Inventing the Metropolis: Civilization and

Urbaniry in Antebellum New York

DELL UPTON

n October 26, 1825, the canal boat Seneca As the celebrants understood, the Erie Canal- I am grateful to Michele H. Bogart,

0 Chief left Buffalo at the head of a parade of

gaily decorated craft to celebrate the open-
ing of the Erie Canal. On November 4 the procession
imagined for a century, projected for thirty years, and
under construction for eight-cemented New York's
position as the "capital of the country:' in the words
Margaretta M. Lovell, Mary P. Ryan,
Catherine Hoover Voorsanger, and
Shane White for comments on an
earlier draft of this essay.

reached New York City, where a small flotilla carry- of the painter and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse. 2 New 1. E. Idell Zeisloft, ed., The New

ing members of the City Council and other New
York dignitaries greeted it (cat. no. 118). Twenty-
nine steamboats and a host of sailing vessels and
smaller craft formed a circle three miles in diameter
around the Seneca Chief Governor De Witt Clinton
York had emerged from the Revolution as the new Metropolis: Memorable Events
of Three Centuries, 1600-1900,
nation's largest city, surpassing Philadelphia, the colo- from the Island of Mana-hat-ta
nial metropolis. By 1825 New York's economic domi- to Greater New York at the
Close of the Nineteenth Cen-
nance was secured, as a result of its favorable location
tury (New York: D. Appleton,
and year-round harbor, the establishment of regular 1899 ), pp. 83-84; Mary P. Ryan,

(cat. nos. +, 122B ), the canal's most ardent pro- transatlantic packet lines on the Black Ball Line in Civic Wars: Democracy and
Public Life in the American
moter, lifted a keg of Lake Erie water high above 1818, and its good fortune in being the site where City during the Nineteenth
his head, then poured it into the ocean. Other partic- Britain chose to dump its surplus textiles after the Century (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1997),
ipants added waters from the Mississippi, Columbia, War of 1812, which gave it primacy in the national dry"'
pp. 61-68.
Orinoco, La Plata, and Amazon rivers, as well as goods market (cat. no. 35; fig. 1). 3 If New York had no 2. Samuel F. B. Morse (1831),

from the Nile, Gambia, Thames, Seine, Rhine, and equal by the time the Erie Canal was completed, the quoted in Paul J. Staiti, Samuel
F. B. Morse (Cambridge: Cam-
Danube. The party landed at the Battery and led "artificial river'' nevertheless assured the city's future bridge University Press, 1989),
a great parade up Broadway to City Hall, and preeminence at the geographical and financial center p. 150. See also Evan Cornog,
The Birth of Empire: De Witt
ultimately to a dinner for three thousand at the of a web of national and international commerce.
Clinton and the American
Lafayette Theatre. 1 Not only did the canal's path set the pattern for Experience, 1769-1828 (New
York: Oxford University Press,
1998), pp. 104-6, 171.
3. See Robert Greenhalgh Albion,
The Rise of New York Port
(181s-1860) (New York: C.
Scribner's Sons, 1939; reprint,
Boston: Northeastern Univer-
sity Press, 1984), pp. 16-38;
and Eugene P. Moehring,
"Space, Economic Growth,
and the Public Works Revolu-
tion in New York;' in Infra-
structure and Urban Growth
in the Nineteenth Century
(Chicago: Public Works His-
torical Society, 1985), p. 31.

Fig. 1. William Guy Wall,

New York.from \the Heights near
Brooklyn) 1823. Watercolor and
graphite. The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York,
The Edward W C. Arnold
Collection of New York
Prints, Maps, and Pictures,
Bequest of Edward W C.
Arnold, 1954 54.90.301

