Post Civil War Era 1865-1920 Flashcards
● San Francisco passed the first land use zoning restrictions on the location of obnoxious uses.
● Tenement House Act of 1867 – 1st New York tenement housing law is enacted. Required fire escapes from each suite as well as windows in each room. Builders met the letter of the 1867 law by merely inserting meaningless windows between interior rooms. Without air shafts, the 1867 requirement failed to increase natural light or fresh air ventilation in the crowded tenement “dark bedroom (“Old Law”).
● Purchase of Alaska
1867
Riverside, IL – Model curved street “suburb” (Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., Calvert Vaux)
1868
The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads meet at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10 to complete the first transcontinental railroad.
1869
Yellowstone is first national park
1872
Munn v. Illinois” – paved the way for future government intervention in land use (when property is devoted to a use having a public interest, owner must submit to be controlled by the public for the common good)
1877
John Wesley Powell’s Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States is published. Includes a proposed regional plan that would both foster settlement of the arid west and conserve scarce water resources.
1878
● Progress and Poverty published. In this influential book Henry George presents an argument for diminishing extremes of national wealth and poverty by means of a single tax (on land) that would capture the “unearned increment” of national development for public uses
● Tenement House Act of 1879 – required that every habitable room have a window opening to plain air, a requirement that was met by including air shafts between adjacent buildings. Tenement dwellers tossed garbage, bilge water and waste into these air shafts which were not designed for garbage removal. As a result, the law’s attempt to improve sanitation only created a new sanitation problem. (“Old Law”)
● Debut of the “Dumbbell Tenement,” so called because of its shape. A form of multifamily housing widely built in New York until the end of the century and notorious for the poor living conditions it imposed on its denizens (lack of light, air, space).
● Establishment of U.S. Geological Survey to survey and classify all Public Domain lands
1879
Building of Pullman, Illinois, model industrial town by George Pullman
1880 - 1884:
Chicago’s Hull House founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr
1889
How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis published.
1890
General Land Law Revision Act – gave President power to create forest preserves by proclamation.
1891
Sierra Club founded to promote the protection and preservation of the natural environment. John Muir, Scottish-American naturalist, and a major figure in the history of American environmentalism, was the leading founder.
1892:
Chicago’s World Fair - Columbian Exposition stimulates city planning; foundations for City Beautiful Movement. Some claim “Birth” of Modern American City Planning. Daniel Burnham’s “White City”. (Daniel Burnham, Frederick L. Olmsted, Sr. Charles F. McKim, Augustus St. Gaudens)
1893
“Children of the Poor” by Jacob Riis published
1892
Kansas City, MO – Metropolitan Park Plan (George Kessler)
1893
