All of you today. And as we have already discussed in this class, we know that the early american republic, which we are roughly defining as the period between the end of the American Revolution and the election of andrew jackson, was a period of possibilities and of problems. It was a time in American History when many of the Big Questions about what the nation would look like, we would hold power, and what kind of spaces and values we define that country remained very much in question. And so last class we talked about americas transition to capitalism. And we talked about how this Economic Transformation was linked to changes in the labor market, in banking systems, and the rise of corporations. And we look at how these transformations were particularly affecting for young women, like mary paul, the worker in the mills in the 1840s. So today we are going to continue our conversation about how economic changes affected americas urban centers, its cities. And we will examine all questions about the national built environment, and access to material resources, like goods, land, and, money came to a in americas growing urban landscapes. But along the east coast, in places that are familiar to us, but also in growing midwestern cities between the 17 90s and the 1830s. So with these things in mind, i thought we could start off today with a little bit of a comparative story that illuminates some of the ideas that we will talk about in more detail. Particularly how americans in the Early National period encountered, commented on, and experienced urban infrastructural growth and change. In the 1810, a young woman by the name of Margaret Van Horn white, set out on the 500 mile journey from connecticut to the ohio territory. And she is going with a few travel companions and friends. Margaret was born in 1790. And she was the descendant of a prominent line of connecticut theologians, and yell College President s, and she grew up in an age defined by the uncertainties and the possibilities of the nation. Yet, margarets sixweek journey west left a lot to be desired. The group stage interview tech dirty taverns, encountered scores of other wagons making the journey west, and struggled to navigate their route, especially in the allegany mountains. And if any of you have ever written a ground to be dramatic journal well on a long triple being frustrated by the people you are traveling with maybe you will emphasis empathize with markets. What margaret wrote we crossed the longest hills on the worst right i ever saw. Two or three times after riding a little distance on a turn hike we found it fenced across and where obliged to turn into a void. It was almost impossible to proceed. In appear to me, we had come to an end of the habitable part of the globe. She commented on infrastructure. I guess i could say, for the purposes of this class, at this moment, the lack of infrastructure. Roads and turnpikes, poor waning finding, margarets journey west was not great. She concluded by mentioning, the reason so few people are willing to return from the western country, not that the country is so good, because the journey is so bad. Now, if we Flash Forward almost 20 years later, we encountered yet another woman making the same journey west. Francis trollope. An english novelist and writer. She moved to the United States to join a utopian community. She later traveled around the country in the 18 twenties and wrote about what she experienced. She returned back to england and published the book, domestic matters of the americans in 1832. Francis, when her journey west, follow the same route that margaret did. This time, instead of a bumpy and unpaid road, she traveled along the national road, the first federally funded road in america. Connecting east and midwestern cities. Francis wrote, the whole of this mountain region, there are 90 miles of which the road passes is a garden. I really can hardly conceive of a higher enjoyment than a two are among the alec gideon mountains. Noble rose higher and higher all that is noblest in nature was joined to all that was sweetest. Here she loses an illusion to the roads, through the alps. What do you guys notice about the differences between margaret and franciss journeys . Particularly franciss journey. What is different here . Yes . Other observations . She was allowed to enjoy beauties of nature rather me frustrated. Absolutely, yes. We see how much had changed for these two women commenting on the same stretch of country. 20 years apart. By the mid 18 twenties the population had nearly tripled to test test test 12 Million People from what it had been in 1784. The nations land area had more than doubled, more states have been added to the union, there were new roads, steamboat routes, canals, and more. All of which helped to bring Economic Development to the west and spurred the growth of cities. What exactly was causing this dramatic transformation in American Life . This week, we are going to explore the roots of these changes and how they took place in American Cities. We will do that through the lens of three questions. First, why was the Early National period such a transformative moment in american urban growth. Next, how did historians know whats cities looked like in this period and whats physical episodes do they have to understand urban change overtime . Lastly, we will ask, how did infrastructural change affect the socioeconomic dynamics of the urban experience . We will begin with our first question. To understand how americas Early National cities changed, we first need some grounding in what these places were like in the colonial period. In the 17th and 18th centuries, european powers as we know, including the english, the spanish, the french, the dutch established cities along the Atlantic Coast of north america. These replaces intended to primarily serve the merchant and imperial interests of european empires. These early status served as important crossroads for the movement of people and goods. The colonial economy flowed first and foremost through its urban