Themes in American History

I asume most of the classmates use subway as their major transportation to either go to school, work, shopping, etc. It surelyapplies to most of the New Yorker today. In the 20th century, one of the many aspects that improved in the New York City was the transportation. In 1904, the subway system started to operate underground, managed by the private company Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT). The IRT was bought by the New York City in 1940, and the subway system was operated under the city’s operation. The subway system in Boston was also improving in the 20th century. The Tremont Street Subway was operated in 1901, the first actively operated subway in the United States. Because of the additional capacity and methods of the transportation, the both subway systems improved the transportation speed and cleaned up the mess and delays on the streets. The subway system is now very essential for most people in the both cities, and still can improve its system to avoid any problem with the transportation.

"Bell Mouths Under Tremont Street- Boston Subway" from nycsubway.org

"The New York Subway Souvenir" from nycsubway.org

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One aspect of New York City development during the twentieth century was the building of the skyscrapers that have become a symbol of the City’s skyline. This all began with the construction of the Empire State Building, which was completed in 1931. A 102-story landmark in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, the Empire State Building, a name derived from the nickname of New York, stands 1,250 feet tall, and was the tallest building until the World Trade Center was erected in 1972. During the twentieth century, the construction of skyscrapers also began to develop in cities around the United States, comparably in Chicago with the erecting of the Willis Tower, commonly known as the Sears Tower. Completed in 1973, the Tower is 108 stories, 1,451 feet tall, and is the tallest building in the country. Towards the end of the twentieth century, the Sears Tower, John Hancock Center (also in Chicago) and the World Trade Center in NYC all vied to be the tallest building in the country. The Sears Tower eventually won in 1982 when two antennas were installed on top of the Tower, bringing its height to 1,707 feet.

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During the 1920’s, urbanization took place on a wider front than even before. While, New York was famous as the most commercial and creative city in the world, Florida was enjoying rapid economic growth, and Miami was becoming known as a tropical paradise, stirring the interests of investors from across America. It was the time of wild real estate speculation known as Real Estate Boom of the 1920’s. During this time, the stock market was moving forward at an extremely fast pace and many investors were becoming quite wealthy. As the boom gained speed, residential and commercial lots were sold and resold several times during a day, and prices spiraled. Celebrities and tourists flocked to the area, land sales increased astronomically and as a result land prices went up. Miami prospered during the 1920’s with the increase of population and infrastructure, but weakened after the real estate crash and the Great Depression.

Sources: Chudacoff 177; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_land_boom_of_the_1920s ; http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/crises/forgotten.html

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An aerial shot of Manhattan that spotlights the newly constructed wall of public housing on the East River -- Lillian Wald and Jacob Riis -- and the middle-class private city at the right, Stuyvesant Town. Original Source: New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), circa 1949.

In the twentieth century, public housing was one aspect of the development in cities in the United States. Public housing in the United States was dedicated for the poor, low-income people, and for slum clearance. In New York City, the first public housing project was built in 1935.

At the beginning, the public housing projects in the United States were welcomed by many working-class whites as well as blacks. Public housing was highly demanded and was not only provided for blacks. In some cities, such as Chicago, the government allocated the poor of different races carefully into different apartments whose location matched the racial composition of that area. For black, there were projects in black communities, and for white, there were projects in white communities. There were also areas there racial composition was mixed.

However, in the late 1940s, this racial allocation seemed to be hard to maintain. As more and more blacks applied to public housing and more and more white looked for alternatives in private market, the government had to fill the public housing units with increasing amount of blacks, rather than let the units vacant. In Chicago, the black population of the Frances Cabrini Homes had reached 40 percent by 1949, the double of the original 20 percent limit. The percentage of blacks continued to increase and reached 85 percent by 1959. This was the same in New York City. The white population of public housing in New York City dropped from 66 percent to 25 percent during the 1950s. Since then, public housing became as a label of impoverished black residents, and even became a way of segregation. (Chudacoff, 233)

