The History of American Urban Development Part 2: Early Industrialism (1840–1875 CE)
Well here we are again to talk about the history of urban development within the United States, with part 2 of this series (find part 1, here). Today we’ll be discussing American cities as they begin to transition into the Industrial Revolution. Over the course of which, the demographics, economies, and shape of American cities will forever be radically changed.
Now just to recap, when we last left off in 1840, American cities were generally located along the Eastern Seaboard with only a few having a population greater than 100,000. These cities were compact and known as pedestrian cities since they were designed on a human scale with walking being the primary method of transportation. This meant that cities were generally heterogenous with all manner of people living within close proximity to each other.
Of the existing US cities, there were two general axes by which goods flowed into the interior. The first ran up from New York City, along the Hudson, and connected the cities of Upper New York and the Great Lakes into a regional economy. The other axis flowed from Philadelphia and Baltimore across the Appalachians and into the Ohio valley.
With this in mind, let’s gather around the campfire and talk about the history of urban development within the United States from 1840–75.
What Changed?
In the 1840s, there were three major changes which helped transform the American economy from one based around trading and mercantilism to one of agricultural maturity and industrial infancy.
The most obvious of these changes is the introduction of industrial technologies and commercial organizations from Europe.
These new technologies and techniques were initially taken up in the largest cities, of the previous period. This is due to four factors:
1) Existing craft, wholesaling, and transportation industries providing a solid basis for such enterprises, offering an existing capitalist class who had the assets to invest into factories and machinery.
2) Large cities already had the tradition and skills associated with entrepreneurship, investment, and lending that were easily adopted for industrial development.
3) A ready supply of labour.
4) The largest markets available for the sale of industrial goods.
Second, improvements in agriculture not only increased productivity and brought more lands under the plow, but it displaced rural labour, fueling a trending of rural-to-urban migration. So not only could larger cities be supported but they were also being peopled by a formerly agrarian caste.
Lastly, beginning in the 1840s there was a massive flow of migrants from Europe. This began with the Irish in the 1830s/40s, grew in the 1850s with industrialization, attracting German, French, and Belgian migrants, Scandinavians by the 1870s, and finally Southern, Eastern, and Jewish Europeans by the 1880s/90s.
These three factors came together, and by 1875, there were more than 15 cities with over 100,000 residents (up from just 5 in 1840). The largest of these cities was New York, with a population of 1.3 million (up from 390,000). This was followed by Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis with between 350–450,000 residents, and then cities like Athens (Georgia), Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Manchester (New Hampshire), Providence, Rochester, and Syracuse with between 100–150,000.
As you may have noticed, more of these larger settlements are starting to pop up further inland, when in the previous era, all major settlements were located on the coastline. This is due to a pair of technologies which made it easier to penetrate into the interior of the continent and exploit its vast economic assets.
The first of these was the steamboat which increased the speed and freight capacity of river transportation, greatly improving the flow of products along major canal and river routes.
More importantly however, was the advent of the railway. The railway opened up the interior, penetrating deep into the western reaches of the continent, bringing vast quantities of food and natural resources to the burgeoning industrial centres of the Eastern Seaboard.
Initially, the steamboat and railroad worked in tandem, with rail connections unifying populated river ports to their immediate hinterlands. The goods from this hinterland would then be brought into the river port and shipped to larger markets via steamboats.
However, the railway did eventually begin to blossom in size, overcoming the need for river ports. In 1860, there were 30,000 miles of tracks in the United States and by 1890 this number had exploded to 164,000 miles. At the same time, this growth rapidly wilted the power of the once proud river ports and we begin to see cities such as St. Louis and New Orleans diminish in relative power. This is due to the railway providing a cheaper and quicker service, something which greatly benefitted industrial trade.
As the railway expanded westwards, it brought with it the American Urban System with settlements beginning to spring up deeper and deeper into the interior.
At the same time, the new demands of industrial technology also gave birth to four new types of urban settlements. This is due to certain forms of industrial enterprise requiring special locational requirements. These four new types include:
1) Power Sites: Locations which could meet the high energy demands of certain industries. Now in a period prior to electricity or coal-fired steam this power came from the movement of water. So, this led to a series of industrial towns popping up along the Fall Line of New England and the Eastern Margins of the Appalachians. Examples include, Allentown and Harrisburg, both in Pennsylvania.
2) Mining Towns: The new industrial economies required large amounts of coal and ore, which sponsored a wave of mining settlements. An example of such would be Norton, Virginia.
3) Transportation Centres: New settlements sprung up in strategic locations on the canal and rail networks of the United States. These were necessary in order to service and maintain the infrastructure necessary for such systems. An example of this would be Roanoke, Virginia.
4) Heavy Manufacturing Towns: These settlements were highly dependant upon the import of a large volume of raw materials, tying them to the source of these resources. A prime example of this would be Pittsburgh, which exploited its importance as a river port, wholesaling centre, and proximity to coal and iron veins in order to become the US centre of steel production.
With industrialization and the expansion of the railway we begin to see America grow from a nation of many loosely connected regional economies into a truly national one. This new system could benefit fully from the economies of scale that a continent-sized economy could provide.
The pork of Knoxville could now be speedily shipped to markets in New York and Boston, the steel of Pittsburgh to Chicago, or the tobacco of Richmond to Detroit and Columbus. This meant that regions could begin to experience a greater degree of specialization, increasing quantities and decreasing production costs for everyday goods. It is in this period that we actually begin to see the foundation of the Manufacturing Belt form within the Great Lakes region of the United States (and Canada).
