Themes in American History

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“There Will Be Blood”

The film ‘There Will Be Blood’ directed by Paul Thomas Anderson was released on 2007. Two of the main actors in this movie were Daniel day lewis and Paul Dano. This movie reflects upon the industrial aspects of New York City during the early 20th century. The film itself explores the world of oil mills and it’s effects on in the world. Similarly, the construction of buildings and new industries and new businesses in New York City parallels this idea.

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Twentieth-century New York City public schools were characterized by their ability to educate the “whole child” and they had to act as parents, psychologists, doctors, and social workers in order to adjust to the changes of the city. The influx of immigrants in the late nineteenth-century introduced a class of the “immigrant child” – a child who was of the lower class, who did not exhibit the proper health etiquette, and who was certainly not American. Progressive reformers quickly saw the potential of delinquency that these children possessed and through their efforts, public school education became “a fostering, a nurturing, and a cultivating process”. The main purpose of the beneficial changes to the school system was to counter-act the poor living conditions of these children and to ultimately turn immigrant children into American citizens.(www.fordham.edu)

                              On the other hand in the South of Boston around this time School attendance, particularly in rural areas, tended to be erratic, and Virginia had one of the lowest rates of attendance in the nation in the years before World War II. Black schools, however, were so underfunded that most of them were overcrowded.Many whites did not want blacks to become educated, fearing they would challenge white supremacy and not be content with jobs working in the fields or in domestic service. Black schools therefore received far less financial support than did white schools. Black schools had fewer books, worse buildings, and less well paid teachers. Ramshackle, segregated schools marked black Virginians with a stigma of inferiority and the status of second-class citizenship that they would have to endure throughout their lives. (www.vahistorical.org)                                                                       Courtesy Library of Congress.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&hl=en&hl=zh-CN&v=S4aPi0ZgN0E

This clip is made by a Youtube user, vietnamgal and been uploaded in 7-26-2008.

The Great Depression was triggered by the stock market crash in 1929. This tragic event soon took effects on every American city, and led to heavy unemployment. New York City was been hit the hardest. By 1932, about 25 percent of the population was jobless, and most of them were concentrated in cities like New York and Philadelphia. New York City had one million unemployed, and Philadelphia had 298,000 people unemployed. In 1933, the unemployment of New York City reached 30 percent. The same year, the congress created FERA (Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which distributed $500 to help the country, and 42 percent of the fund went to the five heavily urbanized cities including New York and Philadelphia.

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The 1920s represented a time of cultural and social advancements among the people of NYC especially for women.  This was a time when women (usually white middle/upperclass women) were seeking independence and wanted to step out of the shadows of their male counterparts.  The term flapper was used to describe a style/fad for  woman who would challenge the traditional norms of women during that era.  Flappers wore their hair in a bob, smoke and drank, drove automobiles, sought employment outside of domestic work and spoke about sex in a casual manor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGdN9cG0Ybw

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While New York City was the capital of many kinds of consumer goods manufacturing such as clothing, furniture and so forth, Detroit became automobile capital in twentieth century. By that time Ford, General Motors and Crysler were considered as three big automakers. When industry moved out of the urban city, most of white collar workers come after to be near their jobs. At the same time, the development of automobile industry brought enormous number of immigrants and migrants into Detroit in beginning of twentieth century. One another reason that people started to move to suburban is many american car  companies produced cheaper one, so that even low wage job workers could afford to get one. While people in New York City tended to  use public transportation , for instance subway or streetcars, people in other suburban started to drive a car to the city for work.

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The 1920s was a great period of change for Americans. The post-war prosperity and Government policies lead to an economic boom. Immigrants fled into the country to escape Europe’s post-war poverty and with the nineteenth amendment giving women the right to vote, American society was going under a big change. Like all change, these changes which took place in such a short space of time attracted the growth of many opposing parties. Such groups were the anti-flirt league, who opposed revolutionary young women, known as ‘flappers’. Perhaps the most recognized opposing group at the time was the Ku Klux Klan, which had been revived recently and gained immense membership throughout the early twenties when it reached five million members. The Ku Klux Klan is a violent hate group who opposed Blacks, Catholics, Jews, immigrants, unionists, and bootleggers in the 1920s to name a few. The reason for the Ku Klux Klan’s uprising in the 1920s is that people feared the change that was taking place in America, and they wanted to band together to try and uphold ‘American White Supremacy’.