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Image depicts the idea of the quota laws set forth during the 1920's in the United States. Original Source: American Isolationism Cartoon, 1921 (Library of Congress)

During the 1920s many American cities saw quota laws that limited or completely stopped a group of people from entering into the United States. One of the cities that was affected by these quota laws was NYC which saw a great decline of immigration during the 1920s. The congressional acts of 1921, 1924, and 1929 limited greatly the amount of immigrants coming from southern and eastern Europe places where the majority of immigration came from to NY (Chudacoff & Smith 206). On the other hand these laws did not limit the immigration coming from the Western Hemisphere therefore, during the 1920’s the majority of the immigrants entering the country where Mexicans. While some of them moved up to some of the northern cities like Chicago and Detroit many of them resided in southwestern cities. For example during this decade Mexicans where a little more than 50% of the population in El Paso, a little less than 50% of the population in in San Antonio and 20% of the population in Los Angeles (Chudacoff & Smith 206). This influx of Chicanos provided a large body of labor as they worked in steel mills, tanneries, meat-packing industries, automobile factories, etc. However these Chicanos were also faced issues in the United States such as segregation a negative aspect of their time here.

Image of a Mexican immigrant couple during the 1920's. Original Source: UC Berkeley Bancroft Library

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As result of the great depression, many factories in New York were forced to closed, and half of New York’s manufacturing plants were canceled.  New York City was one of cities in the united state which was hit in seriously.  People began to lose their jobs and their houses; they lived in streets as wanderers who had nothing to do.  In order to exist, they started to steal and rob from others. Criminal Rate had increased quickly. Some of them waited for the aids from government to help them overcome the hardest time.

At the same time, Agriculture in the Midwest also suffered. Most of the Great Plains, from Texas to North Dakota, had been turned into a “Dust Bowl.” This name referred to the stripped landscape that was a result of windstorms that blew away millions of tons of topsoil. The reason the windstorms made such an impact can be contributed to the over-planting and stripping of lands to plant wheat after World War I. Many farms were abandoned and many families relocated in California.

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The Empire State Building. Photo Taken by: Michael Kenna. March-May 26, 2008

In present day United States, cities are recognized by their skyscrapers. Especially the main cities in each state including Dallas, Los Angeles, Piladelphia, New York, Boston, Miami and Chicago. Skyscrapers were and are still used to help represent each city. In 1913, one of New York’s earliest skyscrapers called the Woolworth Building, which stood at 792 feet was completed and helped define the new downtown along with other skyscrapers (Chudacoff 93). During the construction of the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building already stood tall over midtown New York. The Empire State building was completed in 1930 and until this day, 81 years later, it still stands tall overlooking all of New York City and New Jersey. “By 1929, the editors of The American City could count 377 buildings at least twenty stories tall” (Chudacoff 183). Chudacoff also adds that almost half of those skyscrapers stood in New York, while Syracuse, Memphis and Tulsa boasted with their own share of skyscrapers (183). Cities that competed with New York City included Cleveland and Chicago. The skyscrapers revolutionized the looks in the cities. In Cleveland, there stood the 52-story Terminal Tower; Chicago was represented by the 36-story Tribune Tower and New York had its 102-story Empire State Building (Chudacoff 183). Despite the occupation of vast territories of the city, skyscrapers helped define the true value of its respective city.  Until this day, skyscrapers continue to tower in cities worldwide and they help define the city they’re located in. New York is the city most popular for its skyscrapers; however, many cities in the United States have their own beautiful, towering skyscrapers.

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The roaring twenties was the decade for growth and prosperity for many American cities. Some of the cities that flourish was New York City. It was leader of America modernity during the decade. While some cities grew and prospered, others stagnated.

