The Working Man's Reward: Chicago's Early Suburbs and the Roots of American Sprawl
- ISBN-10
- 0199773017
- ISBN-13
- 9780199773015
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 336
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2014-04-03
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Author
- Elaine Lewinnek
Description
Between the 1860s and 1920s, Chicago's working-class immigrants designed the American dream of home-ownership. They imagined homes as small businesses, homes that were simultaneously a consumer-oriented respite from work and a productive space that workers hoped to control. Stretching out of town along with Chicago's assembly-line factories, Chicago's early suburbs were remarkably socially and economically diverse. They were marketed by real estate developers and urban boosters with the elusive promise that homeownership might offer some bulwark against the vicissitudes of industrial capitalism, that homes might be "better than a bank for a poor man" and "the working man's reward." This promise evolved into what Lewinnek terms "the mortgages of whiteness," the hope that property values might increase if that property could be kept white. Suburbs also developed through nineteenth-century notions of the gendered respectability of domesticity, early ideas about city planning and land economics, and an evolving twentieth-century discourse about the racial attributes of property values. Looking at the persistent challenges of racial difference, economic inequality, and private property ownership that were present in urban design and planning from the start, Lewinnek argues that white Americans' attachment to property and community were not simply reactions to post-1945 Civil Rights Movement and federally enforced integration policies. Rather, Chicago's mostly immigrant working class bought homes, seeking an elusive respectability and class mobility, and trying to protect their property values against what they perceived as African American threats, which eventually flared in violent racial conflict. The Working Man's Reward examines the roots of America's suburbanization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showing how Chicagoans helped form America's urban sprawl.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2014
- 250 pages
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press
Similar books
-
The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People
By Paul S. Boyer, Clifford E. Clark, Karen HalttunenBy her own account, Peggy O'Neale Timberlake was “frivolous, wayward, [and] passionate.” While still married to a naval oflicer away on duty ...
-
The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Volume I
By Paul S. Boyer, Clifford E. Clark, Karen Halttunen... had married the widowed daughter of a Washington tavern keeper. By her own account, Peggy O'Neale Timberlake was “frivolous, wayward, [and] passionate.
-
Rice University: One Hundred Years in Pictures
By Karen Hess Rogers, Lee Pecht, Alan Harris Bath... Bill, Kennedy, Jacqueline, Kennedy, John F., Kidd, Albert and Elizabeth, Kieran Timberlake (architects), Kilpatrick, John, Kirkland, William, Kissinger, ...
-
Cengage Advantage Series: The Enduring Vision
By Paul S. Boyer, Clifford E. Clark, Karen Halttunen... 195–196, 361; abolishing of, 257 Ticonderoga fort, 157, 169 Tilden, Samuel J., 524 Timberlake, Peggy O'Neale, 301 Timbuktu, Mali, Sankore Mosque in, ...
-
The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, Volume 1
By Paul S. Boyer, Clifford E. Clark, Karen HalttunenBy her own account, Peggy O'Neale Timberlake was “frivolous, wayward, [and] passionate.” While still married to a naval officer away on duty, ...
-
The Cherokee Struggle to Maintain Identity in the 17th and 18th Centuries
By Jr., William R. ReynoldsTimberlake, p. 8 (9–10). 2. Timberlake, p. 36 (70). 3. Hoig, p. 45; Kelly, p. 22; Timberlake, p. 37 (72–73). 4. Alderman, p. 6; Timberlake, p.
-
Prehistoric Copper Mining in Europe, 5500-500 BC
By William O'BrienTimberlake, S. 2002. 'Ancient prospection for metals and modern prospection for ancient mines: the evidence for Bronze Age mining within the British Isles', ...
-
The Sixties in the News: How an Era Unfolded in American Newspapers, 1959-1973
By William J. Ryczekhadn't known Timberlake until the two moved in together. Kathy had worked at a series of jobs, including electronics assembler and a dancer in a bar, ...
-
A Borderland Confederate
By William Lyne WilsonTerrill, Philip, killed Thompson, William S. Timberlake, George, wounded. Timberlake, Harry. Timberlake, J. H., wounded. Timberlake, J. L., wounded.
-
Golf in Columbus at Wyandot Country Club: A Lost Donald Ross Classic
By William R. CaseAs the caretaker of the clubhouse, Timberlake was furnished living quarters on the second floor. Around 8:00 p.m., he descended into the basement for the ...