Domesticating the Street: The Reform of Public Space in Hartford,1850-1930 (Urban Life & Urban Landscape)

Peter C. Baldwin

ISBN 10: 0814250262 / ISBN 13: 9780814250266

Published by Ohio State University Press, 1999

Fast & Free Shipping â A well-used but reliable copy with all text fully readable. Pages and cover remain intact, though wear such as notes, highlighting, bends, or library marks may be present. Supplemental items like CDs or access codes may not be included. Seller Inventory # ZWV.0814250262.A

Synopsis:

American city streets at the turn of the century were chaotic places where pedestrians, peddlers, vehicles, and playing children competed noisily for space. How did this scene disappear in so many urban areas, replaced by a modern streetscape dominated by traffic?

Domesticating the Street locates this important change in the Progressive Era, when growing alarm about the impact of the urban environment inspired attempts to make public space conform to the values of the middle-class home. Taking the city of Hartford, Connecticut as a case study, Peter C. Baldwin examines reformers' efforts to fight the litter, prostitution, child labor, and peddling that made streets so anti-thetical to Progressive ideas of decorum. Though these reformers failed, finally, to purify the streets, business-oriented individuals and groups developed a different strategy, dividing public space into a complex system of thoroughfares, pleasure drives, side streets, public markets, landscaped parks, ball fields, and playgrounds. Vice and crime weren't eliminated, but they were displaced to marginal streets and off-street alternatives. This successful reform movement culminated in the adoption of land-use zoning regulations in the 1920s.

Hartford's reform of its public space predated the flood of automobile traffic so often blamed for transforming the streets. In order to understand fully the current condition of American public spaces, Baldwin suggests, we need to look at the complex moral and commercial reform tradition that made it possible -- not simply at the effects of technology.

Synopsis: Examines the change in America's city streets from chaotic places with pedestrians, peddlers and vehicles, to modern urban landscapes dominated by traffic. The text uses the city of Hartford, Connecticut as a case study.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Domesticating the Street: The Reform of ...
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Publication Date: 1999
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: acceptable