Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
George Bellows, The Men of the Docks (1912)
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
Lower
Broadway,
1899
2
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

The New Urban Growth
– “Age of the City”: 1870-1920
 Period marked by growing size and power of urban centers
 From 1880 to 1900: Chicago went from 0.5 million to 1.7 million
and New York went from 1.2 million to 3.4 million (1898
consolidation added Brooklyn, adding one million overnight)
 In 1860, 20 percent live in towns of over 8,000; in 1910, 50
percent live in towns of over 8,000; by 1920, a majority of people
in the U.S. are living in “urban” areas: towns/cities of 2,500 or
more people
 Nonfarm wage workers outnumber farm workers in the U.S. for
the first time in 1880
 Agricultural decline in East leads to people moving to western
farmlands, but in even greater numbers to cities.
3
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

The New Urban Growth
– The Migrations
4
 Black Migration: In the 1880s, African American migration
from rural areas begins: most find work in service occupations
in cities, leading to more females.
 Southern and Eastern Europe: “Old Immigration” was largely
Northern European: Irish, German, Scandinavian, English, etc.
Changes more toward Eastern and Southern Europe by 1880;
by 1890, more than half of all immigrants come from these
areas. Tended to be poorer and less educated than earlier
waves.
 Other Sources: Most immigrants from Europe, but smaller
numbers come from Canada, Latin America, and Asia
 Ellis Island: Opens in 1892, and between that year and 1924, an
estimated 22 million came through the facility.
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
Sources of Immigration
from Europe, 1860-1900
5
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
Total Immigration,
1861-1900
6
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

The New Urban Growth
– The Ethnic City
 Immigrant Majorities: Majority of major cities’ populations is
immigrants by 1890: 87% in Chicago, 84% in Milwaukee and Detroit,
and 80% in New York
 “Immigrant Ghettoes”: Specific neighborhoods would become settled
by one ethnic group, with specific streets often occupied by people
from one village or region. New churches, synagogues, imported food
stores, newspaper, fraternal organizations preserved homeland ties. For
example: In 1893, the Pennsylvania Slovak Association forms to cover
burial expenses coal miners killed on the job.
 Economic Advancement: Germans and Jews tended to advance
economically more rapidly than Irish or Italians; coming with a distinct
skill provided a big advantage.
7
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
Lower East
Side, 1908
8
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

The New Urban Growth
– Assimilation and Exclusion
 Young Migrants: Most immigrants were between 15 and
45 years of age, and felt a tension between preserving old
ties and assimilating.
 Pressure to Assimilate: Public school classes conducted in
English, non-ethnic foodways encouraged, and even in the
religious realm, as with Reform Judaism and church
leaders encouraging American ways. Settlement houses in
immigrant neighborhoods, like Jane Addam’s Hull House
founded in 1889 in Chicago, teach adult literacy, hygiene,
civics, etc.
9
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

The New Urban Growth
– Assimilation and Exclusion
10
 American Protective Association: This anti-Catholic organization was
founded in 1887. Its founder, a self-educated lawyer from Iowa named
Henry Bowers, was dedicated to halting all immigration. The
organization claimed 500,000 members by 1894.
 Immigration Restriction League: Founded in 1894, five Harvard alumni
in Boston founded an organization lobbying for a better “filtering” of
immigrants: literacy tests, and other measures to do a better job of
keeping out “undesirables.”
 Federal Law: In 1882, Congress excluded Chinese immigrants, and
strengthened laws against convicts, paupers, and mentally disabled from
entering, reinforcing these in the 1890s.
 Cheap Immigrant Labor: More aggressive restrictions did not get far in
Congress since the powerful industrial lobby demanded a flow of cheap
laborers.
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
“The Proposed Immigrant
Dumping Site,” the cover of the
March 22, 1890 issue of the
satirical magazine, Judge. It
depicts Secretary of the Treasury
William Windom after he
announced that the Castle
Garden Emigrant Depot in
Manhattan would shut down and
a new processing center would
be built at the statue’s base on
Bedloe’s Island (now Liberty
Island). It was of course moved
to Ellis Island.
11
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
“The High Tide of Immigration—A National Menace,” Judge, Aug. 22, 1903
12
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
“The Immigrant: Is He an Acquisition or a Detriment?” Judge, Oct. 10, 1903
13
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in 1902
14
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

