The Modern American Metropolis: A Documentary Reader introduces the history of American cities and suburbs through a collection of original source materials that historians have long used to make sense of the urban experience.
- Carefully integrates and juxtaposes the primary sources that are at the heart of the collection
- Revisits and compares issues and themes over time
- Reveals how the history of cities and suburbs is not limited to buildings, innovation, and politics, and not confined to municipal boundaries
- Explores a wide variety of topics, including infrastructure development, electoral politics, consumer culture, battles over rights, environmental change, and the meaning of citizenship
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations xii
Series Editors’ Preface xiv
Acknowledgments xvi
Source Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction Or, What Can a Wet Basement
Tell Us about Metropolitan History? 1
Part I Cities and Hinterlands in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America 27
Chapter 1 Transforming the Landscape and Its Functions 29
1 Chicago’s Daily Democrat Measures the Impact of the Transport Revolution, 1852 29
2 Cyrus McCormick Markets the Virginia Reaper to the Nation’s Farmers, 1850 and 1851 36
3 Texans Appeal for the Removal of Native Peoples, 1858–1859 40
4 Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine Discusses the Value of Slave Labor, 1855–1858 45
Chapter 2 Snapshots of Urban Life on the Eve of the Civil War 50
1 An Irish Immigrant Writes Home about Life in the United States, 1850 50
2 Frederick Law Olmsted Compares Northern and Southern Cities along the Atlantic Seaboard, 1856 53
3 The New York Times Reports on a Millworker Strike in Lynn and Marblehead, 1859 60
4 Reverend Albert Williams Describes San Francisco’s Fires 63
Part II From Walking City to Industrial Metropolis, 1860–1920 69
Chapter 3 Commerce and the Metropolis 71
1 The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 Connects the Nation 71
2 William Dean Howells Describes Suburban Boston, 1872 75
3 August Spies Addresses Workers about Their Conditions, 1886 80
4 An Engineer Describes the Work Required to Make Seattle Competitive, 1908 84
5 New York City Retailers Organize to Protect a Fifth Avenue Shopping District, 1916 87
Chapter 4 “Natives,” Migrants, and Immigrants 90
1 A Polish Immigrant Describes Life and Work in New York City, 1902 90
2 Unions Call for Boycott of Chinese and Their Patrons, 1891–1892 96
3 La Crónica Reports on Challenges Facing the Texan Mexican Community, 1910–1911 97
4 Good Housekeeping Counsels “The Commuter’s Wife,” 1909 106
5 Black Southerners Write the Chicago Defender for Information about Employment, 1916–1918 110
Chapter 5 Big City Life 118
1 Urban Imagery, 1889–1913 118
2 A Young Governess Discusses Her New Freedoms, 1903 122
3 A Columnist Describes the Pleasures and Perils of Coney Island, 1915 125
4 A Harper’s Weekly Columnist Worries about Garbage, 1891 129
Chapter 6 Local Politics in the Gilded Age 135
1 George Washington Plunkitt Defends Patronage Politics in New York City, 1905 135
2 Dallas City Commissioner Advocates Running a City Like a Business, 1909 139
3 Jane Addams Describes the Goals of Hull House, 1893 141
4 An Economist Investigates Employers’ Response to Labor Unions 147
Part III City and Suburb Ascendant, 1920–1945 155
Chapter 7 Commerce, Consumption, and the Suburban Trend 157
1 An Investment Banker Insists that “Everyone Ought to Be Rich,” 1929 157
2 Commerce and the Good Life 159
3 Former Employees Describe Finding Work and Building Cars for Ford Motor Company 160
4 Alfred Kazin Recalls New York City’s Ethnic Boundaries Before World War II 170
5 A Social Scientist Explains the “Suburban Trend,” 1925 175
6 Suburban Speculation Creates Empty Subdivisions, 1925 179
Chapter 8 Economic Collapse and Metropolitan Crisis 182
1 The New Deal Rebuilds the Metropolis during the Great Depression 182
2 Jane Yoder Describes Living through the Depression in a Central Illinois Mining Town 185
3 Langston Hughes Remembers Rent Parties in Harlem 187
4 Jose Yglesias Describes the 1930s in Tampa and New York City 190
Chapter 9 The Metropolis at War 194
1 The LA Chamber of Commerce Coordinates the Region’s War Production Efforts, 1942–1943 194
2 Henry Cervantes Describes His Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to World War II Hero 199
3 White Transit Workers Walk Off the Job in Philadelphia, 1944 206
4 Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston Recounts Her Family’s Forced Relocation from Santa Monica, California 208
Part IV Creating a Suburban Nation, 1945–1970s 215
Chapter 10 “The Affluent Society” 217
1 Veterans Line Up for Homes in Long Island, 1949 217
2 Sunset Magazine Markets a Suburban Way of Living, 1946 and 1958 219
3 Ebony Discusses Homeownership and Domestic Life for a Steelworker’s Family in Gary, Indiana, 1957 223
4 Catherine Marshall Defends a Woman’s Right to Work, 1954 226
Chapter 11 Public Policy and “Best Use” in American Neighborhoods 229
1 The Federal Housing Administration Defines Value in Single-Family Suburban Housing 229
2 A US Senator Argues That Military Spending Is Producing Inequality, 1962 232
3 Herbert Gans Critiques Federal Urban Renewal Programs, 1959 236
4 U.S. News and World Report Warns of Contaminated Suburban Water Supplies, 1963 240
Chapter 12 Metropolitan Contests over Citizenship, Rights, and Access 244
1 Local Activists Organize a Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, 1954 244
2 Suburban Homeowners Mobilize to Exclude “Incompatible” Development, 1950–1951 250
3 Residents of a Memphis Neighborhood Block Construction of the Interstate, 1967 253
4 Activists Define Black Power, 1967 257
5 Gays and Lesbians in New York City Organize to Combat Discrimination, 1969 263
6 A Photograph Captures Divisions in Boston over Court-Ordered Busing, 1976 264
Part V What Makes a City? The “Postindustrial” Metropolis 269
Chapter 13 Redefining “Urban” and “Suburban” 271
1 U.S. Steel Demolishes Its Plant in Youngstown, Ohio, 1983 271
2 Hoboken Residents Debate the “Yuppie” Invasion, 1984–1987 273
3 Jersey City Markets Itself to a New Demographic, 2003 and 2006 278
4 A Professor Explains How Urban Redevelopment Has Impacted Los Angeles’s Minority Communities, 1987/1988 281
5 Planners Assess an Experiment in “New Urbanism” (Before the Great Recession), 1999 286
Chapter 14 Growth and Its Challenges 292
1 The Global Economy and Global Politics Create New Challenges in the Twin Cities Region, 2012 292
2 College Students in Merced Rent Empty McMansions, 2011 295
3 The Great Wall of Los Angeles Pictures the Region’s Development History, 1974 to the Present 298
4 City Building in Kansas: An Immigrant’s Perspective, 2007 300
5 Developers in Los Angeles County Spark a Twenty-First-Century Debate over City Building and
Environmental Protection, 2009 305
Further Reading 313
Index 319
About the Author :
David M. P. Freund is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of the award-winning Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (2007) and contributor to numerous educational, documentary, and public policy projects.
