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The social geography of near and far: built environment and residential distance in mid-nineteenth-century New York City

Part of: Thinking Spatially: New Horizons for Urban History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2020

Gergely Baics Open the ORCID record for Gergely Baics [Opens in a new window]
Gergely Baics*
Affiliation:
History Department, Barnard College, Columbia University, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY10027, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article brings together two Geographical Information Systems (GIS) datasets – building-level land-use data from the 1852–54 Perris Fire Insurance Atlas, and geocoded home addresses from the 1854 city directory – to explore how desirable and undesirable conditions of the built environment accounted for new dynamics of residential separation in mid-nineteenth-century New York. Using spatial analysis, it shows how early forms of residential separation were driven by the desire of elites to create secluded residential neighbourhoods. Further, although stark contrasts delineated the extremes of wealth and poverty, the city's dominant landscape was defined by in-between conditions and subtle variations in built environment and residential distance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 47 , Special Issue 3: Thinking spatially: new horizons for urban history , August 2020 , pp. 512 - 534
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Higher resolution, colour versions of the figures in this article can be viewed online as supplementary material. Follow the URL at the end of this article.

References

1 For some classic formulations: Warner, S.B., The Urban Wilderness: A History of the American City (Berkeley, 1972)Google Scholar; Warner, S.B., The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of its Growth (Philadelphia, 1987)Google Scholar; Warner, S.B. and Whittemore, A., American Urban Form: A Representative History (Cambridge, 2013)Google Scholar; Ward, D., Cities and Immigrants: A Geography of Change in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1971)Google Scholar; Ward, D., Poverty, Ethnicity, and the American City, 1840–1925: Changing Conceptions of the Slum and the Ghetto (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar; Chudacoff, H.P., Smith, J.E. and Baldwin, P.C., The Evolution of American Urban Society, 7th edn (Englewood Cliffs, 2009)Google Scholar.

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7 Perris, W., Maps of the City of New York. Surveyed under Directions of Insurance Companies of Said City (New York, 1852–54)Google Scholar. The digitized Perris Atlas is available as an ESRI shapefile at the NYPL Map Warper website: http://maps.nypl.org/warper/.

8 Using the crowdsourced Perris data involved the following steps: first, to check for data quality, including geometric, positional and attribute accuracy; second, to create a historical address locator for the batch geocoding of textual addresses; and third, to design historically relevant, context-based GIS methods to deploy the dataset for mapping analysis. For a more detailed discussion of the Perris data, and some of the GIS methods and estimation processes used: Baics, G. and Meisterlin, L., ‘Zoning before zoning: land use and density in mid-nineteenth-century New York City’, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 106 (2016), 1152–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 For example: Citizens’ Association of New York, Council of Hygiene and Public Health, Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens’ Association of New York upon the Sanitary Condition of the City (New York, 1865); New York (State), Metropolitan Board of Health, Second Annual Report of the Metropolitan Board of Health of the State of New York (Albany, 1868); Scobey, Empire City.

10 McNeur, C., Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City (Cambridge, 2014), 45–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 For example: Blackmar, E., ‘Accountability for public health: regulating the housing market in nineteenth-century New York City’, in Rosner, D. (ed.), Hives of Sickness: Public Health and Epidemics in New York City (New Brunswick, 1995), 42–64Google Scholar.

12 Rode, C.R., The New-York City Directory, for 1854–1855 (New York, 1854)Google Scholar.

13 Rose-Redwood, R., ‘Indexing the great ledger of the community: urban house numbering, city directories, and the production of spatial legibility’, Journal of Historical Geography, 34 (2008), 286–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 For a selected literature on land-use controls and limitations in nineteenth-century cities: Novak, W., The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill, 1996)Google Scholar; Fischler, R., ‘Health, safety, and the general welfare: markets, politics, and social science in early land-use regulation and community design’, Journal of Urban History, 24 (1998), 675–719CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fischler, R., ‘Development controls in Toronto in the nineteenth century’, Urban History Review, 36 (2007), 16–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hirt, S., Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation (Ithaca, 2014), 110–31Google Scholar. On restrictive covenants as a form of land-use control in mid-nineteenth-century New York: Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent, 183–212; Scobey, Empire City, 126–9; Ballon, H. (ed.), The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811–2011 (New York, 2012), 103–25Google Scholar; McNeur, Taming Manhattan, 45–94; Baics and Meisterlin, ‘Zoning before zoning’.

