving man who made a difference in the lives of those so called "Street Rats."

http://www.maggieblanck.com/NewYork/Life.html

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles05/New-York-City-14.shtml

http://www.1776mag.com/20-hitoric-photos-of-New-York-City/

Charles Loring Brace,(1880).The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years' Work Among Them. New York: Wynkoop&Hallenbaeck.

(Please insert pictures here) or up at the top.

Health Issues

By Kelly B.

As American families flocked to cities to find work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, crowding and a lack of clean water gave rise to diseases of epidemic proportions. Sewage was disposed of in outhouses and cesspools, which inevitably overflowed over time. Garbage was thrown out into the street. Horses, used for transportation, filled the streets with manure. Largely a product of the utter lack of sanitation, influenza, cholera (spread through contaminated drinking water), typhus, typhoid, polio and tuberculosis outbreaks raged through crowded cities.

Efforts towards public sanitation in the early 20th century greatly improved the health conditions of people living in cities. Community health nurses were invaluable in educating the public about the need for personal hygiene and sanitary environments, but sanitation was not the only health issue facing people in American cities. From wallpaper laced with arsenic to air pollution from copper mines, concerns over public health came to the forefront of the nation’s conscience.

Sources:
Environmental History Timeline. (1996). Retrieved on June 7, 2010 from
http://www.radford.edu/wkovarik/envhist/5progressive.html

City life at the turn of the 20th century. (2000). Eyewitness to History. Retrieved on June 7, 2010 from http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/snpim2.htm

Contagion: Historical views of diseases and epidemics. (2010). Harvard University Public Library Open Collections Program. Retrieved on June 7, 2010 from
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/contagion

Jones, J., Wood, P., Borstelmann, T., May E., & Ruiz, V. Created equal. (2008).
New York, NY: Pearson/Longman.

Photo retrieved from The National Archives website on June 9, 2010 from
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/records-list.html

Settlement Houses

By: Michelle W.

Settlement houses were first built in America in the late 1890's. The original mission behind them was to help better transition new immigrants into American society. Most immigrants came to America speaking little English and struggling to fit into society. Settlement houses provided several social services such as English class, personal hygiene and parenting classes, after-school programs for children and nurseries. Settlement houses were most prevalent in large cities in the northeast and Midwest. As settlement houses grew and became more established, many began researching the neighborhoods around them. The houses presented their findings to the city and lobbied to get public bathing houses, better sanitation services, public libraries and playgrounds.

The most well-known social settlement house was Hull House in Chicago. It was founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889. Residents of Hull House fought for children rights and created the nations first juvenile court system. Nationally, residents banded together with other settlement houses to fight for child labor laws, workers compensation, and unemployment benefits. Hull House still exists today and focuses its services on children and the homeless.

Sources:
Jones, Jacqueline, et al. Created Equal A Social and Political History of the United States. New York: Pearson, 2008.

“Hull House.” Encyclopedia of Chicago. 2005. Chicago Historical Society. 09July2010.

Michaels, Vince. Hull House, 09July2010. <>

Leisure Activities

By: Steven M.

The Progressive Era was a period of rapid expansion for the United States; it was a time like no other. While the United States was busy industrializing and urbanizing, other changes were also taking place. The institution of shorter work weeks meant that American workers were gaining more free time and needed ways to spend it; vacations were also becoming more common. The United States’ entertainment and leisure market was exploding.

Leisure time within the inner cities was often filled with theater. Vaudeville shows were especially popular because they crossed ethnic and cultural boundaries and theaters oftentimes ran shows continuously to accommodate their customers.
Other popular shows included Wild West shows, circuses, and motion pictures. The increasing popularity of motion pictures gave birth to the Nickelodeon theatres and then to larger theaters.

Outdoor activities were popular for those that wanted to leave the inner city for a while. Those on more limited budgets might choose to celebrity parades or county fairs, while those with more disposable income might choose to visit beach resorts, such as Asbury Park, New Jersey, founded in 1870.
The opening of Coney Island Amusement Park in 1897 marked the beginning of a new era in amusement and entertainment. These parks also provided an ideal venue to showcase the latest technological innovations. National parks and Worlds Fairs were also popular destinations for vacationers. Various spectator sporting events, including boxing, horse racing, baseball, basketball, and football, also gained popularity during this period.

Source:
America at Leisure
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awlhtml/awlleis.html

Skyscrapers

By: Stephanie S.

