American urban history

American urban history is the study of cities of the United States. Local historians have always written about their own cities. Starting in the 1920s, and led by Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. at Harvard, professional historians began comparative analysis of what cities have in common, and started using theoretical models and scholarly biographies of specific cities.

Historiography

American urban history is a branch of the broader field of Urban history. That field of history examines the historical development of cities and towns, and the process of urbanization. The approach is often multidisciplinary, crossing boundaries into fields like social history, architectural history, urban sociology, urban geography business history, and even archaeology. Urbanization and industrialization were popular themes for 20th-century historians, often tied to an implicit model of modernization, or the transformation of rural traditional societies.

In the United States from the 1920s to the 1990s many of the most influential monographs began as one of the 140 PhD dissertations at Harvard University directed by Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. (1888–1965) or Oscar Handlin (1915–2011). The field grew rapidly after 1970, leading one prominent scholar, Stephan Thernstrom, to note that urban history apparently deals with cities, or with city-dwellers, or with events that transpired in cities, with attitudes toward cities – which makes one wonder what is not urban history.

Colonial era and American Revolution

Historian Carl Bridenbaugh examined in depth five key cities: Boston (population 16,000 in 1760), Newport Rhode Island (population 7500), New York City (population 18,000), Philadelphia (population 23,000), and Charles Town (Charlestown, South Carolina), (population 8000). He argues they grew from small villages to take major leadership roles in promoting trade, land speculation, immigration, and prosperity, and in disseminating the ideas of the Enlightenment, and new methods in medicine and technology. Furthermore, they sponsored a consumer taste for English amenities, developed a distinctly American educational system, and began systems for care of people meeting welfare. The cities were not remarkable by European standards, but they did display certain distinctly American characteristics, according to Bridenbaugh. There was no aristocracy or established church, there was no long tradition of powerful guilds. The colonial governments were much less powerful and intrusive and corresponding national governments in Europe. They experimented with new methods to raise revenue, build infrastructure and to solve urban problems. They were more democratic than European cities, in that a large fraction of the men could vote, and class lines were more fluid. Contrasted to Europe, printers (especially as newspaper editors) had a much larger role in shaping public opinion, and lawyers moved easily back and forth between politics and their profession. Bridenbaugh argues that by the mid-18th century, the middle-class businessmen, professionals, and skilled artisans dominated the cities. He characterizes them as "sensible, shrewd, frugal, ostentatiously moral, generally honest," public spirited, and upwardly mobile, and argues their economic strivings led to "democratic yearnings" for political power.

Numerous historians have explored the roles of working-class men, including slaves, in the economy of the colonial cities, and in the early Republic.

There were few cities in the entire South, and Charleston (Charles Town) and New Orleans were the most important before the Civil War. The colony of South Carolina was settled mainly by planters from the overpopulated sugar island colony of Barbados, who brought large numbers of African slaves from that island. As Charleston grew as a port for the shipment of rice and later cotton, so did the community's cultural and social opportunities. The city had a large base of elite merchants and rich planters. The first theater building in America was built in Charleston in 1736, but was later replaced by the 19th-century Planter's Hotel where wealthy planters stayed during Charleston's horse-racing season (now the Dock Street Theatre, known as one of the oldest active theaters built for stage performance in the United States. Benevolent societies were formed by several different ethnic groups: the South Carolina Society, founded by French Huguenots in 1737; the German Friendly Society, founded in 1766; and the Hibernian Society, founded by Irish immigrants in 1801. The Charleston Library Society was established in 1748 by some wealthy Charlestonians who wished to keep up with the scientific and philosophical issues of the day. This group also helped establish the College of Charleston in 1770, the oldest college in South Carolina, the oldest municipal college in the United States, and the 13th oldest college in the United States.