15 The land-use maps were originally developed by Baics and Meisterlin, ‘Zoning before zoning’, 1158, 1161. That article also includes further methodological explanations.

16 For a basic distinction between convenience and comparison goods as understood by central place theory: Berry, B.J.L., Geography of Market Centers and Retail Distribution (Englewood Cliffs, 1967)Google Scholar; Lesger, C., ‘Patterns of retail location and urban form in Amsterdam in the mid-eighteenth century’, Urban History, 38 (2011), 24–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 For further detail: Baics and Meisterlin, ‘Zoning before zoning’, 1159–62. On the formation of central business districts in nineteenth-century American cities, including New York: Ward, D., ‘The industrial revolution and the emergence of Boston's central business district’, Economic Geography, 42 (1966), 152–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ward, Cities and Immigrants, 85–103; Bowden, M.J., ‘Downtown through time: delimitation, expansion, and internal growth’, Economic Geography, 47 (1971), 121–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Domosh, M., Invented Cities: The Creation of Landscape in Nineteenth-Century New York and Boston (New Haven, 1996), 15–25Google Scholar; Fogelson, R., Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950 (New Haven, 2001)Google Scholar; Scobey, Empire City, 89–120.

18 For further detail: Baics and Meisterlin, ‘Zoning before zoning’, 1159–62. On the formation of early industrial districts in nineteenth-century American cities: Lewis, R., ‘The development of an early suburban industrial district: the Montreal ward of Saint-Ann, 1851–71’, Urban History Review, 19 (1991), 166–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lewis, R., Manufacturing Montreal: The Making of an Industrial Landscape, 1850 to 1930 (Baltimore, 2000)Google Scholar; Lewis, R., ‘A city transformed: manufacturing districts and suburban growth in Montreal, 1850–1929’, Journal of Historical Geography, 27 (2001), 20–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lewis, Chicago Made; Muller, E.K. and Groves, P.A., ‘The emergence of industrial districts in mid-nineteenth-century Baltimore’, Geographical Review, 69 (1979), 159–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the Manhattan waterfront: Schlichting, K.C., Waterfront Manhattan: From Henry Hudson to the High Line (Baltimore, 2018)Google Scholar.

19 Baics and Meisterlin, ‘Zoning before zoning’.

20 For further detail: ibid., 1162–4; Baics, G. and Meisterlin, L., ‘The grid as algorithm for land use: a reappraisal of the 1811 Manhattan grid’, Planning Perspectives, 34 (2019), 405–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the geography of urban retail in nineteenth-century cities: Shaw, G. and Wild, M.T., ‘Locational behaviour of urban retailing during the nineteenth century: the example of Kingston upon Hull’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 61 (1974), 101–18Google Scholar; I. Davey and M. Doucet, ‘The social geography of a commercial city, ca. 1853’, Appendix in Katz, M., People of Hamilton, Canada West (Cambridge, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Conzen, M.P. and Conzen, K.N., ‘Geographical structure in nineteenth-century urban retailing: Milwaukee, 1836–90’, Journal of Historical Geography, 5 (1979), 45–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Domosh, Invented Cities, 35–64; Baics, Feeding Gotham, 155–92.