Believe it or not, Chicago was once the home of the tallest and greatest number of skyscrapers. These first skyscrapers were not what we would envision today as a skyscraper; they were merely 10-20 stories high and made possible by Henry Bessemer and George Fuller. Bessemer patented a process that turned raw iron into steel and Fuller created a system utilizing a “cage” of steel bars for support structure, which is still used today (Tucker).

Architects took advantage of the Chicago steel industry’s technological innovations and engineered the first skyscraper using steel-girder construction when they built William Le Baron Jenney's 10-story Home Insurance Company Building from 1884–85 (Skyscraper). Other structures not built with steel simply sank to the ground due to lack of support (Tucker). Skyscrapers also had another element of appeal. They were designed to resemble centuries of the past including Classical, Gothic, and Renaissance. Whether living in, working in or just passing by skyscrapers were a true marvel, except if you lived or worked on the top floor.

In 1857, the first safe passenger elevator was installed in the Haughwout Department Store in New York City, making it more practical to build taller buildings. After all who wants to walk up 10-20 flights of stairs? By 1913, New York boasted yet taller and more ornate skyscrapers than its shorter, stockier, Midwestern parent (Donaldson, 2005). Its first true skyscraper was the Flatiron building, finished in 1902 (Tucker). Although not as tall, another building in New York held the record of the world’s tallest building for four years and stood 309 feet tall (Tucker). The New York World Building stood until 1955 at 18 stories. (True skyscrapers are what we know skyscrapers as today, whereas the New York World Building was one of the first “skyscrapers” that ranged from 10-20 stories). Skyscrapers were a symbol of America’s rising social, global, and industrial power and they solved geographical and social issues that were rising in the early 1900’s (Tucker). With crowded cities, Chicago and New York utilized skyscrapers to house the growing number of immigrants.

“…skyscrapers constitute New York City’s most important icons; without their visual presence, the city practically disappears.”- Sarah Donaldson

Sources:
Donaldson, S. (2005, February). Chicago vs. New York. Next American City. Retrieved July 1,
2010, from http://americancity.org/magazine/article/chicago-vs-new-york-carol-willis- and-kenneth-t-jackson-donaldson/

Skyscraper. (2010). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 11, 2010, from Encyclopædia
Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/547956/skyscraper

Tucker, M., Ho, R. & Megallon, J. The First Modern Skyscraper: New York & Chicago. Retrieved
July 1, 2010, from http://www.ivc.edu/arthistory2/Documents/art2526projects/skyscrapers_sp06.pdf

Pictures:
http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/20_sky1.html

People in the City

By: Justin H.

Industrialization in the United States caused cities to become a magnet for people looking for work. Many people flocked to the cities looking for their piece of the American Dream. But who were these people? And how did the cities change over time during this period?

Towards the end of the 19th century, Americans primarily lived in rural communities. According to the U.S. census, about 35% of the population lived in urban areas. By 1920, America became a majority urban nation (at 51%). A lot of this urban growth came from immigrants coming from European nations. Some major groups include Germans, Italians and Eastern European Jews. In places like New York City, a significant portion of the population consisted of foreign born persons (37% in 1900). Other examples in 1900 include San Francisco (34%), Chicago (34%) and Detroit (34%). Of the top 50 most populated urban areas, Fall River city, Massachusetts had among the largest foreign born population at the time, according to the U.S. census (40-50% 1870-1910). It was a likely place for newcomers to America to start out because of its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the city’s booming industry at the time. It was not uncommon to find neighborhoods where immigrants from the same country would gravitate. Places like Little Italy in New York City or Chinatown in San Francisco were (and still are) among the many sub-communities that immigrant populations lived.

The people who also entered the cities included blacks who moved to northern cities from the South. Many moved to seek job opportunities due to labor shortages and to distance themselves from discrimination that was common in the South. This was the beginning of the “Great Migration” for blacks in America that continued on well in to the mid 1900’s.

The urbanization of America at the time did not mean that everyone was flocking to the cities to live in crowded neighborhoods. For those who could afford it (primarily upper and middle class people), they moved to the outer edges of the city into suburbs. As transportation made it possible to live outside the city and commute to work, the urban landscape expanded outward. The houses in the inner city left by the urbanites were often subdivided into apartments or low-rent living spaces that attracted immigrant populations.

Sources:
http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/hiscendata.html
http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab19.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/black-migration - by David M. Katzman

Pictures:
Festa in Little Italy - Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3c14764/
The street of painted balconies, Chinatown, San Francisco - Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/agc.7a08846/

Closing

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana (1863 – 1952)
The Life of Reason, Vol. 1, 1905

Retrieved on July 12, 2010 from http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/the+past/