By the 1775 the largest city was Philadelphia at 40,000, followed by New York (25,000), Boston (16,000), Charleston (12,000), and Newport (11,000), along with Baltimore, Norfolk, and Providence, with 6000, 6000, and 4400 population. They too were all seaports and on any one day each hosted a large transient population of Sailors and visiting businessmen. On the eve of the Revolution, 95 percent of the American population lived outside the cities--much to the frustration of the British, who were able to capture the cities with their Royal Navy, but lacked the manpower to occupy and subdue the countryside. In explaining the importance of the cities in shaping the American Revolution, Benjamin Carp compares the important role of waterfront workers, taverns, churches, kinship networks, and local politics. Historian Gary B. Nash emphasizes the role of the working class, and their distrust of their betters, in northern ports. He argues that working class artisans and skilled craftsmen made up a radical element in Philadelphia that took control of the city starting about 1770 and promoted a radical Democratic form of government during the revolution. They held power for a while, and used their control of the local militia disseminate their ideology to the working class and to stay in power until the businessmen staged a conservative counterrevolution.

trends in economic growth, 1700–1850

The new nation, 1783-1815

The cities played a major role in fomenting the American Revolution, but they were hard hit during the war itself, 1775-83. They lost their main role as oceanic ports, because of the blockade by the British Navy. Furthermore the British occupied the cities, especially New York 1776-83, and the others are briefer periods. During the occupations they were cut off from their hinterland trade and from overland communication. The British finally departed in 1783, they took out large numbers of wealthy merchants, resume their business activities elsewhere in the British Empire. The older cities finally restored their economic basis; growing newer cities included Salem Massachusetts ( which opened a new trade with China), New London Connecticut, andn Baltimore Maryland. The Washington administration under the leadership of Secretary of the treasury Alexander Hamilton set up a national bank in 1791, and local banks began to flourish in all the cities. Merchant entrepreneurship flourished and was a powerful engine of prosperity in the cities.

World peace only lasted a decade, for in 1793 a two-decade-long war between Britain and France and their allies broke out. As the leading neutral trading partner the United States did business with both sides. France resented it, and the Quasi-War of 1798-99 disrupted trade. Outraged at British impositions on American merchant ships, and sailors, the Jefferson and Madison administrations engaged in economic warfare with Britain 1807-1812, and then full-scale warfare 1812 to 1815. The result was additional serious damage to the mercantile interests.

Not all was gloomy in urban history, however. Although there was relatively little immigration from Europe, the rapid expansion of settlements to the West, and the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, open up vast frontier lands. New Orleans and St. Louis joined the United States, and entirely new cities were opened in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Nashville and points west. Historian Richard Wade has emphasized the importance of the new cities in the Westward expansion in settlement of the farmlands. They were the transportation centers, and nodes for migration and financing of the westward expansion. The newly opened regions had few roads, but a very good river system in which everything flowed downstream to New Orleans. With the coming of the steamboat after 1820, it became possible to move merchandise imported from the Northeast and from Europe upstream to new settlements. The opening of the Erie Canal made Buffalo the jumping off point for the lake transportation system that made important cities out of Cleveland, Detroit, and especially Chicago.

The first stage of rapid urban growth, 1815-1860

New York, with a population of 96,000 in 1810 surged far beyond its rivals, reaching a population of 1,080,000 in 1860, compared to 566,000 in Philadelphia, 212,000 in Baltimore, 178,000 in Boston, and 169,000 in New Orleans. Historian Robert Albion identifies four aggressive moves by New York entrepreneurs and politicians that helped it jump to the top of American cities. It set up an auction system that efficiently and rapidly sold imported cargoes; it organized a regular transatlantic packet service to England; it built a large-scale coastwise trade, especially one that brought Southern cotton to New York for reexport to Europe; it sponsored the Erie Canal, which opened a large new market in upstate New York and the Old Northwest. The main rivals, Boston Philadelphia and Baltimore, tried to compete with the Erie Canal by opening their own networks of canals and railroads; they never caught up. The opening of the Erie Canal made Buffalo the jumping off point for the lake transportation system that made important cities out of Cleveland, Detroit, and especially Chicago.

The Great Depression

Main article: Great Depression in the United States

Urban America had enjoyed strong growth and steady prosperity in the 1920s . Large-scale immigration had ended in 1914, and never fully resumed , so that ethnic communities have become stabilized and Americanized. Upward mobility was the norm, in every sector of the population supported the rapidly growing high school system. After the stock market crash of October 1929, the nation's optimism suddenly turned negative, with both business investments and private consumption overwhelmed by a deepening pessimism that encouraged people to cut back and reduce their expectations. The economic damage to the cities was most serious in the collapse of 80 to 90 percent of the private sector construction industry. Cities and states started expanding their own construction programs as early as 1930, and they became a central feature of the New Deal, but private construction did not fully recover until after 1945. Many landlords so their rental income drained away and many went bankrupt. After construction, came the widespread downturn in heavy industry, especially manufacturing of durable goods such as automobiles, machinery, and refrigerators.