The Urban Landscape
– The Creation of Public Space
 Public Parks: By the mid-nineteenth century, planners and municipal
leaders tried provide relief from urban congestion and slum
conditions with large parks.
 Central Park: In 1858, designers Fredrick Law Olmstead and Calvert
Vaux tried to create a space that appeared entirely natural; it was
meant to be viewed and appreciated rather than played upon.
 Era of Great Public Institutions: This era saw the building of great
urban public museums and libraries. These include Boston’s Museum
of Fine Art (1870), New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (opened
1872) and the New York Public Library (1895, current building
opened in 1905), Chicago’s Art Institute (1879, current building
1893), and the Brooklyn Museum (current building opened in 1897).
15
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
Original 1858 “Greensward Plan” for Central Park by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux
Frederick Law
Olmstead
(1822-1903)
16
Calvert Vaux
(1824-1895)
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

The Urban Landscape
Daniel
Burnham
– The Creation of Public Space
 Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893: Buildings of the neoclassical “Great White City” designed by architect Daniel Burnham
and symmetrical grounds designed by Olmstead become an
inspiration for the “City Beautiful” movement; yet the order in the
Exposition had little relation to chaotic urban reality.
– Expanding Cities
 Landfill and Annexation: Bostonians created a fancy neighborhood
called the “Back Bay” by filling in swampland; Chicago reclaimed
areas from Lake Michigan, filling in swampy areas to create
Lakeshore Drive and the “Gold Coast”; in 1898 New York City
annexed Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the part of the Bronx
that it had not yet absorbed.
17
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
Views of the 1893 Columbian Exposition’s
“White City”
18
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Row”
The Urban Landscape “Millionaire’s
on Fifth Avenue and
65th St. in 1898
– The Search for Housing
 Wealthy Dwellings: Well-to-do people had palatial mansion built in
neighborhoods like Fifth Avenue in New York, Back Bay and Beacon
Hill in Boston, Nob Hill in San Francisco, Society Hill in Philadelphia,
Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, etc.
 Railroad Suburbs: Some professionals who could not afford mansion in
the central city started settling in residential suburbs. Chicago railroads
connected to residential suburbs by the 1870s, and Tarrytown and New
Rochelle in New York.
 Streetcar Suburbs: More lower-middle class residential development
emerged in places like Somerville and Brighton near Boston, in Shaker
Heights near Cleveland, and West Philadelphia. The extension of the
NYC subway led to middle-class housing in places like Jackson Heights,
Queens, and Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, by the early 1900s.
19
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

The Urban Landscape
– The Search for Housing
 Urban Density: City landlords tried to squeeze as much profit out their
properties, often subdividing buildings into as many apartments as
possible. In 1894, Manhattan had a density of 143 people per acre, a
density never again seen in European or American cities. In Philadelphia
and Baltimore, immigrants found residences in narrow brick row-houses;
in Boston, in cheap wood-framed “triple-deckers,” and other places, in
slum dwellings known as “tenements,” which often contained small,
sometimes window-less dwellings with no running water.
 Jacob Riis (1849-1914): Danish immigrant, social reformer, and writer
and photographer shocked many middle-class readers with How the
Other Half Lives (1890), which used flash photography to tenement
dwellers’ lives. Riis’s work encouraged reformers to tear down slum
dwellings, but they mostly were not replaced by affordable housing.
20
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
Tenement dwellers from How the Other Half Lives (1890)
21
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