Opposite: detail, cat. no 135

4 ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY

4. See Cornog, Birth of Empire, urban, railroad, road, and communication networks of character and accomplishment were also necessary.
pp. 161-72; and Carol Sheriff,
The Artificial River: The Erie
focused on the Empire City (cat. nos. 145, 152 ), but its "It is curious and melancholy to observe how little
Canal and the Paradox of construction also attracted foreign investment to manly and dignified pride New York has in its own
Progress, I8I7-I862 (New York:
the city and assured the dominance of New York- character and position:' lamented Harper's New
Hill and Wang, 1996), pp. 5,
18-21. based capital in the nation's economy. 4 Monthly Magazine. ''A man may be large; but if his
5. A Philadelphia Perspective: The The story of antebellum New York is the story of size be bloat, there is nothing· imposing in it.'' 14
Diary of Sidney Ge01;ge Fisher
Covering the Years I834-I87I,
New Yorkers' struggle to come to grips with a city "Great cities; claimed another essayist, are "the
edited by Nicholas B. Wain- exponentially larger than any ever before known on greatest and noblest of God's physical creations on
wright (Philadelphia: Histori-
the American continent. By 1825 its population had earth.'' The nineteenth century was an age of great
cal Society of Pennsylvania,
1967), p. 197. passed 125,000. That figure was in turn dwarfed by cities, and the greatest were characterized by "Civiliza-
6. Lady Emmeline Stuart-Wortley, the nearly 815,000 people who lived in New York tion" and "Urbanity" (as well as by Protestant Chris-
Travels in the United States,
etc. during I849 and I8so (New
thirty-five years later. After a visit in 1847 the Phila- tianity and the English language). The first meant
York: Harper and Brothers, delphia diarist Sidney George Fisher noted ruefully, "'making a person a citizen;' that is-the inhabitant of
1851), p. 13; "Monumental
"Philad: seems villagelike.'' 5 a city:' developing the ability to live responsibly and
Structures," New-York Mirror,
and Ladies' Literary Gazette, To visitors New York was the "Empress City of the effectively with one's neighbors; the second, "the qual-
December 12, 1829, p. 183. West:' the "queen of American cities;' the "London ity, condition, or manners of the inhabitant of a city;'
7. Northern Star, "The Observer:
The City of New-York," New-
of the Western world.'' 6 As impressed as these visitors cultivating the ability to live with style. This was not to
York Mirror, and Ladies' Liter- were, they could not match New Yorkers' own self- suggest, the writer added hastily, "that the bustling,
ary Gazette, November 15,
absorption. There was no aspect of their town that staring, heedless, rude, offensive manners of most self.
1828, p. 147.
8. Mrs. Felton, American Life: did not seem vaster or more numerous, grander or important inhabitants of some modern commercial
A Narrative of Two Years' City meaner, more sophisticated or cruder, more refined or cities are the perfected result of the highest possible
and Country Residence in the
United States (Bolton Percy:
more debased, more virtuous or more vicious than civilization, or are the acme of genuine urbanity." 15
The Author, 1843), p. 35. elsewhere. No element was too subtle to escape atten- Antebellum New Yorkers pursued many pa~ to
9. Timothy Dwight, Travels in
tion or too trivial to convey some vitally significant bringing civilization, or citizenship, and urbanity to
New-England and New-York,
: 4 vols. (New Haven: Timothy insight into the life of the city. Confronted with the their city and its residents. Art was one path, for it
Dwight, 1821-22; facsimile "little world" they lived in, New Yorkers marveled. 7 offered both diagnostic and ideal images that helped .
edited by Barbara Miller Solo-
mon, Cambridge, Massachu-
However great it had become, antebellum New York educated New Yorkers define themselves· and influ-
setts: Harvard University Press, was still a work in progress over which hung a perva- ence the development of their city, and it embodied
1969 ), vol. 3, p. 330.
sive "air of newness.'' 8 ''The bustle in the streets, the the refinement that urbanity implied. At the same
IO. Stuart-Wortley, Travels, p. 13;
"The City of Modem Ruins," perpetual activity of the carts, the noise and hurry at time, the arts were deeply embedded, intellectually and
New-York Mirror, June 13, the docks which on three sides encircle the city; the practically, in antebellum New York's U[ban demo-
1840, p. 407.
II. "Widening of Streets:' New-
sound of saws, axes, and hammer at the shipyards; the graphic upheaval and economic efflorescence. They
York Mirror, November 2, 1833, continually repeated views of the numerous buildings were commodities and spectacles__:._"public ;entertain-
p. 143.
rising in almost every part of it, and the multitude of ments"-offered for sale alongside laxatives arid fine
12. E. E., "Letters Descriptive of
New-York, Written to a Liter- workmen employed upon them form as lively a spec- carriages and freak shows and houses and operas and
ary Gentleman in Dublin, imen of 'the busy hum of populous cities' as can be food and women's bodies and fashionable clothing
No. u," New-York Mirror,
and Ladies' Literary Gazette,
imagined:' observed Yale University president Timo- and grain futures. Art was shown and sold cheek by
· January 6, 1827, p. 187. thy Dwight. 9 But a work in progress was, from another jowl with these other commodities and spectacles on
13. John F. Watson, Annals of
perspective, a "half-finished city;' a "city of perpetual the streets, in stores and ?ffices, and (except for the
Philadelphia ... to Which Is
Added an Appendix, Contain- ruin and repair. No sooner is a fine building erected brothelSi) in the classified columns of New York's news-
ing Olden Time Researches than it is torn down to put up a better.'' 10 New York papers. Thus consideration of the arts entails under-
and Reminiscences of New
York City (Philadelphia: E. L.
would be a "fine place-if they ever got it done.'' 11 standing them in the context of the entire universe of
Carey and A. Hart, 1830 ), New Yorkers' public bravado was tempered by an material culture that defined antebellum New York,
appendix p. 74.
equally public uncertainty about the city's standing including the planning and construction of the city, its
14. "Editor's Easy Chair," Harper's
New Monthly Magazine 21 and its future. What did it mean to be the E~pire City, verb,al and pictorial representations! and its consump-
(June 1860), p. 127. "the greatest commercial emporium of the world"? 12 tion o(a vastly expanded world of goods and images.
15. "Great Cities," Putnam's
Monthly! (March 1855),
As early as 1830 a New York-born historian• of Phila-
pp. 257, 256. delphia discerned in his birthplace "the very ambition
Regulating New York
to be the metropolitan city;' a quality which "gave them
cares 'J\'.'hich I am willing .to see remote enough from New York's phenomenal economic and demographic
Philadelphia.'' 13 All agreed that quantity-mere . size growth was dt;amatically visible in its urban lanl
and wealth-was not enough.. Some elusive qualities scape. At the time of the -Revolution the city was
 INVENTING THE METROPOLIS: CIVILIZATION AND URBANITY 5

