Section 6-2

Urbanization

Urban Opportunities

• Urbanization- growth of cities, mostly in the regions of the Northeast and Midwest.

• Americanization Movement- designed to assimilate people of wide-ranging cultures into the dominant culture.

Americans Migrate to the Cities

• Skyscrapers- Tall steel framed buildings. The Home Insurance Building in Chicago was built in 1885 (ten stories). First Skyscraper in America.

• Louis Sullivan- No one contributed more to the design of skyscrapers. (Chicago)

Urban Problems

Six Major Urban Problems• Housing

• Transportation• Water

• Sanitation• Crime• Fire

Urban Problems

• Housing:-row houses- single family dwellings that shared side walls with other

similar houses. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu9A7zUE_fU

-Tenements- multi-family urban dwellings.

City Life• Poor families

struggled to survive in crowded slums living in tenements.

Hine, Lewis W. NYC tenement 1910

• Tenements were overcrowded, dirty and oftentimes had no windows, heat, or indoor bathrooms.

Jacob Riis, 1889 “Lodgers in a Bayard Street

Tenement, Five Cents a Spot"

Urban Problems

• Transportation:-Mass Transit- Transportation

systems designed to move large numbers of people along fixed routes.

-Streetcars-San Francisco (1873)-Subway-Boston (1897)

Urban Problem

• Water:-As late as the 1860’s many cities

had grossly inadequate piped water.-Disease- Typhoid Fever, Cholera-Filtration (1870’s)-Chlorination (1908)

Urban Problems

• Sanitation:-Manure piled up on the streets-Sewage flowed through open gutters-Factories polluted the air and water-Scavengers- private contractors

hired to sweep the streets.-Sewer lines and sanitation

departments (By 1900)

Urban Problems

Crime:-First full-time police force- NYC

(1844)-To small to impact crime.

Fire:-First paid fire department- Cincinnati (1853).-Automatic sprinkler (1874).

Machine Politics

• Political Machine- an informal political group designed to gain and keep power in the cities. Came about partly because cities had grown much faster than their governments.

• Party bosses- (City Boss) Those in charge of their respected political machine.

Machine Politics

• Graft- getting money through dishonest or questionable means.

• George Plunkitt- One of NYC’s most powerful party bosses; defended honest graft. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bnN9SZlLkg

• William “Boss” Tweed- Leader of Tammany Hall, the NYC Democratic political machine. Very corrupt!