Urbanization in New York City
New York City, as we know it today, is one of the most diverse and popular cities in the country. It is also one of the biggest tourist attractions in the U.S., being home to a number of famous nationally landmarks, such as The Statue of Liberty, Central Park, and the Empire State Building just to name a few. Along with New York City being incredibly popular, both to live in and visit, it is also the most densly populated major city in the nation. Socially, politically, and economically, New York City is one of, if not the, most influential cities in the country. And a large part of why New York City is so influenctial in our countries culture is directly due to the rapid urbanization it garnered during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era of America.
The Gilded Age was a time in America's history where morals grew increasingly less important, and money grew increasingly more important. During this period, New York City was run by robber barons and their businesses, which included individuals such as John D. Rockefeller with his Standard Oil Trust, and J.P. Morgan and his banking house. These two were a large contributing factor in making New York City the epicenter of America's national and international businesses.
While the economic transformation of New York City during the latter years of the 1800s is incredibly impressive, New York City also changed physically. The Gilded Age welcomed new technological advancements in transportation with an elevated railway system, new buildings were constructed, as well as the introduction of electricity into homes and professional businesses. The construction of the famous Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883, allowing all five boroughs to finally be connected, which made New York City the largest city nationally and the second-largest city globally. The Statue of Liberty, as mentioned previously, turned into Amerca's symbol of freedom. This impressive landmark created and gifted by the French in 1886 represented the immigrants from other countries that New York City was the gate into the U.S..
New York City may have favorably benefitted from the rapid urbanization of the Gilded Age in many ways, but there are also those who suffered because of it. How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis famously documented the horrible living conditions of New York City slums in the 1880s. One of the books main focuses is on the tenement buildings, and their horrible living conditions, that the residents of these slums lived in. Tenement buildings were not orignially created for apartment living, as Riis states, "nothing would probably have shocked their original owners more than the idea of their harboring a promiscious crowd; for they were the decorous homes of the old Knickerbockers, the proud aristocracy of Manhattan in the early days."3 Due to the fact that these tenement buildings had a different original use, they had to be transformed to accomodate for the incredible amount of immigrants and poor New York City residents that needed a place to live, "'large rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones, without regard to light or ventilation, the rate of rent being lower in proportion to space or height from the street; and they soon became filled from cellar to garret with a class of tenatry living hand to mouth, loose in morals, improvident in habits, degraded, and squalid as beggary itself."4
In terms of our standard of living today, these tenement houses are a major downgrade comparatively. After they were transformed into apartment style buildings, it was determined that, "'they were not intended to last. Rents were fixed high enough to cover damage and abuse from this class, from whom nothing was expected, and the most was made of them while they lasted. Neatness, order, cleanliness, were never dreamed of in connection with the tenant-house system,'" "'until the entire premises reached the level of tenant-house dilapidation, containing, but sheltering not, the miserable hordes that crowded beneath mouldering, water-rotted roofs or burrowed among the rats of clammy cellars.'"5 These living conditions for immigrants and the poor is the ugly truth of rapid urbanization in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Cities grew in population too quickly to accomodate for all of its new residents, so ethics and basic living conditions were thrown out the window, and tenement buildings were created to provide individuals the absolute bear minimum. These living conditions were inhuman, and the exact opposite of what immigrants were expecting when moving to America.
Footnotes
[1] Detroit Publishing Co., Publisher. New York City, interior of tenement house. United States New York New York State, None. [Between 1900 and 1910] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2016795745/.
[2] A tenement house in Mulberry Street / C.A. Vanderh..f.Inspection of fruit in New York markets, by order of the Board of Health / drawn by R. Lewis. New York, 1873. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/98513779/.
[3] Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York; with Illustrations Chiefly from Photographs Taken by the Author. United States: University of Michigan Library, 2011.
[4] Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York; with Illustrations Chiefly from Photographs Taken by the Author. United States: University of Michigan Library, 2011.
[5] Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York; with Illustrations Chiefly from Photographs Taken by the Author. United States: University of Michigan Library, 2011.