In Chudacoff’s book, the author mentions the historian Kenneth T. Jackson estimated that half the Klan’s membership “lived in cities of over fifty thousand people”. Also he states that Chicago, with an estimated fifty thousand Klansmen, “contained the largest operation in the country.”(Chudacoff 235).  Moreover, Jackson states : “At the time, the “Invisible Empire” was known for anti-Catholicism as much as for white supremacy and anti-Semitism, and Chicago had an abundance of all three targets. The Chicago Klan drew its primary support from lower-echelon white-collar workers, small businessmen, and semiskilled laborers, all of whom resented the growing influence of persons who did not meet the Klan’s definition of “one hundred percent American.” (encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org)

On the other hand, in New York City, the Klan was not as violent as cities in the south and in rural places: “In cities, Klansmen often turned to politics rather than using violence and display to achieve their goals.” (Chudacoff 235). One example of the ways of the Klan to try to achieve its goals was in the Democratic National Convention: “The Klan issue played a significant role at the bitterly divisive 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York City. The leading candidates were Protestant William Gibbs McAdoo, with a base in areas where the Klan was strong, and Catholic New York Governor Al Smith, with a base in the large cities.” (Wiki)

Bibliography

Jackson, Kenneth T. The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930. 1967.

Encyclopedia Chicago History.org

Cover of sheet music for the song "We Are All Loyal Klansmen"-It is copyright 1923 by William Davis, William M. Hart, Charles E. Downey, and E. M. McMahon

Ku Klux Klan parade in New York State, 1924

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Photo taken by a young Spaniard Javier Saracho in New York City in 2007

In 1898 New York City became a consolidated city of five boroughs. Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island and The Bronx combined all together became 5 boroughs of New York City. The consolidation helped to bring the people together. Construction of subways allowed people to travel easier to boroughs like Brooklyn and Queens. Construction of Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges further connected new consolidated city. On other hand, Boston was unified from the beginning. During the early 20th century Boston focused on creating new roads which extended from the city core to the suburbs. The highway system was a priority. New York focused on connecting the boroughs and making sure all five of them are easily accessible from anywhere around the city.

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The race to the sky

New York City is known as the  city of massive skyscrapers that can be recognized by anyone all around the world. But which city in the U.S was competing against NYC for the race towards the sky? Chicago is one city that was late to compete against the Chrysler Building and the Empire State building but now holds the Sears Towers as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. The first skyscraper was built in NYC (1873) called the Equitable Life Building which stood at a total of 8 stories high. Chicago then took the lead in 1889 with the Auditorium Building which was 17floors high. The early twentieth century officially marked the start of the Race to the Skies with the construction of the Chrysler Building on 42nd St. The building was built in an architectural style known as Art Deco and is still profoundly recognized today for its artistic design both portrayed in its interior and exterior parts of the building. The building was completed in 1930 as the worlds tallest building beating New York’s very own 40 Wall Street building as well as the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Chicago at this time had no competition whatsoever against New York City in the Race to the Skies. New York was competing themselves for the world’s tallest building and exactly a year later after the completion of the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building was completed as the Worlds Tallest building. Chicago finally caught up in the race by racing forward to complete the Sears Towers in 1973 as the World’s Tallest building surpassing the World Trade Center. It took Chicago 40 years to finally surpass NYC. The Sears towers is no longer called the same name but now called the Willis Towers. Although Willis Tower is the world’s tallest building, NYC still has proclaimed as the world’s champion in the Race to the Skies because of the amount of buildings that was built in the early 1900’s with the title of “skyscrapers”. The Empire State building as well as the Chrysler building as well as the fallen WTC building were masterpieces of NYC as well as an internationally recognized piece of history.

