|
|
“Hurrying for the Train”
Nosegay resides in the suburbs. He is late this morning and Mrs. N. informs him that she hears the train in the distance. Mr. Nosegay rushes for the train, the dogs of the village accompanying him. A narrow escape, in which he receives some bruises and loses his hat and basket.Mr. N. having borrowed a cap of the brakeman arrives safely at the office. The hat and basket, having been found, are sent home. Terrible anxiety of Mrs. Nosegay. She hastens to the office where her joy at the safety of Mr. Nosegay knows no bounds.
The
light-hearted melodrama of this cartoon is based on one of the most
profound changes in American history: the rise of the
suburbs. When the cartoon was published in 1871, the vast majority
of Americans lived in small towns or on farms, with the nation's few
cities located primarily in the Northeast. Historians have
characterized urban areas prior to the late-nineteenth century as "walking cities" because their limited geographic size
allowed residents to walk to work, the market, stores, church, and most
destinations they frequented regularly. These cities were socially
and economically diverse, containing commercial and residential
buildings--as well as rich,
middle-class, and poor families--within only a few blocks of each
other. The population and number
of American cities grew, especially in the post-Civil War decades, as
European immigrants and rural migrants moved to the increasingly
congested municipalities. The establishment of horse-drawn (and,
later, cable or electric) street railroads
permitted
residents to travel farther in their daily routine. Businesses
followed the streetcar lines and increasingly established their
operations downtown or in other distinctly commercial districts.
Real estate developers trailed the tracks of streetcars and steam
railroads (as in this cartoon) in the opposite direction, building
residential neighborhoods (which historians term "streetcar
suburbs") on the outskirts of the crowded city.
These planned "sub-urban" communities provided spacious
houses and yards on broad, tree-lined streets, which contrasted
dramatically with the brownstones, apartments, or tenements standing
against each other on narrow streets in the compact cities. It was
the middle-class who could afford to move to the suburbs; and the
wealthier the new homeowners were, the farther out of the city they
could afford to purchase property. Suburbanization undermined the
socioeconomic diversity of the former "walking cities" by
segmenting the metropolis into concentric circles of wealth, from poor
residents in the inner city to wealthy homeowners in the farthest
suburbs. The comfortable middle-class status of the cartoon's main
character is indicated by his genteel name (a nosegay is a small bouquet
of flowers), his and his family's apparel, their employment of a maid
(lower-left panel), and his job as a business clerk in an investment
firm (center- and lower-right panels).
The construction of suburbs necessitated the expansion of utilities
and services, such as piped water and sewer, fire and police protection,
roads, and bridges. Those and other needs of the new communities
spurred a movement to bring professional standards to the occupations
of the service providers: architects, civil engineers, police,
firefighters, public health officials, and so forth. The
establishment and expansion of suburbs also resulted in the development
of more sizeable and populous metropolitan areas. Over the second
half of the nineteenth century, for example, Boston changed from a
merchant city of 200,000 to an industrial metropolis of 1,000,000 spread
over 10 miles and 31 towns.
New York City's status as the nation's leading port, immigrant depot,
financial center, and arts mecca, meant that it paved the way for
suburbanization. By the early 1830s, ferry service to Manhattan
allowed Brooklyn Heights to become the first commuter suburb in the
world. The ferry and railroad also served Llewellyn Park, New Jersey,
designed by architect Alexander Jackson Davis in 1852 as the first planned,
picturesque suburb, which provided a park-like setting of manicured
lawns, winding roads, and an open commons in the center. The development of the steam locomotive in the 1840s and
1850s encouraged the construction of Tarrytown, New Rochelle, and other
railroad suburbs. Westchester County, New York, became the nation's first major suburban
area, doubling its population in 1850-1870, 1870-1890, and again in
1890-1910. By the end of the nineteenth century, New York City had
more suburbs than any city in the world.
Robert C. Kennedy
|
|
|