21 The near–far approach has been developed in close collaboration with urbanist and GIS methodologist Leah Meisterlin. For a detailed explanation of the approach and methodology: Baics and Meisterlin, ‘Zoning before zoning’, 1158, 1161. Here it is opportune to highlight the value of such collaborative work for GIS-based historical scholarship. Urban historians integrating GIS into their research may not only need to access collaboratively or institutionally produced data. Just as critically, they greatly benefit from the intellectual insights and methodological expertise of spatial urbanists. Optimally, such collaboration builds on complementary knowledge and skills, and transforms the entire project: from articulating research questions, to locating or building relevant GIS datasets, designing spatial methods and publishing results. While this article is single-authored, its maps and approach benefited from and built on years of such close and fruitful collaboration with Meisterlin.

22 The distance from industry map was originally developed by Baics and Meisterlin, ‘Zoning before zoning’, 1158. Here, distances are measured within 158.5 metres – corresponding to a two-block radius on the Manhattan grid – from residential buildings.

23 The distance from commerce map was originally developed by Baics and Meisterlin, ‘Zoning before zoning’, 1161. Here, distances are measured within 158.5 metres – two-block radius – from residential buildings.

24 On the food trades as nuisances: Baics, Feeding Gotham, 193–230; Citizens’ Association of New York, Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health.

25 The seminal book on antebellum New York City housing is Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent. Tenement housing is widely discussed in New York histories, including: Ernst, Immigrant Life; Spann, The New Metropolis; Stansell, City of Women; Stott, Workers in the Metropolis; Scherzer, The Unbounded Community; Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City. For nineteenth-century classics: Riis, J.A., How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York (New York, 1971; orig. edn 1890)Google Scholar; Deforest, R.W. and Veiller, L. (eds.), The Tenement House Problem, Including the Report of the New York State Tenement House Commission of 1900 (New York, 1903)Google Scholar.

26 The population density and rear-lot tenement crowding maps were originally developed by Baics and Meisterlin, ‘Zoning before zoning’, 1165, 1168. That article provides detailed methodological explanations about how these maps and their estimates were produced. Briefly, in creating the population density by block map, a dasymetric approach was used. Ward-level population data from the 1855 state census was disaggregated to the level of blocks, using the total area of residential building footprints. For estimating tenement crowding by block, the contemporary idea of the tenement evil was adapted, which especially singled out rear-lot tenements. The technical solution was to select out dwellings in the blocks’ interior (without direct street frontage, and thereby generally deprived of adequate air and sunlight), aggregate their total footprint area per block, and then divide this figure by the block's unbuilt interior area. The resulting ratio provides a block-level measure of the intensity of rear-lot residential crowding. It also captures the alarming issue of inadequate ventilation, which especially concerned contemporary public health experts. A similar map on the geography of cellar dwellings is unfortunately not possible. It is reasonable to assume though that it would reveal the same clusters of blocks as shown by the map of rear-lot tenement crowding.

27 For a short list on mortality conditions and unequal health risks in nineteenth-century cities: Szreter, S., ‘Economic growth, disruption, deprivation, disease, and death: on the importance of the politics of public health for development’, Population and Development Review, 23 (1997), 693–728CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Szreter, S. and Mooney, G., ‘Urbanization, mortality, and the standard of living debate: new estimates of the expectation of life at birth in nineteenth-century British cities’, Economic History Review, 51 (1998), 84–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haines, M.R., ‘The urban mortality transition in the United States, 1800–1940’, NBER Historical Working Paper Series, 134 (2001)Google Scholar; Cain, L. and Hong, S.C., ‘Survival in 19th century cities: the larger the city, the smaller your chances’, Explorations in Economic History, 46 (2009), 450–63CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Floud, R., Fogel, R.W., Harris, B. and Hong, S.C., The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World since 1700 (Cambridge, 2011), 320–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Olson and Thornton, Peopling the North American City.

28 The data comes from New York (State), Metropolitan Board of Health, Second Annual Report, map between 274 and 275.

29 McNeur, Taming Manhattan, 45–94; Ballon (ed.), The Greatest Grid, 103–25. On Central Park: Rosenzweig, R. and Blackmar, E., The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca, 1992)Google Scholar.

30 See n. 6.

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