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The Great Depression began with the crash of the New York Stock Exchange of October, 1929 and it rapidly spread worldwide.  The market crash manifest the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, deflation, diminishing farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth. In the Great Depression the American dream had become a nightmare. What was once the land of opportunity became the land of desperation. Unemployment rose and wages fell for those who continued to work. Thousands of banks and businesses failed and millions were homeless.

In Virginia the economic impact of the Great Depression was less harsh. While the state suffered industrial reverses, unusual unemployment, and much hardship, Virginians did not experience, in the same degree, the extensive hardship that the rest of the nation endured. Virginia had a delayed reaction to the financial catastrophe. The state’s manufacturing did not include the heavy production of steel and automobiles that sustained huge national losses. A major part of Virginia’s industry was consumer oriented; producing the sort of necessities that even a poor person could not do without, such as food and clothing. While these buffers eventually broke down, they minimized the depression’s effect on Virginia and contributed to its more rapid recovery by 1935. Virginia was fairly better off than most other states during the depression, with industrial production and employment rising in the last 10 years.

Depression: Breadlines: long line of people waiting to be fed: New York City

(Picture from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.)

Depression: Breadlines: long line of people waiting to be fed: New York City: in the absence of substantial government relief programs during 1932, free food was distributed with private funds in some urban centers to large numbers of the unemployed. (Circa February 1932)

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Although cities such as New York and Cleveland could boast of hundreds of miles of sewer pipe as early as the 1890s, most cities simply dumped their collected sewage into downstream waterways. In the first decade of the twentieth century many cities still provided unfiltered water that was unfit to drink. Between 1900 and 1910 many cities added sand filters and chlorination devices to their water systems resulting in a marked reduction in disease. The extensive water systems of American cities permitted widespread installation of flush toilets and bathtubs in American homes at the beginning of the twentieth century. Provision of such admirable municipal systems led outlying areas to seek annexation by central cities to obtain these services.

original source: Sylmar, Los Angeles, 29 September 2008

For example, New York City and Los Angeles began the water supply system around the same period of time in the 20^th century. The first Los Angeles aqueduct system was under construction in 1908. The Catskill Aqueduct, part of the New York City water supply system began in 1907. Also, Later improvements in sewer and water systems during the Great Depression and after the Second World War, combined with the application of effective filtration and chemical treatment systems, led to America’s reputation for having the safest public water supply systems in the world.

Courtesy of New York Public

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As you will see in this video, there is a new fire system in the borough of Brooklyn, which was supposedly the best in the world. It was a complete state of the art Fire Telegraph system. With this system it took only six seconds for the firefighters to be informed about a fire. At that time this must have been considered as the most modern thing possible in the firefighting industry. There was tremendous pressure on the city fire officials to improve after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and there was a huge improvement over the next decade. In the 1920s, the fire department had the resources, what at that time they thought were the best in the world. Now when we look at the video, we may not think so and actually I did chuckle a time or two as well. But then I think about the fire fighters I seen in the “Gangs of New York” movie and quickly realize the progress this industry has made since.

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In the 20th century, suburban domesticity became the idealized life for Americans. Many servicemen returning from World War II had difficulties finding a home in the cities. The Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the GI Bill, made home loans available to these military veterans; this act, along with mortgage insurance allowed the suburban real estate development to increase. Populations of the suburbs grew ten times faster than the city populations. Since 1950, Chicago and New York City had lost population while their suburban rings grew by 117 percent and 195 percent respectively (Chudacoff & Smith, pg 223).

Suburban Legend

Levittown, NY, gets its name from its builder, the firm of Levitt & Sons, Inc. founded by William Levitt. William Levitt is considered the father of modern suburbia. Levittown was the first truly mass-produced suburb and is widely regarded as the archetype for postwar suburbs throughout the country (Wikipedia).

