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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American urban history | 5/12 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_urban_history | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T16:00:42.902054+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== The new West === After 1860, railroads pushed westward into unsettled territory. They built service towns to handle the needs of railroad construction and repair crews, train crews, and passengers who ate meals at scheduled stops. Gunfights and disorder characterized the railhead towns that were the target of major cattle drives from Texas. The violence was often exaggerated in dime novels. In most of the South, there were very few cities of any size for miles around, and this held for Texas as well. Railroads arrived in the 1880s and they shipped the cattle out; cattle drives became short-distance affairs. However the passenger trains were often the targets of armed gangs. Denver's economy before 1870 had been rooted in mining. It then grew by expanding its role in railroads, wholesale trade, manufacturing, food processing, and servicing the growing agricultural and ranching hinterland. Between 1870 and 1890, manufacturing output soared from $600,000 to $40 million, and the population grew by a factor of 20 times to 107,000. Denver had always attracted miners, workers, whores and travelers. Saloons and gambling dens sprung up overnight. The city fathers boasted of its fine theaters, and especially the Tabor Grand Opera House built in 1881. By 1890, Denver had grown to be the 26th largest city in America, and the fifth-largest city west of the Mississippi River. The boom times attracted millionaires and their mansions, as well as hustlers, poverty and crime. Denver gained regional notoriety with its range of bawdy houses, from the sumptuous quarters of renowned madams to the squalid "cribs" located a few blocks away. Business was good; visitors spent lavishly, then left town. As long as madams conducted their business discreetly, and "crib girls" did not advertise their availability too crudely, authorities took their bribes and looked the other way. Occasional cleanups and crack downs satisfied the demands for reform. With its giant mountain of copper, Butte, Montana was the largest, richest and rowdiest mining camp on the frontier. It was an ethnic stronghold, with the Irish Catholics in control of politics and of the best jobs at the leading mining corporation Anaconda Copper. City boosters opened a public library in 1894. Ring argues that the library was originally a mechanism of social control, "an antidote to the miners' proclivity for drinking, whoring, and gambling." It was also designed to promote middle-class values and to convince Easterners the Butte was a cultivated city. Appreciative crowds filled the large, upscale "Belasco" opera house for full-scale operas and top-name artists.
=== Skyscrapers and apartment buildings ===
In Chicago and New York, new inventions facilitated the emergence of the skyscraper in the 1880s—it was a characteristic American style that was not widely copied around the world until the late 20th century. Construction required several major innovations, the elevator, and the steel beam. The steel skeleton, developed in the 1880s, replaced the heavy brick walls that were limited to 15 or so stories in height. The skyscraper also required a complex internal structure to solve difficult issues of ventilation, steam heat, gas lighting (and later electricity), and plumbing. Urban housing involved a wide variety of styles, but most of the attention focused on the tenement house for the working class, and the apartment building for the middle class. The apartment building came first, as middle-class professionals, businessmen, and white-collar workers realized they did not need and could scarcely afford single-family dwellings of the type that low land costs in the towns permitted. Boarding houses were inappropriate for family; hotel suites were too expensive. In smaller cities, there were many apartments over stores and shops, usually occupied by proprietors of small local businesses. The residents paid rent, and did not own their apartments until the emergence of cooperatives in New York City in the 20th century, and condominiums around the country after World War II. Turnover was very high, and there was seldom was a sense of neighborhood community. Starting with the Stuyvesant luxury apartment house that opened in New York in 1869, and The Dakota in 1884, affluent tenants discovered that full-time staff handled the upkeep and maintenance, as well as security. The less-lavish middle-class apartment buildings provided gas lighting, elevators, good plumbing, central heating, and maintenance men on call. Boston contractors build 16,000 "Triple-Deckers" Between 1870 and 1920. They were modern well-equipped buildings with a single large apartments on each floor. Chicago built thousands of apartment buildings, with the upscale ones close to the lake, where it was warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. In every city, apartment buildings were built along the paths of the street railways, for the middle-class tenants rode the streetcar to work, while the working class saved a nickel each way and walked. The working class crowded into tenement houses, with far fewer features and amenities. They were cheap and easy to build, and filled up almost the entire lot. There were typically five story walk-ups, with four separate apartments on each floor. There was minimal air circulation and sunlight. Until the reforms of 1879, New York tenements lacked running water or indoor toilets. Garbage pickup was erratic until late in the 19th century. Rents were cheap for those who could endure the dust, clutter, smells and noises; the only cheaper alternatives were squalid basement rooms in older buildings. Most of the tenements survived until the urban renewal movement of the 1950s.
=== Lure of the metropolis === Jeffersonian America distrusted the city, and rural spokesmen repeatedly warned their young men away. In 1881 The Evening Wisconsin newspaper warned cautious boys to stay on the farm. As paraphrased by historian Bayrd Still, the editor painted a grim contrast: