Chapter 20: Sections 2 and 3:The Growth of Cities and City Life

Chapter 20: Section 2: The Growth of Cities

• 1850: NYC was only American city with more than 500,000 people

• By 1900, more than six cities did

• Immigrants, people moving from rural areas, and black people from the South fueled urbanization

• Chicago: 30,000 people in 1850 to 1.7 million in 1900.

• Chicago's location by the Great Lakes and railroads made it great for immigrants.

​Growth of Urban Areas

• Mass Transit- public transportation designed to move many people.

• Suburbs- residential neighborhoods outside of downtown areas

• 1897-first subway opened in Boston...1904-first in NYC

• Mass Culture- leisure and cultural activities shared by many people.

• Boom in publishing

• Linotype machines... by 1900 more than 3000 newspapers in country

​Getting Around

• Joseph Pulitzer...New York World...largest paper in country

• William Randolph Hearst- publisher of NY Journal...added a color comic strip...other newspapers followed

• Department Stores- or giant retail shops began to show up in large cities

• Earliest was Marshall Field in Chicago...customers can also eat while shopping

• Creation of amusement parks...Coney Island

• Frederick Law Olmsted- designed Central Park and other national parks. (Prospect Park in Brooklyn, U.S. Capital Grounds.)

​ New Ideas

​ Section 3: City Life

Urban Problems

• Sanitation problems: no good system for collecting trash, so garbage piled up outside of apartment buildings.

• Unsafe tenements: landlords were not required to fix their tenements or maintain safety standards.

Urban Problems

• Air pollution caused by oil refineries, steel mills, and other factories.

• City help: new sewage and water purification systems improved city sanitation.

• City help: full-time firefighters and police officers were hired.

Improving City Life

• Lawrence Veiller: Helped lead the effort in improving conditions in tenements.

• Charity Organization Society (COS) sponsored an exhibit of photographs and maps graphically showing the conditions of New York tenements.

Improving City Life

• 1901: New York State Tenement Act required building to have better ventilation and running water.

• Private organizations aided the poor.

• Settlement houses - neighborhood center in poor areas that offered education, recreation, and social activities.

Improving City Life

• 1886: Charles B. Stover and Stanton Coit established the first settlement house in the United States, the Neighborhood Guild in the Lower East side of New York City.

• 1889: Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr moved into a run-down building in a poor Chicago neighborhood and turned it into Hull House, the most famous settlement house of the period.

Hull House in Chicago

Hull House

• Focused on serving immigrant families serving over 2,000 a week providing English classes, day care, cooking and sewing classes.

• Families could participate in art classes, plays and sports.

Hull House

• Florence Kelley: important reformer at Hull House.

• Florence Kelley visited sweatshops and wrote about the problems which prompted lawmakers to take action.

• Florence Kelley became the state's chief inspector and helped enforce laws.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWiHtUymEhw