Chapter 18: The Growth of the City

• "old immigrants" came from northern and western Europe, majority were Protestants and Irish or German Catholics

  "new immigrants" came from southern and eastern Europe, Italians, Greeks, Slovaks, Poles, Russians
• Reform Judaism


  imported from Germany, an effort by American Jewish leaders to make their faith less foreign
• American Protective Association


  a group committed to restricting immigrants, founded by Henry Bowers
• Contract Labor Law of 1885

  restricted temporary workers to protect American workers, forbade the engagement in labor contracts with individuals prior to their immigration
• Immigration Restriction League


  a more genteel organization, founded by five Harvard alumni, proposed screening immigrants through literacy tests and other standards to separate the "desirable" from the "undesirable"
• Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

  placed a ban on all new immigrants from China
• Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux

  landscape designers that promoted city parks as a refuge and designed NY's central Park
• "City Beautiful" movement


  -advanced grand plans to remake American cities with tree-lined boulevards, public parks, and public cultural attractions

  -strove to impart order on hectic, industrial centers by creating urban spaces that conveyed a sense of morality and civic pride
• the "Great White City"

  -a cluster of neoclassical buildings

  -center of the 1983 Colombian Exposition (a world's fair to honor the 400th anniversary of Columbus' first voyage to America)

  -became an inspiration for the "city beautiful" movement

  -architect: Daniel Burnham
• tenement apartments


  -housing for poor immigrants, slum dwellings

  -overcrowded, filthy

  -in 1879 NYC passed a law that required each bedroom to have a window
• ethnic neighborhoods


  distinct groups that could maintain its own language, culture, church, etc.
• Jacob Riis


  Danish immigrant and NY photographer, wrote the book How the Other Half Lives w/ description and pictures of tenements
• Brooklyn Bridge


  used a dramatic steel-cable suspension span, designed by John A Roebling
• the modern skyscraper


  -first in Chicago

  -steel-framed

  -emerged b/c of New kinds of steel grinders, passenger elevator, and steel-frames
• 3 major strains of urban life

  (1) crime

  (2) fire

  Chicago and Boston suffered "great fires" in 1871, encouraged fire-proof buildings, fire dept., and steel instead of wood in construction

  (3) disease

  improper sewage system led to water contamination, poor air quality, typhoid fever, cholera
• Public Health Service (1912)

  created by the federal government to prevent diseases (such as tuberculosis, anemia, carbon dioxide poisoning) by attempting to create common health standards in factories

  had little impact due to its limited power of enforcement
• Occupation Safety and Health Administration (1970)

  a legacy of Public Health Services' early work, gave gov. the authority to require employers to create safe and healthy workplaces
• Salvation Army 


  provided basic necessities to the homeless and poor while preaching the Christian gospel
• Urban National Guard groups

  built imposing armories on the outskirts of affluent neighborhoods and prepared for attacks that never really occured
• Theodore Dreiser


  wrote the novel, Sister Carrie about single women without support in the city
• political parties in major cities came under the control of tightly organized groups of politicians, aka political machines

  urban/political 'bosses' were the top politicians who gave orders to the rank and gave political jobs to supporters, often corrupt and graft
• William M. Tweed


  boss of NYC's Tammany Hall (1860s-70s), extravagant use of public funds, jail in 1872
• National Consumer League (NCL)

  formed under the leadership of Florence Kelly, attempted to mobilize the power of women as consumers for better work conditions
• Simon Patten

  economist who articulated the new idea of leisure in The Theory of Prosperity (1902) and The New Basis of Civilization (1910), argued that new economies could create enough wealthy to satisfy needs and desires of all
• vaudeville


  a form of theater adapted from the French, consisted of a variety of acts, open to black performers
• Coney Island


  famous amusement park on beach in Brooklyn, included Luna Park

  competitor: Dreamland Park
• Alexander Graham Bell


  developed the telephone
• improvements of the telephone

  -switchboard (CT): only needed line to central telephone office

  -repeater: strengthened signal

  -The Bell System: hired young white females as operators
• AT & T 


  monopoly, exclusively built and owned all telephone instruments and then leased them to subscribers (owned both the equipment and service)
• Stephen Crane


  wrote Maggie: A Girl of the Streets (1893), The Red Badge of Courage (1896)

  told how a brutal environment could destroy the lives of people
• Winslow Homer


  painted New England Maritime life
• James McNeill Whistler


  introduced oriental themes in art, born in Mass., studied color
• Ashcan School


  painted scenes of everyday life in poor urban neighborhoods
• Armory Show


  where nonrepresentational abstract paintings were exhibited
• pragmatism


  modern society should rely for guidance not on inherited ideals and moral principles but on the test of scientific inquiry
• Morill Land Grant Act of 1862

  fed. gov. donated public land to states for colleges (Land Grant institutions)