centers. Including things like the slave trade. Has historian colin paul away reminds us, european powers were certainly not the first real great largescale urban settlements in the americas. Native americans had also created monumental towns and cities long before the european showed up. The native american urban frontier was a space of cultural contact and exchange. Colin callaway also writes, he says, while christians were erecting gothic cathedrals in the 12th and 13th century europe, indian people in the Mississippi River basin were constructing temple mounds, creating ritual speeches and demonstrating their power through building. We know that indians continue to visit to cities in america and in europe well into the 18 in 19 centuries. They went as diplomats, invited guest, and of course, curious travelers. With the rise of British Imperial power in the 18th century, we see a series of Anglo American cities emerge into the forefront of the north american landscape. By 1775, boston, newport, new york, philadelphia, and charleston or the largest urban centers in british north america. They had populations ranging anywhere from 12,000 people to 20,000 people. Youre probably starting to see this by looking at the statistics. Those cities are forming an important part of the colonial economic experience. They are certainly not the norm for ordinary folks. Only about one in 20 people actually live in cities in the colonial period. These were small places compared to the large scale metropolises that will emerge in the 19th century. Of course, what we think of, when we think a big cities today. A number of factors shaped the growth of cities in the Early National period. There are far too many to explore in just one lecture. We are going to focus in on a few key points. We will talk about the market revolution, we will look at westward migration, and we will examine changes to the labor market. Then, we will shift gears, we will zoom in on the physical evidence of cities to talk about their impact on peoples everyday lives. In the Early National period, American Cities were shaped in large part by what historians have come to call the market revolution, we talked about this a little bit last class. This revolution was not something drawn out by bloodshed or by war. Rather by innovations and transportations and technology and factories. Changes to the labor market. Of course, accompanying economic and infrastructural growth. Though historians disagree about when the market revolution officially started, some argue that we should be talking about this much earlier in the 18th century. They all agree that the market revolution fundamentally reoriented americans relationship to the broader economy. Especially the act of buying and selling goods and earning a living. Cities are the places where these changes are felt and seen most clearly. What is the market revolution trying to address . One of the biggest pieces that the market revolution is trying to address is the terrible inefficiency of the colonial market. In the 1700s in the colonial period, it was incredibly inefficient to transport goods from city ports to rural markets. It cost the same amount of money to ship a good just 30 miles inland than it did to bring the good from europe in the first place. As you can imagine, this economic and efficiency would have frustrated many americans, particularly people with interest in the economic sector in business. Many people began to funnel that frustration into innovative action. By the 1830s, a number of innovations arrived to make the movement of people, goods, and money much more efficient. Specifically the rise of turnpikes and canals. In the early 1800s, congress authorized the construction of the national road. A paved road from maryland to the old northwest that they extended a few times in the 1820s and 1830s. Eventually terminating in illinois. This was the same road that francis traveled on in her journey west that we saw earlier today. In 1825. Cities like new york celebrated the opening of the 363 mile long erie canal. The system of canals and hudson river transport that connected new york city to growing upstate new york cities and towns like syracuse, buffalo. This also issues in a major migration of new england hours into upstate new york and into ohio as they are able to reap the benefits of these Economic Trends in deeper western areas. You can see on this map behind me here, the roads and canals crisscrossing across the country. What is jumping out to you about the number of Transportation Networks by the 1840s . What do you see . In contradiction to what we previously learned, now were going to travel more towards the ports, north carolina, even down toward alabama and mississippi, rather than being tied to the coastline, allowing for greater transportation and access to people of all backgrounds and demographics. When else do you see . Charles . It goes farther west. All the way to green bay, the iowa territory, not that long ago people were complaining about going to ohio. Absolutely, no mark twain about going to ohio. Other things . What about cities . Any city named jumping out . What do you notice . A lot of the core cities like boston in new york, philly, they are all connected by the highway. But also new cities like chicago and new orleans, they are also connected. Yeah, excellent. We had these Colonial Cities being connected to one another in a more concrete way through road and rail transport. We also have the emergence of new western cities, excellent. Jordan . Off that point, now theres an ability for cities to pop up in the middle of the country, no long along seaport. They are able to travel a lot easier than through the water. Great, great, excellent. The Economic Transformations as we have seen drastically alter their relation of to western lands and spurred the growth of these new cities today. Americans were lured west by transportation and communication. Between 79 in 1840, a period of just 50 years about 4. 