Boston was one of those cities that had trouble during the 1920s. It entered the decade with a great disaster called the Boston Molasses Disaster. At 529 Commercial Street a huge Molasses Tank collapsed which crushed many buildings foundations and washed them away. Some trucks were hurled into the Boston Harbor. Some people were drowned by the Molasses also 151 people were injured. It took 187 000 man hour to clean up the mess but even though the aftermath led to many class action suits against the state. After the event Boston population stagnated, but the Molasses Disaster was just beginning.

As New York was gro

http://edp.org/molasses.htm

wing culturally, Boston experienced a police riot when they wanted to join the AFL union. This led to a clash between the Massachusetts militia and the police. Eventually Governor Calvin Coolidge suppressed the riot. But later this led to the unionization of police forces across the country. Then Boston decides to send anarchist Nicola Sacco and Bartolommeo Vanzetti to the electric chair which caused riots in most of Europe major cities.

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The twentieth century brought about great changes for America, especially in New York.  New York had shown great progression economically, culturally, and architecturally. There was growth in every aspect of New York life from informal to professional subjects. However, there were also changes taking place in other parts of America and not all of those changes ended as good as New York. One of those places are Miami, Florida. In the mid 1920s, Florida was facing a land boom. Miami was looked at as a tropical paradise and people from all over America decided to invest in land. There was easy credit access and the prices of the land were quickly increasing. This led to the brokers and dealers ordering large amounts of supplies and causing a big problem with the railroads, some of them even being stranded en route. In result, there was a negative news feed about investing in Florida real estate.

Although the railroads were messed up, there was still ways of transporting goods by waterway. That was used until 1926, when a ship sank at the base of the port, making impossible to reach by any other ships, killing every way of transporting goods at the time from January until May. But by that time, Miami was no longer a place people wanted to go. Later that year, Miami faced a huge hurricane and left most developers bankrupt. After facing another big hurricane two years later then the stock market crash in 1929, Florida was no longer looking like the paradise it had initially been. The great depression and the invasion of mediterranean fruit flies left Florida with a bad economy that wasnt fixed until after World War II. Although New York faced economic depression as well, nothing was as bad as having your resources cut off and actually ruining your land.

[caption id=”attachment_2086″ align=”alignnone” width=”600″ caption=”photo from "Miami: Then

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Boxing in the 1920’s was an exceptionally popular sport. Many fights during this era were social events with many thousands in attendance, both men and women. New York has an interesting and unique boxing history. Boxing was banned from America in the early 1900’s. In 1920 New York passed Walker Law, this law permitted boxing fights to be legal in New York. As other States witness what was happening in New York so they also legalized boxing. One of the state was Chicago, following agitation to end the ban, notably by the Chicago Tribune, boxing was legalized in 1926, upon which the illinios boxing commission was organized. Windy City Boxing Gym in Chicago was a gym where fighters trained in 2o’s. Similarly, in New York a famous gym from that era was stillman gym located near the old madison square garden in New York City. On December 14, 1920, Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight champion, appeared in the Madison Square Garden, knocking out Bill Brennam in the 12th round. Dempsey drew the largest crowds at Madison Square Garden in that period. Likewise, With big time bout back in the Windy city, Chicago also began to attract soem of the biggest names in Boxing. Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey met at Chicago’s soldier field for the title. The bout drew record heavy weight gate receipts of over $2.5 million with 104000 fans at soldier field where Gene Tunney defeat Jack Dempsey. 1920’s was the tougher society and the more it loves tough sports which was boxing. The following youtube video footage is the fight between Tunney and Gibbons during 1920’s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tN0nynRY9U

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Throughout the entire decade of the 1920’s the baseball teams in New York, the New York Giants and the New York Yankees, have dominated the sport of baseball by being a part of the World series nearly every year in the 1920’s. New York baseball has dominated every other baseball team during this time and it set the tone for New York being an aggressive and winning state in sports. This era also brought ought arguably the best baseball player of all time. Babe Ruth.

Babe Ruth as a New York Yankee

Source: Library of Congress

Author: George Grantham Bain

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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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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 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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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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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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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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