Themes in American History

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

Just as prosperity was visible during 1920s in the city through construction and rapid growth of industrialization, the economic crisis in twentieth century brought the great depression  in the U.S.; causing through the Stock market crash of 1929 until 1939, and unemployment that resulted poverty throughout the nation. The working class people and upper class people were widely affected and failed them in terms of raising their life standard and led them into the depression. It was the period of both unemployment and poverty, and increased government involvement in the economy.The most serious problem was an unemployment that heavily fell on unskilled, the young, and color people. In Chudacoff’s book, he states that between 1929 and 1933, both Mayors of Detroit and New York City preferred spending available money and borrow for relief even by reducing other municipal services of the city. This decreased the expenditure on parks and recreation departments in 795 cities and towns by 50 percent. Likewise Chicago was one of the hardest hit cities in American by the Great Depression because of the city dependence on manufacturing and crisis that existed the stock market crash. An unemployment in Chicago was near 50 percent after the four years of crash which led thousands of people to move and gather for social protest.

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In Savannah and the Low country of Georgia, a legacy of decorative art among African Americans, including carvings, canes, quilts, baskets, furniture, and grave decorations, continued into the early twentieth century. During the 1930s and early 1940s, a period in which regional cultures were emphasized in literature, music, and the arts, the less conventional works of southern, self-taught artists, especially African Americans, were exposed to a wider audience and received greater appreciation. Trained artists in the Savannah area often collected the work of self-taught artists. (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org)

Street Scene, Savannah

Margaret Augusta Murphy, the daughter of Savannah artists Lucile Desbouillons and Christopher P. H. Murphy, painted the watercolor Street Scene, Savannah between 1930 and 1940.

 By 1914 New York City had become the center of Modernist art. Characteristically, modernist art has a tendency to abstraction, is innovative, aesthetic, futuristic and self-referential. It includes visual art, literature, music, film, design, architecture as well as life style. It reacts against historicism, artistic conventions and institutionalization of art. In this period, art was not only to be dealt with in academies, theaters or concert halls, but to be included in everyday life and accessible for everybody.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_modernism)

http://www.chicagomaroon.com/2008/5/30/new-york-changes-before-sloans-eyes

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Collection of the New York Public Library, Maps of New York City and State

One aspect of New York City development during the twentieth century to another American city was passing zoning ordinance in 1916 (Chudacoff 214).  As stated on the NYC.GOV website, “In 1915, when the 42-story Equitable Building was erected in Lower Manhattan, the need for controls on the height and form of all buildings became clear setting the stage for the nation’s first comprehensive zoning resolution”. To deal with population density and growing Skyscrapers the concept was born. According to NYC.gov, “The concept of enacting a set of laws to govern land use and bulk was revolutionary, but the time had come for the city to regulate its surging physical growth. The groundbreaking Zoning Resolution of 1916, though a relatively simple document, established height and setback controls and designated residential districts that excluded what were seen as incompatible uses”. New York was the first city to pass this ordinance and became a model for other cities in the United States. It took additional eight years for other major cities to establish zoning regulations in order to control heights of buildings and fixed density limitations (Chudacoff 214).

. [Chicago : Chicago Zoning Commission, 1922]. maps : photocopies ; on sheets 80 x 100 cm. Blue line prints.”]In 1922, for example, the Chicago Zoning Commission, in order to facilitate the creation of Chicago’s first zoning law, compiled the first land-use map of Chicago. This picture is one of the  Government Maps of Chicago in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s

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By the 20th century, Philadelphia had become one of the world’s largest industrial centers. But pollution, disease, and inadequate housing alarmed city officials. Unlike the high-rise tenements of New York. The three-story tall bandbox houses were often hidden from street view. Local government was slow to react. By 1920 most of south Philadelphia was filled with block after block of row and twin houses. unlike New York has the public place like central park and recreation park. philadelphia only has a few public squares and playgrounds provided off-street recreation and open green space.

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NYC has most modern subway system. In 1904, first subway was built on a route from city hall to Bronx.  After that number of extensions occurred in following years. From 1913 onwards, city signed contracts with private companies for the growth of subway lines. In1940 city got independent subway system after acquiring BRT and IRT(private companies). It was the latest and most innovative subway development of that time. Chicago “L” subway system is the second longest rapid transit system in total track mileage in United States.  After 1911 the Chicago line came under the control of president of Chicago Edison electric utility. He knew that trains were the city largest consumer of electricity. He improved the whole system including free transfers and through routings. He also bought three other Chicago electric railroads and ran them via “L” tracks.    

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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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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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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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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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