We’ve all seen old photos and films of the Lower East Side at the turn of the 20th century: the teeming masses of  immigrants struggling to adjust to a strange new life in America.

Their travails in sweatshops and factories was well chronicled. Tragedies like the horrendous 1911 fire at the Greenwich Village blouse factory known as the Triangle Waist Company that cost the lives of 123 women and 23 men made international headlines.

But less is known of  how the denizens of Manhattan’s Old Fourth Ward around City Hall …

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5718/

…spent their spare time.

In 1916 the New York Bureau of Municipal Research decided to investigate this question.

The study, a very thorough affair, was seeking to discover what the adults and children of the neighborhood did inside and outside the home and what forms of entertainment were available to them. The plan of attack consisted of 38 different assignments, with data collected either through onsite observations, interviews, questionnaires, or good old fashioned shoe-leather research of available city data.

When creating the assignments, the Bureau noted the data to be collected,  the source and how it was to be used. For instance, one of the desired data sets was the length of a workday for a worker and what time he or she went home. The data would be used to indicate the amount of time that people had available for recreation. The source of the data would be a questionnaire.

The easiest assignments involved researching the census and other published data readily available through City Hall or public libraries. Through them the Bureau was immediately able to ascertain such things as population density of the neighborhood, which stood at an average of  245 persons per acre (although the density ranged widely from 98 per acre south of Chambers Street to 383 north of it.) Of the entire population residing there, statistics also showed that 16% were illiterate.

The study required members of the Bureau to blanket the neighborhood to uncover all available options for recreation. Churches, dance halls, clubs, even health centers were scoured to find out as much information as possible. The researchers sought a wealth of information: including reputation of the venue (usually established by asking the officer on the beat), its hours and the type of drinks available.

Even children inside the schools were not safe from the prying inquiries of the Bureau men who created a 43-question questionnaire for children to fill out. As an incentive, children got school credit for their efforts. “By arrangement with principals and teachers part may be substituted as classroom work in English.” The questions covered almost all aspects of the children’s lives and included such questions as “What is the name of your gang or club?”

The resulting reports from field work painted a rather stark picture of the recreational options available to the residents of the Fourth Ward. In a report with the provocative title “What Would You Do Without Money?” Morris R. Werner, a staffer who was assigned to interview nurses, wrote:

“As soon as a man gets home from work, which is in the average case about seven-thirty in the evening, he doesn’t call for his slippers, as English novelists are in the habit of making their characters do, but he sits down at the table with his wife and children and eats. He usually prays before he eats, but he eats. Then the family reads the one newspaper which the head of the family has bought. As the families are for the most part Hebrew in their faith in the Fourth Ward of the City of New York, the Jewish papers have a tremendous circulation. ”

Any entertainment to be had was to be derived outside the home – in parks or in Coney Island during the summer. Werner pessimistically noted that the wages of the people were so low that they “cannot even buy a copy of the New Republic.”

He ended the report almost apologetically that he could not say more on the recreation available in the home.

“… there is very little to tell about home recreation, since the occupants of the home get out of it as soon as they can, or go to bed as early as they can. The women get no time at all for recreation, because they have to earn a living, cook, and take care of the children. The children go to school, play on the streets, and use the libraries, and the Educational Alliance. The young people people work, use the libraries, use the streets, and go to bed. The adults work, read, and go to bed.”

Many of his conclusions were seconded in another field report by Howard W. Palmer who wrote “Although abject poverty does not prevail in the district known as the Old Fourth Ward, yet the home conditions are such as to make it practically impossible to get any recreation within the home.”

The average family, Palmer discovered, had six children living in what usually amounted to no more than three rooms. Overcrowding made home activities all but impossible, forcing families to seek recreation outside the home.

His research also indicated a severe lack of playgrounds, so much so that until a child turned 14 he or she almost never went more than a block and a half to play. Playgrounds were so small that they could barely accommodate the children living in their immediate surroundings. A child living even a few blocks away would have no chance of finding an available spot.