Huts and unemployed men in New York City, 1935.

One visible effect of the depression was the advent of Hoovervilles, which were ramshackle assemblages on vacant lots of cardboard boxes, tents, and small rickety wooden sheds built by homeless people. Residents lived in shacks and begged for food or went to soup kitchens. The term was coined by Charles Michelson, publicity chief of the Democratic National Committee, who referred sardonically to President Herbert Hoover whose policies he blamed for the depression.

Unemployment reached 25 percent in the worst days of 1932-33, but it was unevenly distributed. Job losses were less severe among women than men, among workers in nondurable industries (such as food and clothing), in services and sales, and in government jobs. The least skilled inner city men had much higher unemployment rates, as did young people who had a hard time getting their first job, and men over the age of 45 who if they lost their job would seldom find another one because employers had their choice of younger men. Millions were hired in the Great Depression, but men with weaker credentials were never hired, and fell into a long-term unemployment trap. The migration that brought millions of farmers and townspeople to the bigger cities in the 1920s suddenly reversed itself, as unemployment made the cities unattractive, and the network of kinfolk and more ample food supplies made it wise for many to go back. City governments in 1930-31 tried to meet the depression by expanding public works projects, as president Herbert Hoover strongly encouraged. However tax revenues were plunging, and the cities as well as private relief agencies were totally overwhelmed by 1931 men were unable to provide significant additional relief. They fell back on the cheapest possible relief, soup kitchens which provided free meals for anyone who showed up. After 1933 new sales taxes and infusions of federal money helped relieve the fiscal distress of the cities, but the budgets did not fully recover until 1941.

The federal programs launched by Hoover and greatly expanded by president Roosevelt’s New Deal used massive construction projects to try to jump start the economy and solve the unemployment crisis. The alphabet agencies ERA, CCC, FERA, WPA and PWA built and repaired the public infrastructure in dramatic fashion, but did little to foster the recovery of the private sector. FERA, CCC and especially WPA focused on providing unskilled jobs for long-term unemployed men.

The Democrats won easy landslides in 1932 and 1934, and an even bigger one in 1936; the hapless Republican Party seemed doomed. The Democrats capitalized on the magnetic appeal of Roosevelt to urban America. The key groups were low skilled ethnics, especially Catholics, Jews, and blacks. The Democrats promised and delivered in terms of beer, political recognition, labor union membership, and relief jobs. The city machines were stronger than ever, for they mobilize their precinct workers to help families who needed help the most navigate the bureaucracy and get on relief. FDR won the vote of practically every group in 1936, including taxpayers, small business and the middle class. However the Protestant middle class voters but turned sharply against him after the recession of 1937-38 undermined repeated promises that recovery was at hand. Historically, local political machines were primarily interested in controlling their wards and citywide elections; the smaller the turnout on election day, the easier it was to control the system. However for Roosevelt to win the presidency in 1936 and 1940, he needed to carry the electoral college and that meant he needed the largest possible majorities in the cities to overwhelm the out state vote. The machines came through for him. The 3.5 million voters on relief payrolls during the 1936 election cast 82% percent of their ballots for Roosevelt. The rapidly growing, energetic labor unions, chiefly based in the cities, turned out 80% for FDR, as did Irish, Italian and Jewish communities. In all, the nation's 106 cities over 100,000 population voted 70% for FDR in 1936, compared to his 59% elsewhere. Roosevelt worked very well with the big city machines, with the one exception of his old nemesis, Tammany Hall in Manhattan. There he supported the complicated coalition built around the nominal Republican Fiorello La Guardia, and based on Jewish and Italian voters mobilized by labor unions.

In 1938, the Republicans made an unexpected comeback, and Roosevelt’s efforts to purge the Democratic Party of his political opponents backfired badly. The conservative coalition of Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats took control of Congress, outvoted the urban liberals, and handed the expansion of New Deal ideas. Roosevelt survived in 1940 thanks to his margin in the Solid South and in the cities. In the North the cities over 100,000 gave Roosevelt 60% of their votes, while the rest of the North favored the GOP candidate Wendell Willkie 52%-48%.

