History of Boston Name: ____________________________Expansion in Boston in the late 19th century Date: ____________________________Document Based Question

DIRECTIONS: Respond to the following prompt in at least FIVE organized paragraphs. You must write a THESIS that CLEARLY and DIRECTLY answers the prompt. You must use AT LEAST SEVEN of the documents provided as EVIDENCE that supports your thesis. You should follow the HEAT or HEAEAT paragraph structure. You must frame your evidence, include the source and accurately analyze each document in a way that supports

your thesis. Do not refer to the document as “Document 1” etc. Use the title given instead. You must make a full effort to use proper grammar and spelling—this is not a “draft” that you can edit later.

DBQ PROMPT:

Why did the city of Boston need to expand in the late 19th century and how did this growth impact the city?

YOUR THESIS:

The city of Boston needed to expand in the late 19th century because ________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________.

This growth led to changes in the city that include _______________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________.

DOCUMENT 1: Lithograph of Boston’s Back Bay (1844)

DOCUMENT 2: Excerpt from Bibles, Brahmins and Bosses by Thomas H. O’Connor (1984)

The Back Bay quickly became an area where wealthy families moved to keep distance from the undesirable neighborhoods. With the combination of gorgeous homes, beautifully paved streets, and the development of well-recognized organizations, the Back Bay gained recognition as Boston’s elite neighborhoods where the wealthy and fashionable resided. Compared with the rest of the city during this time that was filled with filth, overcrowding, and traffic, the Back Bay grew to symbolize the distinction between the rich and the poor. However, even with the development of areas such as the Back Bay, there was still an insufficient amount of housing as Boston’s population and commercial growth continued to reach new highs. In addition, after several years of immigration, many of the Irish became much more economically stable and wanted to move out of the crowded tenements of the North End

DOCUMENT 3: Excerpt from Gaining Ground: A History of Landmaking in Boston (2003)

Boston at mid century was a thriving metropolis, beginning to burst its narrow confines of the original terrain. Boston Common, which had been a fixture since the 17th century, was well established, but the public garden was hardly begun at this time. Beacon Street was just being developed, and a railroad station occupied a prominent position at the south edge of the Common, on the right. The modern city of Boston emerged from the waters, an Atlantis in reverse. New technologies were required for the filling of the Back Bay. It was a larger area to be filled -- more than 700 acres -- and the easy sources of fill were already cut down. The invention of the railroad and steam shovel made it possible to bring in gravel from as far away as Needham to the West. It was a tremendous undertaking, and carefully organized. At the peak of activity, 3,500 carloads per day were sent from the Needham gravel pits to be dumped in the Back Bay.

DOCUMENT 4: Excerpt from Boston's Immigrants: A Study in Acculturation by Oscar Handlin (1949)

DOCUMENT 5: Excerpts from Mary Antin’s The Promised Land (1912)

Anybody who knows Boston knows that the West and North Ends are the wrong ends of that city. They form the tenement district, or, in the newer phrase, the slums of Boston. Anybody who is acquainted with the slums of any American metropolis knows that that is the quarter where poor immigrants foregather, to live, for the most part, as unkempt, half-washed, toiling, unaspiring foreigners; pitiful in the eyes of social missionaries, the despair of boards of health, the hope of ward politicians, the touchstone of American democracy. The well-versed metropolitan knows the slums as a sort of house of detention for poor aliens, where they live on probation till they can show a certificate of good citizenship.

Education was free. That subject my father had written about repeatedly, as comprising his chief hope for us children, the essence of American opportunity, the treasure that no thief could touch, not even misfortune or poverty. It was the one thing that he was able to promise us when he sent for us; surer, safer than bread or shelter. On our second day I was thrilled with the realization of what this freedom of education meant. A little girl from across the alley came and offered to conduct us to school. My father was out, but we five between us had a few words of English by this time. We knew the word school. We understood. This child, who had never seen us till yesterday, who could not pronounce our names, who was not much better dressed than we, was able to offer us the freedom of the schools of Boston!

DOCUMENT 6: Photograph of Streetcar on Columbia Rd. (1911)

DOCUMENT 7: Excerpt from Three Deckers of Dorchester by Arthur Krim (1977)

DOCUMENT 8: Map of Boston’s Streetcar lines (1915)

DOCUMENT 9: Map of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace (1900)

The three-decker is democratic architecture. It was built to give the average family the benefits of suburban life while living close to city jobs. It was neither tenement nor mansion, but rather good solid housing. It was large enough to raise a host of children around the dining room table, but small enough to keep a pot of flowers on the back porch. The three-decker was affordable, for the new family who rented the top floor, for the owners who occupied the middle floor, and for the retired couple downstairs whose rent paid the mortgage. It was attractive—each floor had its own parlor bay and own piazza, its own stained glass and oak pantry and its own view. This was the appeal that drew the families out on the trolleys and into Dorchester.

The meeting of the electric trolley and the three-decker occurred about 1890. At this point both had been perfected and their combined presence began to create a new landscape of the streetcar suburb in Dorchester. During the 1890's new trolley lines were built into the far reaches of practical service, from Fields Corner down Adams Street to Adams Village, from Codman Square down Washington and Norfolk Streets, and from Lower Mills along River Street to Mattapan.

DOCUMENT 10: Excerpt from Frederick Law Olmsted: The Genius Behind Boston’s Emerald Necklace

DOCUMENT 11: Excerpt from The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys by Doris Kearns Goodwin (1987)

DOCUMENT 12: Excerpt from Boston’s 1915 Movement by Richard G. Heath (1998)

DOCUMENT 13: Chart showing Boston’s Population Growth (1690—1900)

John F. Fitzgerald described his first meeting with Martin Lomasney in vivid detail, recalling the powerful presence Lomasney projected as he sat in his chair surrounded by a half-dozen loyal aides.  A thickset, well-muscled man whose most outstanding feature was a hard rocklike jaw that made him a cartoonist's friend, Lomasney was a bachelor whose entire life was given to the building of his political machine, the Hendricks Club.  He lived a simple, low-key life, renting a small apartment and wearing the same old battered straw hat year round, but to the people of the West End he was a god.  Arriving early each morning at his headquarters, the Hendricks Club Lomasney worked 365 days a year, caring for "his" people in all phases of their lives. With no existing social welfare net, the Hendricks Club also became the place that members of the community turned to for shelter, food and help finding work. Ultimately it became the heart of Lomasney’s political machine, with a primary function of rallying and organizing of voters. Despite his unquestionable political power and position, Lomasney hated being called a ward boss. He repeatedly downplayed this title, once saying, “A boss gives orders. I don’t. When I want something done I ask for it. Just before the election we send out suggestions to the voters. We don’t tell ‘em how to vote. We just suggest.”

City affairs, in the eyes of the Brahmin Good Government Association, were being directed from Irish Democratic clubhouses in the West and North End and Ward 17 in Roxbury. City agencies were being filled with often incompetent political appointments. What was worse was the increased taxes levied on business property due to the soaring costs of municipal contracts - particularly in construction - because of graft and kickbacks. All this caused the GGA to form and seek ways to correct these problems before commerce and industry moved out of the city. In this context it is easy to understand why a municipal financial audit and a study of waste and mismanagement in City affairs were the first two points of the Boston 1915 agenda.  The election in 1905 of John F. Fitzgerald (grandfather of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy), political boss of the heavily Irish Catholic Democratic North End, created panic within the GGA.