The Urban Landscape
– Urban Technologies: Transportation
and Construction
 Urban Railways: Horse-drawn streetcars had
been in use since before the Civil War, but were slow. NYC
introduced its first elevated railroad in 1870; Richmond, Virginia,
employed the first electric streetcar in 1888; and Boston opened the
first subway in 1897 (New York’s was opened in 1903).
 Bridges: John A. Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge opened in 1883, using a
steel-cable suspension system.
 Skyscrapers: Steel skeletons come into use in the 1880s, which along with
elevator technology, allow for much taller buildings. The first is considered
to be the ten-story Home Insurance Building in Chicago, completed in
1884 (pictured above).
22
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Strains of Urban Life
– Fire and Disease
 Fires: Chicago and Boston suffered “Great Fires” in 1871, which
encouraged building fireproof structures and the development of
professional fire departments.
 Inadequate Sanitation: Flush toilets and underground sewers began to be
introduced in the 1870s, but not enough to reduce outbreaks of diseases
like typhoid and cholera. Streets were piled with horse dung.
– Environmental Degradation
 Air Pollution: Burning of soft coal for heat, cooking, and for factories
created a thick smog over many cities, making breathing difficult.
 Public Health Service: The federal government created this service in
1912 to create health standards for factories, but had few powers of
enforcement.
23
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Strains of Urban Life
– Urban Poverty, Crime, and Violence
 Public Agencies and Private Philanthropies: Tried to distinguish
between the “deserving” and “undeserving poor” in giving out relief,
conducting elaborate investigations and interviews.
 Growing Crime Rate: Greater inequality and widespread urban
poverty meant a more crime: murder rate went from 25 per million in
1880 to 100 per million in 1900. Crime
 Sister Carrie (1900): This novel by Theodore Dreiser, considered
shocking in its day for its sexual frankness, depicted a single woman
from a rural area coming to the big city, where she is exploited by
predatory men, but ultimately becomes a vaudeville sensation (that
she was not punished for her immoral lifestyle drove critics crazy).
24
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Strains of Urban Life
– Urban Poverty, Crime, Violence, and Alienation
 Public Agencies and Private Philanthropies: Tried to
distinguish between the “deserving” and “undeserving poor” in
giving out relief, conducting elaborate investigations and
interviews, while other groups focused on religious revivalism.
 Growing Crime Rate: Greater inequality and widespread urban
poverty meant a more crime: murder rate went from 25 per
million in 1880 to 100 per million in 1900. Leaders responded
by creating bigger and more professional police forces, but
these, too, were often corrupt. Elites built national guard
armories to protect fancy neighborhoods from big disturbances,
like New York’s 1865 Draft Riots.
25
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Strains of Urban Life
– The Machine and the Boss
 Function of the “Urban Boss”: To win votes for his party was
his principal function, and he did so by providing occasional
relief for the poor, employment, and patronage: jobs in city
government, police, and contracted jobs for the city. Bosses
also enriched themselves through graft and corruption.
 William M. Tweed (1823-1878): Boss of New York’s
Democratic Tammany Hall machine in the 1860s and early
1870s, but was jailed for his use of public funds and kickbacks
in 1872. His organization especially benefitted Irish
immigrants.
26
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
A few of the famous images by Thomas Nast (1840-1902) that helped to bring Tweed down
27
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

The Rise of Mass Consumption
– Patterns of Income and Consumption
 Rising Income: Rose unevenly, with those at the top enjoying
immense wealth, but “white collar” clerks, accountants, and
middle-managers saw their income rise by one-third between
1890 and 1910. Females and non-whites saw smaller increases.
 Ready-Made Clothing: The invention of the sewing machine
and the Civil War manufacturing of uniforms jump-started this
industry (mass-produced clothes existed only for slaves before
then). By 1900,, most people wore mass-produced clothing
bought from a store, and began to cultivate distinct styles.
28
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

