The Urbanization of America

� Urban population of America increased seven fold after Civil War, natural increase accounted for a small part of urban growth, high infant mortality, declining fertility rate, high death rate

Population Growth 1860-1900

America in 1900

The Urbanization of America

� Cities offered better paying jobs, new forms of transportation made it easier to move, those leaving rural America: young women in search of work and community, southern blacks who tended to work as cooks, janitors and domestic servants

The Urbanization of America

� Most substantial form of urban population growth: immigrants from abroad Canada, Mexico, Latin America, China and Japan but the greatest number came from southern and eastern Europe, no single national group dominated

Immigration’s Contribution to Population Growth 1860-1920

Sources of Immigration From Europe 1860-1900

The Urbanization of America

� National groups formed close-knit ethnic communities within cities where the immigrant groups tended to reinforce the cultural values of their previous societies-Jews and Germans moved up economically faster

The Urbanization of America

� Those who arrived with at least some capital had an enormous advantage, while second-generation immigrants attempted to assimilate to American way of life

Rising Nativism

� Henry Bowers founded the American

Protective Association which was a group

committed to stopping the immigrant tide

Rising Nativism

� The Immigration Restriction League was

founded in Boston by Harvard alumni –

believed that immigrants should be screened

through literacy tests and other standards

designed to separate the desirable from the

undesirable

“Immigration Under Attack”

Rising Nativism

� Congress’ Response – restricted Chinese

immigration, denied entry to "undesirables",

placed a tax on each person admitted

Rising Nativism

� Immigration was providing a rapidly growing

economy with a cheap and plentiful labor

supply – many argued America’s industrial

development would be impossible without it

The Urban Landscape

�Creation of great urban parks designed to allow city residents a healthy, restorative escape from the strains of urban life, Olmsted and Vaux designed New York's central park

The Mall in Central Park, 1902

The Urban Landscape

�New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art was the largest and best known of many great museums taking shape in the late 19th century

The Urban Landscape

�Creation of art museums, concert halls, libraries, parks required philanthropy by the wealthy

The Urban Landscape

� City Beautiful Movement – led by architect Daniel Burnham, aimed to impose order and symmetry on the disordered life of cities around the country, growth of suburbs for the moderately well-to-do, tenements were slum dwellings for industrial workers, with little or no plumbing, often windowless with no heating, in 1870 a New York state law required a window built in every bedroom

The Urban Landscape

� Jacob Riis shocked the middle class America with pictures and descriptions of tenement life in his book How the Other Half Lives

The Urban Landscape

�Perhaps half the population of New York lived in homes with boarders in the late 19th century

The Urban Landscape

�Conditions of streets impeded urban transportation, led to the development of mass transportation – street cars drawn on tracks by horses, elevated railway, cable cars, electric trolley, Boston opened first American subway, John Roebling designed the Brooklyn Bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge

The Urban Landscape

�The Equitable Building in New York, rose seven stories, first to be built with an elevator, Louis Sullivan was the leading figure in the early development of the skyscraper