5 Million People crossed over the appalachian martins to settle in new western areas. Peoples migratory roads typically followed one of three pathways. With this movement came the creation of New Territories and states. They would move from the southeastern states to the new cotton kingdom of alabama, mississippi, louisiana and arkansas. They would go from the upper south and into southern ohio and indiana and illinois. And from new england into new york. In places like ohio, illinois, michigan, and wisconsin. At the heart of all of these migrations sit cities like cincinnati they form the center of these growing trade and exchange networks. You also see growth happening on the east coast. These trade and Transportation Networks connecting east and west spurred the growth of some other cities like baltimore on the coast. It really comes into its own on the Early National period. Urban populations in the United States skyrocketed between 1820 and 1850. In 1820, there are just 12 cities with populations of more than 5000 people. By 1850, there are almost 150 cities with populations of that size. As western settlers are traveling, theyre going with their families, theyre bringing their belongings, theyre taking things with them that you would expect, your typical household belongings. Things like furniture and farming equipment. But also in many cases, they are traveling with enslaved men and women. I will just say this briefly here. We are going to return to this and future lectures when we talk about the material culture of the southern urban experience. In the 19th century. Though urban growth brought with it economic opportunity, it was linked to the backs of enslaved labor. Thats essential to the story as well. The market revolution and westward expansion happened in tandem, and the choices and decisions that are authorizing the construction of new roads, canals, Transportation Networks, are alternately motivated by other choices and decisions that heightened americas reliance on slave labor. So, when we are talking about people spending thread into cloth and northern factories, we have to talk about the ties to the southern cotton economy. When we are talking about the growth of railroads and canals, not just in the northeast, but especially in the deep south and northern territories, we have to acknowledge the role of enslaved labor in building that infrastructure. So, weve seen how the market revolution offered greater efficiency for the movement of people and goods, but how did these economic changes shape the growth of cities and the people who lived in them . Now is the time for a quick refresher from last class. We can brush off the cobwebs from the other day. We discuss the decline of the household system of labor. Anybody want to remind us why that was all about . Alice. It revolved around an apprentice staying with a master, and they would learn the craft from this master for many, many years, so they could perfect every aspect of the trade. That wasnt very efficient. So it led to them wanting a factory style of work or piece work, where one person would specializing a particular part of an object so they wouldnt have to be trained as long and things could go a lot quicker, rather than knowing every aspect of the trade and expertise. Excellent, excellent, yeah. Other things that we want to add to that explaination of the household system of labor and it decline . Yeah, annalee summarized it nicely for us. That was really, really nice. So, we have this Household Labor system, the system of a master craftsman working in the trade, his apprentices and a journeyman living with his family under one roof. And as anna lee reminded us, this is a fairly inefficient system. As we see the rise of a factories and more and more folks depending on peace work, the descaling of the labor force, people become to rely more and more on wage labor. We see jobs popping up in a things like factories and mills. The earliest mills happened in places like new england, pawtucket, rhode island, or lowell, massachusetts. These are places where you can build along a river or a fall line where water power from waterfalls, or the movement of a river will be harnessed to power water powered machinery. By the 1840s, we have factories springing up in places like philadelphia and chicago, as folks are turning towards more Steam Powered technologies. And then, by the 1850s, american factories have expanded well beyond textile mills, specializing in other production of goods like tools, agricultural machinery, shoes, clocks. You name it. This economic expansion fuels a demand for more labor. This was met, in part, by an increased arrival of immigrants from abroad. In a cities along the east coast and into the midwest, an increasing labor force of irish and german immigrants arrived to fill these jobs. Here are just a few stats to give you a sense of the growth of immigrants in the 19th century. We see that 90 of the immigrants arriving in the United States in the mid 19th century are heading directly for midwestern cities, where Job Opportunities are abundant, and they are not going to have to compete with enslaved labor. By 1860, one third of wisconsins population, for example, was foreign born. You see this growth happening in the church behind me here. In the 1840s, you see the arrival of just over 400,000 immigrants. In 1846 to 1850, that number has jumped to over 1. 2 million. Then, by 1850, its in the 1. 