And guess what? The problem is still with us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/arts/design/mayor-de-blasios-plan-for-parks-needs-to-grow.html?ref=arts&_r=0

 

Robert Fulton Cutting (1852-1934), known as “the first citizen of New York,” was born into a prominent New York family.

His grandfather, Robert Cutting, was Robert Fulton’s partner in the ferry from Brooklyn to New York, and Robert Fulton Cutting  and his elder brother, William, started the sugar beet industry in the U.S. in 1888. Another illustrious ancestor was Leonard Cutting, a former president of King’s College, later Columbia University, who took over when his predecessor fled the city during a smallpox outbreak and, according to an authoritative history of the college, delivered a “masterly” valedictory oration in Latin at the college’s first graduation, in 1758.

After himself graduating Columbia, R. Fulton Cutting became involved in various municipal campaigns in the city, often speaking from a box in Union Square. One of the main organizers of the Citizens Committee, Cutting was offered the support to run for mayor of New York. Instead, he threw his support behind Seth Lowe, president of Columbia, who promised to tackle the corruption of Tammany Hall.

Cutting was also an early advocate of public baths for the poor, a cause he shared with Dr. Simon Baruch, father of Bernard, the philanthropist, FDR adviser and benefactor of City College and the City University.

Realizing early on that a reform mayor was not enough, Cutting thought that good citizens could not act intelligently about their government’s decision without knowing all the facts. For the facts to be reliable and valid, they would need to be presented by an impartial and detached organization. His first attempt came in 1897 with the formation of the Citizens Union of which Cutting became president. Its goal was to study political issues, develop policies, and then aggressively present its findings to the public in support of a cause, especially at election time. A division of the Citizen’s Union was the Bureau of City Betterment whose work in support of the main group was becoming increasingly important; so much so that in 1906 the division became an independent entity and was given the name of the Bureau of Municipal Research.

Cutting and his friends became the largest contributors to the new organization for the next decade, ensuring that it would survive and thrive during its infancy, and attracting other eminent deep-pocketed donors.

He also became president of Cooper Union and chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Opera. He owned fabulous mansions.

http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2012/03/lost-1899-r-fulton-cutting-mansion-no.html

Cutting died at 82 in 1934 and was mourned by all New York. Eulogists sang his praises: “He did work for the people’s pocketbook, as it was often remarked, but it was not a selfish, negative economy that he was ever urging, concerned as he was in abolishing public waste and official graft.”

The Institute of Public Administration honored Cutting with a large framed portrait (above) that hung in the Institute’s library and greeted researchers who came to mine its treasures.

In the second half of the 19th century, New Yorkers certainly horsed around. Indeed, one of the biggest problems faced by municipal planners of a rapidly growing metropolis was the staggering number of horses needed to keep the city running. The problem of cleaning up after the herds presented a logistical nightmare.

Growing mechanization at the turn of the 20th century eventually solved this problem but horses did not disappear overnight. In the first two decades of the 20th century horses were still to be found employed throughout the city. In fact, the company that styled itself “the largest horse supplier in the world” at the start of the last century was located on the spot where Baruch College’s William and Anita Newman Vertical Campus now stands. (Before that it was a livestock market.)

In 1913 the New York Bureau of Municipal Research decided to investigate how many horses were still being used by various city agencies, sending out a brief questionnaire with the following questions:

1 – What is the location of all stables owned or leased by the department, with their capacity of horses and the number of horses at present stables in each?

2- How many horses does the department own, and to what use are they put?

3 -How many horse-drawn vehicles are owned by the department – where are they housed and to what use are they put?

4 – What is the average number of horses, drivers and vehicles hired per day – the average time each is worked – and the rate of hire? Are they hired regularly all the year or only at special times?

5 – Do you do your own shoeing?

The result showed that almost every single city department and agency either still owned or regularly hired horses for various jobs. The largest horse owner was the Department of Street Cleaning (the future Department of Sanitation) which had 2,823 horses in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. (Queens and Staten Island often came under a different administrative structure.)