Now with this brief oversight, of how the Industrial Revolution shaped cities and their alignment in the world, we can begin to look into what life was like within such cities.
A City Inverted: Life Inside of an Early Industrial City
Lands within early industrial cities were in high demand as factories, warehouses, shops, and offices competed viciously for the best and most accessible locations. Along with this, the railway also played a factor in this fight, using up urban land and cutting harsh lines through cities, radically altering the urban landscape and attracting stockyards, factories, and warehouses while repelling all but the lowest grade of housing. This isn’t even mentioning the vast stretches of land required in order to support the rail lines such as depots and stations.
This industrial development paired with the arrival of thousands of migrants, and a growing tension amongst labour and the capitalist class, creating a flight of the rich away from the central city that they had once eagerly inhabited. It is in this period that we begin to see the social stratification of urban society, where one’s address was now an indicator of their wealth and standing in society. No longer would the rich and poor be living side by side.
The rich were aided in their flight by the invention of a few key technologies which allowed for the spatial scope of cities to greatly expand. Horseback and foot were no longer the only means of transportation, as the horsecar and railroad allowed for the first generation of public transit.
The first horsecar service was established in New York City in 1829 and by the 1840s there would be several hundred such horse-drawn omnibuses in New York City, along with similar enterprises in Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Washington DC. With this technology, people could now commute upwards of 3–4 miles within a reasonable timeframe, greatly expanding the size of cities, creating the first wave of suburbs which developed along the stops of the omnibus network. This service, however, was very much an upper-middle class luxury, meaning only better-off families could afford it.
Beyond the horsecar, the railway was also important in expanding the size of cities. It allowed for a series of exurban residential developments just outside of larger cities to accommodate the demands of the upper-class citizenry attempting to flee urban squalor. The first of these were formed in the 1840s around Boston, followed by New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago in the 1850s, and all remaining large cities by the 1860s. These developments could be as far away as 12–15 miles from the city and were eagerly embraced by the wealthiest segments of society. By 1848, 20% of Boston’s business class lived in such settlements and by 1858, there were 40 trains carrying passengers daily between Philadelphia and its exurb, Germantown, and a similar number doing the same for Chicago and Evanston. However, this was strictly for the rich with only merchants, industrialists, doctors, and other wealthy elites being able to afford the ticket prices.
As you can see, this was no longer a city built around the scale of walking. Instead, we begin to see the first tendrils of urban sprawl as the influence of urban development could be felt more than a dozen miles away from the city centre.
Now, with the rich leaving, what replaced them in the central city?
That would be the infant stages of the Central Business District (CBD), known more traditionally as the downtown, a region of intense commerce and industry. This was aided, yet again, by the train which ferried ever larger crowds into the central city, allowing for it to be prime real estate for the hotels, restaurants, and stores needed to service them, along with the warehouses which used the rail for transportation.
This intense development was helped by other new technologies, including iron girders with curtained walls and passenger elevators which allowed for the construction of the first high rises and skyscrapers, greatly increasing the potential density of the CBD, allowing for a greater concentration of commerce.
I would also like to briefly mention how the English system of civil liberties impacted land use within this period. Under the English system, anyone could acquire land and hold it as long as they were willing to pay taxes upon it. This also allowed them to develop it as they saw fit, a philosophy reinforced by the Northwest Ordinance of 1784–87 and the US Constitution, which stated that no government agency could seize private land without the due process of law, a legitimate public purpose, and just compensation.
This meant that large tracts of urban land were held by private interests who could develop it as they saw fit. A system which was heightened within newer urban settlements.
To quote Sam Bass Warner’s, The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City.
“Those who had private capital, or who were bankers or agents of Eastern money, had an enormous advantage. Such men could purchase a whole valley, a promising townsite, whatever they wished. They could then sell part of it cheaply to settlers and retain large tracts and await the substantial price rise that would follow in the wake of the development of adjacent land.”
What this meant is that banks and speculators had a massive say in how lands were developed, an advantage compounded by the fact that they could control who they leant money to when such lands needed to be developed. For example, a settler may be able to afford a chunk of land but would require financial assistance in order to build a home or shop upon it.
Now where were the poor in these new American cities? The poor were relegated to the former homes of the wealthy, in the central city, which were now divided into cheap multiroom tenements. Of these, over half were in bad condition, left neglected by landlords who cut costs in order to keep rents cheap and returns on investment high. Yes, believe it or not landlords have a proud history of scumminess.
This meant that the rich had fled to the countryside and the poor sought refuge in the rapidly crowding cities, reversing the housing trends that marked the mercantile period.
Conclusion
Just to conclude, the industrial revolution, improvements in agriculture, and immigration allowed for the ballooning of US cities in terms of population, while new transportation systems made for greater connectivity between cities, transitioning the American economy into a truly national enterprise.
Within cities, the squalor of industrialization and immigration led to the retreat of the wealthy towards suburban and exurban developments, aided by improvements in urban transportation (horse-drawn omnibuses and the railway). In their place, the inner city was transformed into an arena of intense commerce known as the Central Business District. Meanwhile, the urban poor were moved into the formerly wealthy homes, which had been transformed into overcrowd multiunit tenements.
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