7 millions. That number is really starting to grow. Immigrants from england were easily absorbed into the american population, particularly the longstanding connections to the British Empire and that history, made it out assimilation quite easy for some folks. But, folks from ireland and other nations were often encountering a lot of hostility. The influx of irish immigrants in the 18 40s and 18 50s really alarmed many native born americans. Historians call those people, who feared the impact of immigration on the american political and social life, they called them nativists. Nativist blamed immigrants for a whole host of urban problems, crime, political corruption, bad behavior. The list goes on. They accused immigrants of a wide variety of vices, everything from undercutting Job Opportunities for american born workers, to being willing to work for such low pay, that, you know, no one can get a job. Sometimes, these nativist reactions could turn violent. They did in the 1840s in both new york and philadelphia, where antiimmigration rights sprang up in response to the influx of new arrivals and increased job competition. Lets try to put all of this in some kind of a context. Its a little tricky, but who has seen this painting before . Yeah, a lot of you have. A lot of you have. We are looking at a pretty familiar sight from the 1970 this is john ghasts, 1872 painting, american progress. You probably saw this in your textbooks in high school. This was a print that was widely disseminated in the 1800s. Americans wouldve been really familiar with this image. It was also a pretty loaded image. Lets take a minute, and try to tease out what we can glean from the picture that you see behind me. Whats going on in this image . Why do you see . Elizabeth. Its almost like the angelic figure is bringing light to the land, that hasnt yet been settled by, like, americans coming west, and that as they move to the western region, its almost like an enlightenment, and, like, a period of knowledge coming to the west by these people moving there. Yeah, yeah. What else can you say about this picture . Yes. We can see on the far side of the picture, that native americans are pushing further and further away from the people moving forward. Yeah, absolutely. Other things that we notice from this image . Building off the transportation point, we see boats in the foreground. We see some trains as well. That goes with the notion that, instead of just being on the east coast, now you are able to move towards the west, and midwest as a whole. Absolutely. There is one way to read it this image as, sort, over this Forward Motion of a progress, the westward movement of a progress. Indeed, in the 19 century, many people did read it as such. The figure of a columbia dressed in her classical outfit, carrying school book in her arm, and a telegraph wire in her other hand, pulling the progress across the country towards the west, pushing Indigenous Peoples out of the way, as she goes. Theres another way to look at this picture, and its one of urban growth and change. Anybody notice where the cities are in this picture . Can you see it . It might be a little tricky to see. In the top corner up here, weve got yes, mitch in the east. Yes, they are on the. East youve got new york in the background. Weve got this growing metropolis in the background. There is this sense that all of this progress is emanating from this urban place, all right. We have this image in our minds of a nation in motion, a society in motion. From the 1830s to the 1850s, the market revolution and resulting urban changes had produced an american landscape that people described as energetic, materialistic, and seemingly constantly on the move. These transformations were particularly apparent to outsiders and visitors, folks like alexis de tocqueville, who commented on the matters of americans. He, said each man of the community separate on the mass of his fellow, to draw apart with his families and friends, leaving society at large to itself. Weve seen that economic and social transformations happening in urban areas. They are pushing people across the class spectrum to reconsider their relationships to cities, but also to each other. This brings us to the second part of our class today, how historians actually study why did these places look like, and we can learn from studying these landscapes today. So, one of the most interesting things, i think, of studying the history of Early National cities is that, kind of, on the Ground Research that goes into exploring the built environment and architecture, and what these places wouldve looked like in the past. It teaches us to really think carefully and really see, and understand that change overtime, that is happening at the human level, through things like physical evidence, stuff like the city streets, buildings, and even archaeological remains. These are all remnants of how people lived, worked, and came into contact with one of another through the early 19th century. We call the experts that examine this lived experience through physical evidence Vernacular Architecture historians, and material culture scholars. These are the folks that help us understand how cities look, how they worked out a physical level, and they use evidence like archaeology, city views, architecture, and building plans to reconstruct these landscapes, somewhat metaphorically speaking, for us to understand them today. I want to take a few minutes today, and actually work from the bottom up, starting at the ground in ending with the buildings themselves to figure out how these spaces worked in functions. One of the ways that we can understand urban change overtime is through a school of thought and practice known as historical archaeology. But, not this, kind of, archaeology, unfortunately, unfortunately. We will talk more about this kind of archaeology, fieldwork happening on the city streets around us. Urban archaeologists to study urban growth and City Development are often looking feet beneath the ground for evidence of human habitation and change. There are discoveries of built landscapes in the Early National period help us see what once existed, how people adapted their surroundings to new needs and priorities, and how these places changed over time. So, here is an early example from new york city. You are looking at a google satellite view of Lower Manhattan at the intersection of water street and old slip, right near the east river, not too far from the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. You are probably looking at this, and you are thinking, gosh, this doesnt really mean anything to me. I promise, you it well in just a second. What you are looking at here, is