The Rise of Mass Consumption
– Chain Stores, Mail-Order Houses, and Department Stores
 A & P (Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.): National chain of grocery stores
developed in the 1870s.
 F.W Woolworth: National chain of “dry goods” stores began in the late
1870s and early 1880s.
 Marshall Field: Began as a dry goods store, but emerged as one of the
first modern department stores in Chicago in the 1870s.
– Women as Consumers
 National Consumers League: Founded in 1899, it was led by Florence
Kelly, who encouraged women to buy products that had been produced
under fair working conditions.
29
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Leisure in the Consumer Society
– Redefining Leisure
 New Leisure Time: White collar classes and evenings, weekends, and
even paid vacations; even industrial laborers and farmers had more
time due to mechanization.
 Simon Patten (1852-1922): This influential economist and head of the
U. Penn’s Wharton School wrote several books arguing that modern
economies produced enough wealth to go around, so people did not
have to be frugal and self-restrained all the time, as they had to be in
previous centuries.
 New Mass Entertainments: Some new forms of entertainment—like
vaudeville—could breach class, race, and gender barrier. Sporting
events and saloons remained male preserves. Elites often had very
different ideas of leisure than urban working classes.
30
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Leisure in the Consumer Society
– Spectator Sports
 Baseball: Evolved from a British game called “rounders” in the early
nineteenth century, and was popularized during the Civil War.
• First professional team is the Cincinnati Red Stocking founded in 1869,
soon joined by other teams in the National League in 1876.
• Rival American Association appeared and collapsed between 1882 and
1891, but was replaced by the American League formed in 1901.
• First World Series was held in 1903, with the Boston Americans (later
Red Sox) beating the Pittsburgh Pirates, five games to three in a best-ofnine series. (Between 1901 and 1918: Boston Americans/Red Sox won
five world series, and the New York Highlanders/Yankees won zero).
31
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Leisure in the Consumer Society
– Spectator Sports
 Football: The first intercollegiate game was in 1869 between
Princeton and Rutgers, and remained an elite sport since it was played
only at the college level.
 Boxing: This sport was very popular among working-class audiences,
but remained disreputable among the upper and middle classes.
 Basketball Invented: Dr. James A. Naismith (1861-1939) was ordered
to create and indoor game in 1891 that was “not too rough” and
would keep track athletes in shape over the winter months in
Springfield, Mass.
 Bicycling: During the 1890s, the new “safety bike” was a popular
distraction for middle-class and elite males.
32
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Leisure in the Consumer Society
– Music, Theater, and Movies
 Vaudeville: Based on a French model, vaudeville was a series of
“variety” acts—comedians, magicians, jugglers, etc.—that was
initially inexpensive to produce, at least until big spectacles like
“Ziegfeld’s Follies” around 1907; vaudeville also contained aspects of
minstrelsy.
 Movies: Edison invents his Kinetoscope in 1888, which requires the
viewer to look through a peep hole. In 1905, nickelodeons began
appearing in most U.S. cities, which were small storefront movie
theaters showing short films that did not have a plot.
 D. W. Griffith (1875-1948): Produced epic silent narrative films that
made told stories in a distinctly visual way, such as Birth of a Nation
(1915) and Intolerance (1916).
33
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
Vaudeville posters from the turn of the
twentieth century.
34
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
35
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Leisure in the Consumer Society
– Patterns of Public and Private Leisure
 Public Leisure: Late nineteenth and early twentieth century leisure
was more public than in the present. Working-class people went to
vaudeville shows, dance halls, and concert halls, while elites went to
the opera and promenaded in Central Park.
 Coney Island: In the 1890s, amusement parks—partly inspired by the
Columbian Exposition, but in a less uptight way—arose on the Coney
Island peninsula. The greatest ones, Luna Park and Dreamland,
opened in 1903 and 1904. Luna Park had a 90,000 average daily
attendance in 1904. The parks put people in situations that would
have been awkward or embarrassing in another context.
 Dime Novels: These were adventures stories, detective stories, Wild
West dramas, and sentimental romances published as cheap
paperbacks; had formulaic plots and often featured “moral uplift.”
36
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
Postcard of Luna Park at night
37
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Leisure in the Consumer Society
– The Technologies of Mass Communication
 Newspapers: Circulation of daily papers rose from 3 million to 24
million between 1870 and 1910, journalists’ salaries became higher
and standards became more professionalized with reporting and
opinion became more separate.
 William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951): As the son of a U.S. senator
and mining magnate, he bought the San Francisco Examiner in 1887,
thereby launching a media empire that by the 1920s almost 30
newspapers in major U.S. cities, two wire services, a film company,
and several magazines. He pioneered “yellow journalism,” getting his
paper intertwined in the affairs leading up to the Spanish-American
War, and also pioneered color and photographic printing processes in
the 1890s
38
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
39
Richard Outcault’s “The Yellow Kid,”
from Hearst’s New York Journal. Hearst
lured Outcault away from Joseph Pulitzer’s
World in 1896.
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