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=684n8FO68LU

The vedio shows the life styles in 1920s. Throughout the vedio we could see how the life style has been changed during 1920s. People began to have more places that get along and entertain with each other. The music had great impact during this time and the inventions of mass media brought fresh shock to the people. People began to have more leisure time and the business people also took adventage mass media to introduce their products which encourage people to buy more things. The economics during 1920s also boosted up.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkqz3lpUBp0&feature=grec_index

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The Flapper in 1920s had a big impact on the economic growth. Flapper is an young woman who was short skirt, has short hair, listens jazz music, wears excessive make-up, drinks a lot, treating sex in a casual manner, smokes, and flouting social and sexual norms. This flappers were more liberate than their previous generation.The cosmetic industry flowed as women  used make up in large number.They were engaged in the active city nightlife. However, women in small city or town were conservative but also attracted to these flapper’s fusion.

Here some about flappers in 1920s

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The 1920s, also known as “The Roaring Twenties” was a great time period for the United States. New York City, especially, flourished with many inventions as well as political, cultural, and structural changes. New York was becoming more modern than ever, it was finally being known as the American New York. With all the other changes in the city, there was a big change occurring in Harlem, New York. Many African-Americans were migrating from the South and entering Harlem. New York was experiencing an explosion of culture. The African Americans brought a huge change culturally. The black population brought with them new ideas and had a great influence in poetry, literature, music, and photography to New York. Jazz, a style of music brought by the African American community, became the musical tradition in this time period. Also, with a great boom in the black population in New York, African American officials were now finally being elected.

Musical Influence

The Harlem Renaissance

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Starting from the mid nineteenth century, the populations of New York and Chicago were growing exponentially. Consistent with such urban development there has been a widespread increase in wealth and the desire to improve living conditions. It had become obvious that the formless growth of the city is neither economical or desirable, and that overcrowding and traffic congestion had paralyzed the every day functions of both cities. Chicago, in common with New York, realized that it was time to bring order out of the chaotic growth that its diversified populations brought. As a result, in 1906 the Commercial Club of Chicago along with Daniel Burnham, a gifted architect and an American planner, came up with the Plan of Chicago. The plan included the building of the park system, lakes, beaches, gardens and public squares as well as expanding transportation and areas available for public recreation.

The video attached shows that Burnham has also designed some of the most famous buildings in New York city. Among them is the flatiron building, located on 23rd street and Broadway, which is only a few blocks away from Baruch college. However, the biggest project in his career was the Chicago’s world fair.

Thus, one of the similarities of urban development in 20th century between New York and Chicago was the city planning and architecture; which sometimes involved the same people working on the projects of each city. Perhaps no other metropolis was more immediately affected by the influence of New York regional planning efforts than Chicago, where civic leaders initiated designs of the best plans for architectural and infrastructural improvement, of which Daniel Burnham was a leading example.

Source: The film is produced by The Archimedia Workshop in consultation with Kartemquin Educational Films, 2007

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CREDIT: Gottscho, Samuel H., photographer. "The Empire State Building. From south," 1934.

Courtesy of "Chicago and Its Makers" (Chicago: Felix Mendelsohn, 1929).

Skyscrapers offered visual proof of progress in twentieth-centuries cities, skyscrapers. Corporate offices, along with banks, law offices, and advertising agencies that served them, now towered over downtown streets. Chicago’s 36-story Tribune Tower, and New York’s 102-story Empire State Building represented the reorientation of downtown space in the transition from industrial to corporate city. Chicago tribune tower construction started in 1923 and completed in 1925 is 462 feet tall.  When the Empire State Building opened on May 1, 1931, it was the tallest building in the world – standing at 1,250 feet tall. This building not only became an icon of New York City, it became a symbol of twentieth century man’s attempts to achieve the impossible.

Source: New York Documentary directed by Ric Burns

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During the 1920s, entertainment was being established in New York City. Especially in Harlem, where music and the arts came to life. Similarly, New Orleans also had a music break through. Many talented African Americans came out to night clubs and bars to show off their talent in singing and playing instruments. Music from New Orleans influenced New York’s culture, and entertainment world. Jazz brought up a mix of other creative innovations with in the communities it touched.  Here is a video showing how Jazz influenced New Orleans and New York. Jazz served as a gateway outside of their work, so they can relax with other people and enjoy the music.

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/30143-assignment-discovery-american-jazz-age-video.htm

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