the approximate location of what was once a war owned by new york merchants, baisch, he has one of the coolest oldtime names i have ever heard. He and his or were a prominent feature of new yorks early 19th century landscape. The remains of this war still exist. They rest feet beneath the ground in Lower Manhattan. In the 19 80s, archaeologists went and they uncovered the remains of bachess wharf. What they found look Something Like this. They dug up this site and on earth huge wooden timbers a sitting feet beneath the ground. If you look at this image here, you can see theres the archaeologist and another on right there. On top of that timber cribbing, just to give you a sense of scale, this is huge. These huge timber frame structures beneath the ground. They dug this up to try to find traces of new yorks Early National waterfront. Looking at archaeological remains like this one, we can better understand how wealthy new yorkers were able to take advantage of the Economic Opportunities afforded by the growth of cities in this period. While ordinary, and poorer people also often struggle to make ends meet. Baches was a wealthy new yorker. He was a merchant. He purchased a type of property called a water lot in 1775. He did this to expand his business empire. A water lot is a term for a plot of land that sits beneath the water that merchants would buy in the 18th and early 19th century with the intention to frame out with wood and fill in with dirt and sand. All sorts of stuff. To create wharves, new city streets and plots of land for building upon. All with the goal of expanding the citys footprint out into the water. We see phenomenon like this happening here in boston, in philadelphia, it happens in waterfront cities across the United States in this period. It is a common way of building. We know from property records, real estate documents, city directories, census records that baches is a building in not only one of the hottest real estate regions in the city at this time, also one of the most crowded. I just want to show you for a moment, what you are looking at here is a property map, a plaque map, it is created centuries later. This is from the early 1900s. It is showing you the names of the different Property Owners who bought water lot Properties Around the same time that baches did. There is his water lot. It is right here. This region is also incredibly dense. Over 5600 people lived on roughly 53 acres of land surrounding bachess wharf. If you are trying to get a sense for what that means, you like to think in terms of sports, we are thinking about approximately 55 football fields worth of space. It is important we consider this density in relative terms. Manhattan had a much smaller geographic footprint at the time that baches is building. It was only about a mile north to south and a half mile east to west. It had a population of about 32,000 people in 1789. When baches is building and wharfing out this water lot, 5600 people live in the immediate vicinity. There is a higher concentration of people relative to the side of the city. This suggests that as merchants are buying up valuable waterfront real estate and reaping all these financial benefits of urban development, they are also scores of poor and working class men and women who find themselves increasingly crowded into the nooks and crannies of these newly built spaces. Many of the Public Health issues that plagued Early National cities were often traced to these exact neighborhoods. Especially things like yellow fever. We know today that yellow fever is a disease caused by what . Does anyone know . What causes yellow fever . Nobody knows . Any guesses . Yes . Rats or human waste . Not rats, another passed coming to us in the summertime here in new england. Is it mosquitoes . Mosquitos, exactly. We know today that yellow fever is caused by mosquitoes. In the Early National period, people did not know this fact. They often blamed a whole bunch of possible causes for the recurrence and very common yellow fever epidemics that would often show up in cities. They blamed breathing unhealthy air, smelling spoiled cargo, they blamed peoples personal hygiene and living conditions. In the 1790s and early 1800s, cities are visited over and over again by yellow fever outbreaks. We see that they tended to affect the poor more than they did the wealthy. Any thoughts about why the wealthy might have been spared the worst effects of yellow fever . Ryan . Their clothing was a lot more covering of their bodies i guess. It was just more coverage. An interesting theory. I hadnt thought about that. Perhaps theres something to be said about material clothing that youre wearing. Thomas . More leisure time indoors, not working outside. They can go inside, yeah, what else . Their land afforded them more personal space. Yeah, one of the things that wealthy urbanites can do, as they can do today, we saw in the covid pandemic, they can pack up and leave. If people are getting sick, they do not want to stay there, they can flee to their country estate. They can head up to their cousins house. Someplace outside of town. The poor, the working class, they dont have these same options. When we see these yellow fever outbreaks happening, we notice that the poor are not only stuck, they are also the ones getting sick. So, when we consider the relationship between construction of things like bachess wharf and the crowding of poor and lower class people, we see that things like archaeological evidence can help us understand how city growth could create greater disparity between the haves and the haves not. Here is another example of urban archaeology from brooklyn, new york. This is the Empire Stores warehouse located in brooklyn park, right underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in brooklyn. In the late 1970s and 1980s, archaeologists excavated the ground outside of the Empire Stores warehouse. It was originally an 1860s coffee storage warehouse. It had been home to centuries of new yorks urban industry and commercial growth. When they went