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WEEK
3. MANUFACTURING CIVIC AND COMMERCIAL CULTURE
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L'Enfant's Plan for Washington and the Commissioners' Plan for New York; urban boosterism; dissemination of the grid, the town square and the great urban park; producing industrial space.
READING:
Jack H. Williamson, "The Grid: History, Use, and Meaning," in Victor Margolis,
ed., Design Discourse (Chicago, l989), pp. l7l-86
Mona Domosh, Invented Cities: The Creation of Landscape in Nineteenth-Century
New York and Boston (New Haven, l995), pp. 7-34
Frederick Law Olmsted, "Public Planning and the Enlargement of Towns"
(l870) in S.B. Sutton, ed., Civilizing American Cities: Writings on
City Landscapes by Frederick Law Olmsted (New York, l997), pp. 52-99
Recommended:
Hildegard Binder Johnson, "Towards a National Landscape," in Michael P.
Conzen, ed., The Making of the American Landscape (Boston, l990),
pp. l27-245
Stephen V. Ward, Selling Places: The Marketing and Promotion of Towns
and Cities, 1850-2000 (London, 1998)
Thomas Bender, Toward an Urban Vision: Ideal and Institutions in Nineteenth
Century America (Baltimore, l982), esp. pp. 1-128
Harold and James Kirker, Bulfinch’s Boston, 1787-1817 (New York,
1964)
David Schuyler, The New Urban Landscape: The Redefinition of City Form
in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore, l986)
Edward Spann, "The Greatest Grid: The New York Plan of l8ll," in Two
Centuries of American Planning, ed. Daniel Scheffer (Baltimore,
l988), pp. 11-40
Elizabeth Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850 (Ithaca, l989)
Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History
of Central Park (Ithaca, l992), esp. pp. 95-205
Charles E. Beveridge, ed., The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted,
6 v. (Baltimore, 1977-97)
QUESTIONS:
l. Are American cities determined by real estate and commercial interests,
or do these interact with other forces in different sites, at different
times in history?
2. What kinds of urban risks or dangers concerned Americans in the early-19th
century? What precautions did they take in terms of where they lived,
what regulations they passed, what institutions they built?
3. What are the strengths and limits of mapping a utopian vision for a
society? How does it help people adhere to high ideals? Can the formal
plan (perhaps even the names of a town or its major spaces) also suggest
that the goals have been achieved?
4. To what extent can we speak of city planning or regional planning in
this era, even though there were no agencies to undertake this scale of
work? Who made decisions about cities and regional development? What roles
did architects take on for themselves? What do you think of these public
officials?
5. What do you think of the grid plan? Why is it so closely identified
with American society?
Discuss
Questions on the Bulletin Board