Leisure in the Consumer
Society
– The Telephone
 Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922): He invented the
device in 1876, but not until the switchboard came into use
in 1878 did it become commercially viable, and even then it
only worked over a few miles until the “repeater” was
widely introduced in the 1910s.
 The Bell System: The telephone initially was used as a
business/corporate tool; in 1891, there 7,400 customers in
the NY/NJ area, and 6,000 of these were businesses and
organizations. A.T. & T. became a powerful cartel by
controlling the equipment and the service itself.
40
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

High Culture in the Urban Age
– Literature and Art in Urban America
 Literary Realism: The 1893 novel, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets by
Stephen Crane (1871-1900) shocked middle-class readers with its
graphic depiction of brutal slum life. Theodore Dreiser, Frank Norris,
and Upton Sinclair also dealt with the harsh realities and anomie of
urban life.
 Ashcan School: A 1908 exhibition of Philadelphia artists known as
“The Eight” caused a sensation for its realistic depictions of urban,
working-class neighborhoods and the darker side of urban life.
Among these initial artists was John Sloan, who would rise to
prominence. Later artists who became a part of this “ash can”
movement (the coin was termed in 1916) included George Bellows
and Edward Hopper.
41
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City
The Ashcan School
John French Sloan, McSorley’s Bar (1912)
42
George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey’s (1909)
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

High Culture in the Urban Age
– The Impact of Darwinism
 Resistance to Evolution: Acceptance of Darwin’s
ideas among educated and urban elites drew a
sharper cultural divide between them and rural
conservatives; this led to the simultaneous rise of a
liberal Protestantism and the beginnings of organized
Christian fundamentalism.
 “Pragmatism”: The first genuinely American
Charles Darwin
philosophical tradition emerged during this time: all (Library of Congress)
ideas and beliefs must be scientifically tested for
their overall usefulness and be discarded if they are
of no practical value. Thinkers like Charles S. Peirce,
John Dewey, and psychologist William James
became chief advocates of this school of thought.
43
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

High Culture in the Urban Age
– Toward Universal Schooling
 Spread of Free Public Schooling: The demand for specialized skills in
the workforce led to greater compulsory public education. Thirty-one
states and territories had compulsory (out of forty-five states and four
territories).
 Rural and Racial Lag: People living in rural areas often had no access
to public schools, while blacks in the South were often excluded.
 Carlisle Indian Industrial School: This Pennsylvania school opened in
1879 in an attempt to “civilize” Indians, but ultimately closed in
1918. It had been a model for a network of Indian boarding schools
created by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
44
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

High Culture in the Urban Age
– Universities and the Growth of Science
and Technology
 Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862: Federal lands were
donated to states to create agricultural and technical
colleges, which funded the founding of sixty-nine schools
that formed the basis of state systems in California,
Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin
 Economic Impact of Higher Education: State schools and
private schools, like MIT (1865), helped advance
American industry and science through their research.
45
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

High Culture in the Urban Age
– Medical Science
 “Symptoms”: Doctors begin to accept the idea that symptoms were not
the disease itself, but outward manifestations of a more complex disease.
 Technologies: X-rays, improved microscopes, and other diagnostic tools
improve medicine, as did advances in pharmaceuticals, like the
formulation of aspirin in 1899. The invention of blood transfusions in
1906 make more elaborate surgeries possible.
 More Complex Understanding of Germ Theory: Awareness of the causes
of infection and other factors aside from germ exposure develop a deeper
understanding of illness.
 Declining Mortality: American surgeons and physicians wer viewed as
the best in the world, as was American understandings of public health
and sanitation issues.
46
Chapter Eighteen:
The Age of the City

High Culture in the Urban Age
– Education for Women
 Women’s Colleges: Only three colleges were co-during the
Civil War, but higher education for elite women became
increasingly more available: Vassar (1865), Wellesley and
Smith (1875), Bryn Mawr (1885), and Barnard (1889).
 Emergence of Women’s Communities: These schools were
largely run by women. Elite college women tended to marry
later, and sometimes did not marry to pursue careers.
47