to dig out in front of this space, they found remnants of timber frame cribs. Structures used to expand the cities shoreline to create more land. When they excavated the interior of these cribs, they found thousands of objects. Stuff like shoe leather, metal pieces, glass bottles, ceramic plates. Why do you think all of this stuff was doing inside of a landfill crib . A structure thats meant to sit beneath the ground. Lucy . All trash people used to weigh down the cribs. Exactly, this was all of their garbage. These items were there because 19th century new yorkers threw them away. These items had ended up in the trash heap of history. They got uncovered by archaeologists centuries later. They comprised the landfill that would have helped build out the shoreline of places like new york and brooklyn. In short, what can we learn from all of this . The objects we pull up from the ground teach us about how people built. Also what kind of stuff they spent their money on. We see them engaging in the world of the market revolution through what was essentially their trash. Another way that historians study and interpret how Early National cities grew and developed, through things like city views, drawings, paintings, works on paper. Things that depicts cities in a particular historical context. You have probably seen some instagram shots like these ones behind me here. Maybe you have taken a couple yourself. We have got our beloved beacon hill behind me here. Over here, we have got the Manhattan Bridge in brooklyn. Supposedly, one of the most iconic instagram places to take a photo in the country. I dont know if thats true. What do we see here . We see here people doing what . What are they doing in the urban experience here . Walking [laughs] they are walking. What is the point of an instagram shot like this . Tony . Capture the beauty of the landscape . Okay, sure. Why would you take a picture like this . Capture a moment of time when you are ones there. Absolutely, they were trying to capture cities at a particular moment in time. Saying, i was here, i saw this place. They are trying to preserve, in essence, for future generations, what the spaces were like. Who they were when they were in them. 19th century americans definitely didnt have instagram. They did have paper, pen, paint. We can look at artistic depictions of cities to see how folks in the 19th century were also thinking about urban growth and change. One of my Favorite Places to look is at the artwork of a man by the name of william chapel. Who painted a series of new york city cityscapes in the 1870s. Now, by this point chapel was an older man. He had lived throughout the duration of the 19th century and what he was painting was the new york that he remembered from his childhood. He is painting things like city streetscapes, work a day landscapes. What are some of the things that you notice about chapels paintings . We can start with this one over here. Elizabeth . It is not a particular moment in time, a famous event. It is actually just kind of a mundane picture of what that city would have looked like on any other day. Yeah, he is capturing very ordinary work a day spaces. What else do you notice about what he is capturing here . It doesnt look like the new york we think of. It looks very much like a small town. There is no tall buildings. There is nothing like that. Yeah, this is new york in a different scale than the new york we would think of today. Absolutely. What about structures like this . I recognize its hard to see. What do you notice there . What are those . Lucy . Landfill cribs. That is timber, absolutely, for wharves, landfill, absolutely, absolutely. How about over here . You can get a sense. This one is called the water pump. What does that suggest to you about whats going on here . What is this guy doing . Can you see . This dude here. The horse, cart, lucy . Is that freshwater in a barrel at the end of his cart that he is giving the people . Yeah, yeah, at a moment in time where access to the infrastructure for forest running water, like we understand today was not as easy to come by, you would have water cart man who would come around the city and get your freshwater for your tea, tea water pump. This is where you could go and make tea. Absolutely. We see these and these workday spaces. An effort to capture the cities in a moment in time. Finally, we can study the buildings themselves. Those that still stand around us today, these former warehouse spaces, right here in boston on broad street. Designed by Charles Bulfinch. This building, you can still go visit this one, it is just off the street. This warehouse would have been one of 40 identical warehouses lining broad and india streets in boston in the early 1800s. It was built and financed as part of this much larger Waterfront Development project that included the creation of warehouses, shops, like this one, a monumental wharf building called india war. The whole project was built and sold in phases from approximately 1803 into the 18 teens. Remember how last class we talked about the rise of corporations . What were some of the reasons why merchants and businessmen were kind of keen on establishing corporations in this period . What were they jazzed about . Corporations could outlive the members of business. Before, if they had a business between two people, it would die out. Corporations could live on through other people and keep the Financial Success growing. Absolutely, other reasons why it was popular to start to incorporate . Giovan . Limited liability. Basically, even if the corporation had some problem or approaching bankruptcy, they could not go after the personal assets. It was limited to corporations. Totally, what else . Other things . We like these things today when we invest in corporations. Lucy . It allowed the Business People to return dividends to their shareholders. It was worth investing in the business. Totally, you can make money off of it if it goes well. These are things that we are familiar with today. The same sort of thinking and