Antiques

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2004 by Wendell Garrett

I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
Because I see that world nested in nests of water-bays, superb,
Rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships and steamships, an island
  sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender, strong,
  light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies....
City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!
City nested in bays! my city!
Walt Whitman, "Mannahatta," Leaves of Grass, 1891-1892
(final "authorized" or "deathbed" edition)

Like Whitman's poem, nineteenth-century New York was a city of extremes and excess. For Whitman it was a city of "spires and masts," of "numberless crowded streets," and "high growths of iron." In these words he defined the characteristics of New York's landscape that became those of the modern city everywhere.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, almost all American cities were compact, limited by how far one could walk. They were focused on harbors or riverfronts, since water transport fueled commerce. Business buildings clustered by the docks, and churches, hotels, and shops were built nearby. Residential buildings and craftsmen's shops formed an outer ring. Later in the century heavy industry began to move in around the railroad connections on the outskirts of the city.

Just as walking limited the horizontal span of the early city, technological limitations restricted the height of the buildings. Only after the 1850s was the elevator invented, and iron, rather than masonry, used for structural support. And it was not until the 1880s that the first skyscrapers began to rise. In New York, bridges and steam ferries allowed the city to expand beyond Manhattan, with the result that by 1860 Brooklyn was the third most populous city in the United States, surpassing Boston. The spread of the railroad stimulated bridge building techniques in cast iron. This changed with the steel Brooklyn Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world when it opened on May 24, 1883. Wide enough for two rail lines, two double carriage lanes, and a footpath, it became a symbol of national growth.

Between 1860 and 1920 the number of people living in cities of eight thousand or more increased from a little over six million to more than fifty-four million. This was perceived both as a threat to American civilization and a triumph for the expanding nation. Slums rubbed shoulders with flourishing commercial enterprises and cultural institutions. Among the boosters was Willard Glazier who wrote in 1883 of New York: "It is the great monetary, scientific, artistic and intellectual centre of the western world."

The rapid urbanization of the United States after 1860 involved profound changes in the nature of the city and the pattern of life in organized communities, both urban and rural. Simplicity and lack of differentiation in American life gave way to specialization, complexity, and the dictatorship of the clock. Nonetheless, the city seemed to offer the promise of a richer, fuller, and less demanding way of life than the family farm. Instead the new city dwellers found poverty, disease, and crime.

The advent of the automobile dispersed and fragmented the urban scene, and those who could afford to move created the suburbs. The cities became pitiful giants, immobilized like Gulliver in Lilliput, which is one of the major domestic problems in the United States today. Despite massive outlays of money and energy, the revival of the American city remains uncertain.