during the gilded -...
TRANSCRIPT
Characteristics of Urbanization
During the Gilded Age
1. Megalopolis. 2. Mass Transit. 3. Magnet for economic and social
opportunities. 4. Pronounced class distinctions.
- Inner & outer core 5. New frontier of opportunity for women. 6. Squalid living conditions for many. 7. Political machines. 8. Ethnic neighborhoods.
1. How do Americans become consumers? 2. What does a “Higher Standard of Living” include? 3. What created a “mass culture”? 4. What was reflected in the arts during the gilded age? 5. How did education change in U.S.? 6. What did Americans do for entertainment? 7. What did cities offer as entertainment?
Florence Kelley • Illinois
• Attorney
• Fought against child labor.
• Fought for women’s rights.
• National Consumers League (NCL) 1899 promoted goods produced under “fair, safe, healthy” conditions. Inspect meat packing plants. Created “White Labels” = seal of approval.
• National Child Labor Committee (still active) – U.S. Children’s Bureau created in 1912. 1916 Keating – Owen Act struck down child labor. SCOTUS overturned in Hammer v. Dagenhart, 1918.
• Led NAWSA (Natl. Amer. Women Suff. Assoc.) to support war effort (WWI).
• Founding member of NAACP.
• Lone Tenement by George Bellows 1909
• “urban dislocation and a poignant allegory of time's passage. The last remaining building underneath the approaches to the new Queensboro Bridge stands alone.”
• People continued to live in this dilapidated tenement building while the others had made way for city growth.
• Cliff Dwellers by George
Bellows 1913
• View of the transformation
of America. Lower East
Side of Manhattan, lifestyle
of immigrants.
• Poor and living in cramped
quarters, if they have
housing at all. Paintings
like this captured the
essence of city living and
informed Americans about
the conditions of city
dwellers.
Statue of Liberty: “Mr.
Windom, if you’re going to
make this island a garbage
heap, I’m going back to
France.”
In 1890 secretary of Treasury
William Widom wanted to turn
the island at the base of the
Statue of Liberty into a
processing point for
immigrants. Compare the
caption to the poem inscribe
on the base of the statue that
tells the world to,
Give me your tired, your
poor, Your huddled masses
yearning to breathe free…
Chinese and
Irish
immigrants
both
consume
Uncle Sam
(America),
then the
Chinese
man
consumes
the Irishman
CHICAGO
HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the
Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe
them, for I have seen your painted women
under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I
answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the
gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my
reply is: On the faces of women and
children I have seen the marks of wanton
hunger…
- Carl Sandburg
Louis Sullivan
The Chicago School of Architecture
Form follows function!
Louis Sullivan: Bayard
Bldg., NYC, 1897
Frank Lloyd Wright 1869 – 1959
“Prairie House” School of Architecture
“Organic Architecture”
Function follows form!
New York City Architectural Style:
1870s-1910s
1. The style was less innovative than
in Chicago.
2. NYC was the source of the capital for Chicago.
3. Most major business firms had their
headquarters in NYC their bldgs. became
“logos” for their companies.
4. NYC buildings and skyscrapers were taller than
in Chicago.