phenomena is happening in the early 1800s. Here in boston, we have a group of merchants who want to get in on exactly this kind of business. They form a corporation with sanctioned from the state that allows them to build the real estate that you see behind me here. They call themselves the broad Street Associates. They approached architect Charles Bulfinch to have him design them some really neoclassical monumental structures for the city of boston. Bulfinchs designs are replacing old rickety waterfront building with two streets lined with brick stores, like the ones you see behind me here. The broad Street Associates do all this work. They purchased a whole street called battery march street here in boston. They rename it broad street. Then, they landfill additional space, and they build india street on it. If you walk in Downtown Boston today, you are walking on those same streets today. They Start Building a bunch of stores on top of them, which i all share a similar architectural vocabulary. They are all built of a brick. They have a marble belt course separating the ground floor from the upper stories. If you have a shop on the ground floor, Storage Space above, and all of the houses wouldve looked essentially the same. One of those stores still stands on a corner of broad and Customs House street here in Downtown Boston, 68 broad street. Historians know quite a bit about this particular building because they went out and drew it. They documented it. Historic, American Buildings survey went out and created these elevation drawings of this warehouse in the 20th century, capturing this building at a particular moment in time. We also know about these buildings because of bulfinchs own records, it wrongs like this one, a building plan, a series of opposed and digging plans like the ones you see the. Jaime youve got almost a managing, him crowding over his drafting table, thinking about the different folks who have a finance these buildings, thinking about where he will place them on the street, and how they will be oriented, and how these buildings are going to fit together in the landscape. If we look closely at this document, we see that many of the corporate members, the man who are financing this project have their names listed inside different warehouses. Here is lloyd, otis, clotting. Names for all of the last names of the men investing in this product. We know that all of these names, of course, are male. This is a feature indicative of a lot of corporate change happening in the early republic. The merchants who funded the broad street warehouses wanted these buildings to serve a very particular corporate function. These buildings would be used for storage. They would be used for business. They would be used for shopping and office space, all under one roof. This intentionality is a departure from what folks wouldve been familiar with in the colonial period, when home and work often have been under the same exact roof. So now, you see this differentiation between a persons home space and their work space. As a result of this, one of the biggest impacts that bostons early Corporate Development had was on women. Because these prescribed uses and types of control over how urban space would function, particularly around things like Property Ownership, were very elusive for women because of things like marriage and customs, stuff that we talked about in this class. Many women almost found themselves locked out of the different kinds of a financial opportunities that these types of real estate endeavors wouldve afforded. Yet, if we look at cities directory documentary events, we can see that women may have found some ways to resist the Real Estate Development trends happening around them, especially once the buildings were completed and occupied. These are two pages from a city director. Does anybody know at a city directory is . Its an odd document that is not totally familiar with. What do you think this is . Elizabeth . It kind of shows all the Business Owners in the city, and, like, where they are located and what they do. Yeah, not just Business Owners, but basically anybody could have their name, their resident, their place of occupation listed in a city directory. We can see this in a book, akin to a phone book before phones. This is where you can look up who lived where and what they did. We can look at these books, published on a yearly basis in cities, and we can find evidence of a variety of folks about variety of, jobs living in a variety of places, everything from, margins apothecary, sailors, laborers. One of the things that we can also find is the existence of women. For example, we see a woman named lydia operating a boarding house at 151 broad street in 1810. Boarding houses were a very particular and popular form of Employment Opportunity for women in this period, because they could run a domestic lodging space for sailors and laborers. We also know that widow, abigail stone, operated a ladies boarding house at 180 broad street with two documented female tenets, a woman made Mary Lawrence and elizabeth sears. By 1821, as this page indicated behind me, abigail had moved her boarding house from broad street to purchase street. So, what do we make of all of this evidence. What does this suggest to you. When you see the presence of women in space is designed by this corporate entity . Any thoughts . What do you think is happening here . What can we surmise from what we see here . Charles and then it giovan. More often, it might be unmarried women. Thats why one of them is a widow, given a lot of the laws concerning married women. It was often that they couldnt have property. Yeah, we see a without women. She is on married. She has a little more flexibility in society. She is not covered by her husband. Yeah, do you have on. It also showed that women were capable of making money. If you are a corporate business owner, you want to turn a profit. If you are going to allow women to use it, they have to be producing some sort of money to make ends meet. Yeah, excellent, excellent. Another