American History Chapter 15-2

Urban Life

Cities Change

• Taller buildings became practical:– Needed more space.– Steel frames.– Elisha Otis: Invented the elevator.

Where Did the Green Go?• Landscape architects were hired.– Frederick Olmsted: Designed city parks.– Designed New York’s Central Park.

Pretty, Isn’t it?

Social Classes• Wealthy: 1870s – 1890s, The Gilded Age.– Many got rich through business & industry.

• Middle Class: Corporations created good paying new jobs.– Accountants, clerks, managers, salespeople, etc.– Needed educated workers.– Professionalization became a process:• Standardized skills & knowledge.

• Working Class: Unskilled, lowly paid workers.– Lived in tenements, poorly built apartment buildings.

Helping the Poor

• Settlement houses: – Provided job-training, English courses, & social activities.

• Hull House: A settlement house in Chicago.– Started by Jane Addams.– Lillian Wald founded Henry St. Settlement in NYC.

• Social Gospel: Rel. faith expressed thru good works.

Wald Addams