With the start of full-scale war mobilization in the summer of 1940, the economies of the cities rebounded. Even before Pearl Harbor, Washington pumped massive investments into new factories and funded round-the-clock munitions production, guaranteeing a job to anyone who showed up at the factory gate. The war brought a restoration of prosperity and hopeful expectations for the future across the nation. It had the greatest impact on the cities of the West Coast, especially Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.

See also

• Urban history
• Urbanism

Further reading

• Abbott, Carl. "Urban History for Planners," Journal of Planning History, Nov 2006, Vol. 5 Issue 4, pp 301–313
• Callow, Alexander B., Jr., ed. American Urban History: An Interpretive Reader with Commentaries (3rd ed. 1982) 33 topical essays by scholars
• Chudacoff, Howard et al. eds. Major Problems in American Urban and Suburban History (2004)
• Ebner, Michael H. "Re-Reading Suburban America: Urban Population Deconcentration, 1810-1980," American Quarterly (1985) 37#3 pp. 368-381 in JSTOR
• Engeli, Christian, and Horst Matzerath. Modern urban history research in Europe, USA, and Japan: a handbook (1989) in GoogleBooks
• Frisch, Michael. "American urban history as an example of recent historiography." History and Theory (1979): 350-377. in JSTOR
• Gillette Jr., Howard, and Zane L. Miller, eds. American Urbanism: A Historiographical Review (1987) online
• Glaab, Charles Nelson, and A. Theodore Brown. History of Urban America (1967).
• Goldfield, David. ed. Encyclopedia of American Urban History (2 vol 2006); 1056 pp; excerpt and text search
• Handlin, Oscar, and John Burchard, eds. The Historian and the City (1963)
• Lees, Lynn Hollen. "The Challenge of Political Change: Urban History in the 1990s," Urban History, (1994), 21#1 pp. 7–19.
• McManus, Ruth, and Philip J. Ethington, "Suburbs in transition: new approaches to suburban history," Urban History, Aug 2007, Vol. 34 Issue 2, pp 317–337
• McShane, Clay. "The State of the Art in North American Urban History," Journal of Urban History (2006) 32#4 pp 582–597, identifies a loss of influence by such writers as Lewis Mumford, Robert Caro, and Sam Warner, a continuation of the emphasis on narrow, modern time periods, and a general decline in the importance of the field. Comments by Timothy Gilfoyle and Carl Abbott contest the latter conclusion.
• Mohl, Raymond A. "The History of the American City," in William H. Cartwright and Richard L. Watson Jr. eds., Reinterpretation of American History and Culture (1973) pp 165–205, overview of historiography
• Nickerson, Michelle. "Beyond Smog, Sprawl, and Asphalt: Developments in the Not-So-New Suburban History," Journal of Urban History (2015) 41#1 pp 171–180. covers 1934 to 2011. DOI: 10.1177/0096144214551724.
• Schlesinger, Arthur M. "The City in American History," Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1940) 27#1 pp. 43-66 in JSTOR influential manifesto calling for an urban interpretation of all of American history
• Schlesinger, Arthur M. The rise of the city: 1878-1898 (1933), A social history
• Seligman, Amanda I. "Urban History Encyclopedias: Public, Digital, Scholarly Projects." Public Historian (2013) 35#2 pp: 24-35.
• Shumsky, Larry. Encyclopedia of Urban America: The Cities and Suburbs (2 vol 1998)
• Taylor, George Rogers. "The Beginnings Of Mass Transportation In Urban America." Smithsonian Journal of History (1966) 1#2 pp 35-50; 1#3 pp 31-54; partly reprinted in Wakstein, ed., The Urbanization of America (1970) pp 128-50
• Wakstein, Allen M., ed. The Urbanization of America: An Historical Anthology (1970) 510 pp; 37 topical essays by scholars

External links

• H-URBAN, daily email discussion group on urban history
• Gilbert A. Stelter, "Introduction to the Study of Urban History" (1996)
• The Urban History Association
• Journal of Urban History