The Fire Department was  second, employing 1,400 horses for fire engines and transportation, in addition to hiring around 60 horses from outside vendors.

The Police Department was a distant third with 620 horses engaged in various services. Interestingly, the Police Department indicated it had recently lowered the amount paid to have its horses shod, going from $39,933.5 in 1911 (around $959,000 today) to $26,917.66 by 1913 (around $646,000 today).

The majority of the departments, however, owned far fewer horses. For instance, the Board of Education had only two stables – one in Queens and one in Brooklyn, with a total of six horses. The horses were used for such tasks as delivering laundry and bread (and sometimes truant students) to the Brooklyn Truants’  Home, as well as carting manure, plowing and harrowing on one of the school farms.

One of the Home’s more notorious denizens was Salvatore Lucania, better known as the mob boss Lucky Luciano, who did a stint there in 1911.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Luciano

Bellevue Hospital had 14 horses in its main location of which one was used for a hearse, one for the transfer wagon, one for laundry truck, one for store truck, 8 for ambulances, and 2 for the pathological laboratory. At least one horse at its Fordham location was used for transportation between the subway and hospital for visiting physicians and other individuals.

Some departments owned almost no horses and contracted out. For instance, the Department of Public Works owned a single horse which was used by the inspector in charge of roads and viaducts. It would however hire horses on a daily basis if needed.

Similarly, the Bureau of Weights and Measures had no stables or horses but employed two horses and wagons at a rate of $5 a day (around $120 today). Because the average daily rate was around $3.50, the department felt that it needed to justify the steep price tag in its answer to the Bureau of Municipal Research, noting that only a single inspector was present in each wagon but was required to carry between 1,000 and 2,000 pounds of test weight. Lifting the weights required a great deal of effort and the driver of the cart was paid extra to assist the inspector. If not for this expedient, noted the Bureau, a second inspector in the cart would entail an additional annual salary expenditure of $1,200.

Interestingly, the only city agency that did not indicate the employment of any horses was the New York Public Library. It  used two electric delivery wagons to transact its business. How green was my Library!

The appearance of the New York  Bureau of Municipal Research in the first decade of the 20th century transformed the way government operated in the United States. By the 1910s there were various other bureaus around the country attempting to duplicate the original model. But what made them a success? We will attempt to answer that in what follows.

When it was formed in 1906, the Bureau was composed of reformers and idealists who wanted to reform the government and the group quickly attracted others of the same mindset. The core of the group was soon made up of a small ensemble  of experts in their respective fields – from educational institutions to police affairs – and a larger group of staff whose task was to assist the experts.

Preaching what they practiced, the Bureau introduced the same type of policies within its institution that it wanted to propagate throughout government departments and made sure that the policies were strictly adhered to.

A project would usually begin with assemblage of all available information on the topic which would be done in a number of ways. If the project involved a single department or was based in New York, a staffer would be sent to that particular entity to observe the way it functioned, collecting as much material as possible before reporting back to the Bureau. In one extant assignment sheet the employee was cautioned:

“Please exercise care in approaching the department officials, arrange to submit constructive and other criticisms to them for their comment, cooperate in every way with the work which they are doing, interfere as little as possible in the regular routine – but bring back information.”

If the department in question would not cooperate, the Bureau would compile its information based on observation, but most were more than ready to assist, resulting in stacks of documentation detailing everything from the way pets were taxed to how residents connected their houses to city sewers.

For larger, multi-city or multi-department projects, the Bureau pioneered the use of questionnaires which would become one of the most common methods of studies even in our day.

After information was collected by questionnaires or other means, it was analyzed and the Bureau would create a thorough report describing the issue in a neutral manner, frequently but not always stating its own unbiased opinion. Frequently charts would be included in the reports. These charts detailed, sometimes for the first time, the complicated relationships within departments and city agencies, allowing for greater efficiency and laying plain the hierarchies of power.

The more popular or important reports would be published for a wider circulation, spreading the Bureau’s message around the country.

Luther Gulick was a frequent doodler throughout his lifetime. Below are just some of the doodles we found thus far while processing the collection.