thing that we can surmise from what weve seen here, is that there is a possibility that women were finding opportunity in the growing rental market. So, where as they might not be able to buy one of these buildings are right, they might be able to run space inside it, and as giovan tells us, have to make a living, earn some money to be able to live there, put a roof over their head, support their tenants, and things like that. Renting, in this case, might have given some of these women a little bit more economic flexibility. They can move from place to place, seeking new landlord, find cheaper rent, all in an effort to grow their businesses, and support themselves in the city. So, we see, tucked behind and within these new monumental buildings, the cities or scenarios are, its women, like the women you see here who are seeking some sort of access to that nearly corporatized waterfront through rental properties. What are we to make of the physical evidence, and how does it illustrate the demographics of the urban experience . How can physical evidence teaches about real peoples lives are at the social life of cities . I will ask you guys. How are you thinking differently about the relationship between human lives and urban space, now that youve heard these stories today . Analise. A lot of urban life comes out of the human experience, and those types of buildings were created because people decided that those buildings wouldve been a good thing to create. At the same time, these architectural spaces affect the individuals that are living in these cities, as shown by the woman who had set up their own spaces. Absolutely. All the things that we are thinking about now, that weve seen this connection between people and buildings. How will you think differently about the spirit of history now . I will offer up some ideas from the historians who do this work for a living. One of the big takeaways from Research Like this is that it gives us tangible proof of the ways that urban development and change cannot only lead to Economic Opportunities, for some folks, but can also make things a lot more complicated for everybody else. This is a theme thats been, it kind, of coming up in our last few classes together, this, sort of, crunchiness between the haves and havenots, you know . Economic opportunity for some, but struggle and questions for many others. We saw this last class when we talked about how the impact of urban growth allowed young women to enter into a waged workforce in a significant way for the first time, like when we talk about mary paul and the mills. We saw this today, when we talked about how urban Property Development and consolidation allowed some wealthy merchants to prosper, while a lot of other people found themselves crowded and squeezed. We can place this history, that weve found today, and a large arc of historical scholarship that looks at these questions from a lot of different angles, architectural historians, social historians, material culture scholars, you name it. They remind us that the city itself is a historical artifact. Architectural historian, dale upton writes, in the embodied experience of urban life, the obstructions of political ideology, planning ideas, and personal identities were tested and absorbed. The city shaped and annotated the urban experience, and it was shaped by it. So, there is no one way to understand the growth of cities in at the early republic. There is significance comes in many different forms, from the stories of men and women who found a way to make a living in the new streets and buildings of the Early National period, to the architectural evidence that tells us about how these places grew and functioned. So, we know that cities were places of social, economic, and architectural change. I hope that, as you go forth, and we talk more about this in future semesters and classes, that we understand that at the intersection of people, places, and things, we can find a way to tell this story. Thanks, guys. Every saturday on cspan two American History tv features lectures from professors across the country. Recently Claremont MckennaProfessor John pitney caught a class on president ial speeches and Public Opinion from the 1970s through the 1990s. How president ial communications shifted from Network Television to cable and the internet. This was very controversial at the time. Many people wanted to have closer relations with the soviet union. The perception was that by using the term evil we would be provoking the soviet union. Some of you may have seen the clip i showed from the Television Series and the americans where the two characters are kgb spy shocked to see reagan talking this way yes within the soviet ranks there was a great deal of shock about reagan how much did reagans policies have to do with the fall of the soviet union . Well, it is quite a debate. Some would argue that at most reagans policies were peripheral to the soviet union collapsed because of internal reasons others would say that the soviet union fell because reagan gave them a push you decide read the evidence. Im sure this will come up in a lot of your courses in international relations. Important thing, again, is what he is using the speech for. This is a case of a president ial speech having multiple audiences. Obviously, his immediate audience was National Association of evangelicals. More broadly, it was religious people within the United States. Evangelicals in general. Whom he wanted to mobilize on behalf of his causes. When the president speaks, the world listens. People all over the world knew that he had referred to the soviet union as an evil empire. This was of some of concern in moscow, to put it mildly. Word reached places like warsaw. There were people who took inspiration from these words. For some people it was inspirational. For other people, it was confrontational and alarmist. Every lectures in history that has been featured on American History tv is available to watch online. Anytime at cspan. Org slash history. Nearly two decades before