confined to the southern end of the otherwise-rural 16. Thomas N. Stanford, A Con-
cise Description of the City of
Manhattan Island. Antebellum New Yorkers often New York ... (New York:
described the colonial section of their city (those The Author, 1814), quoted in
Hendrik Hartog, Public Prop-
streets south of City Hall Park-then called simply
erty and Private Power: The
"The Park") as "essentially defective:' "a labyrinth- a Corporation of the City of New
puzzle-a riddle-incomprehensible to philosophers York in American Law, 1730-
1870 (Chapel Hill: University
of the present day." 16 It was nothing of the sort. Laid of North Carolina Press, 1983),
out by the Dutch .as a rough grid (adapted to the p. 159; "The Walton Mansion-
House. -Pearl Street;' New-
shoreline) with major streets paralleling the East River
York Mirror, March 17, 1832,
waterfront and perpendicular streets leading back into p. 289.
the core of the island, the city was continually 17. Paul E. Cohen and Robert T.
Augustyn, Manhattan in
extended in the process of land reclamation along the Maps, 1527-199s (New York:
shore (cat. no. 124; fig. 2). Rizzoli International Publica-
tions, 1997), p. 94.
The colonial district was embellished and rational-
18. "Late City Improvements;'
ized (or "regulated:' as it was called) as money and New-York Mirror, and Ladies'
occasion permitted. When New York emerged from Literary Gazette, March 27,
1830, p. 303; "Widening of
the Revolution heavily damaged by British military Streets;' New-York Mirror,
occupatiofl and by a disastrous fire of 1776 that November 2, 1833, p. 143; "City
Improvements;' New-York
burned much of the city west of Broad Street, city
Mirror, November 3, 1833,
officials took advantage of the destruction to modify p. 175; John F. Watson, Annals
Broadway's grade as it descended from Wall Street to and Occurrences of New York
City and State, in the Olden
Bowling Green and to straighten and widen some Time . .. (Philadelphia: H.F.
streets. 17 The improvement of the old town continued Anners, 1846), pp. 144-45.
19. Elizabeth Blackmar, Manhat-
through the antebellum era, particularly during the
tan for Rent, 1785-18s0 (Ithaca:
1830s, when Ann, Cedar, and Liberty streets were Fig. 2. Water Courses ofManhattan, 1999. Line drawing Cornell University Press, 1989),
straightened and widened, William and Nass au streets by Sibel Zandi-Sayek, after Egbert L. Viele, Sanitary and pp. 30-31, 41; Peter Marcuse,
To-pographicalMap of the C#y and Island ofNew York, 1865, "The Grid as City Plan: New
enlarged, and Beekman, Fulton, and Platt streets newly York City and Laissez-Faire
reprinted in Paul E. Cohen and Robert T. Augustyn,
cut. 18 During the same years the waterfront was con- Manhattan in Maps, 1s27-199s (New York: Rizzoli Inter- Planning in the Nineteenth
Century;' Planning Perspectives
tinually redeveloped as landfill extended the shoreline national Publications, 1997)
2 (September 1987), p. 297;
into the river (cat. no. n9 ). Edward K. Spann, "The Great-
In the years following the Revolution urbanization est Grid: The New York Plan
of 18II," in Two Centuries of
began to creep along the East River beyond the Then the city exploded (fig. 3). By 1828 the streets American Planning, edited by
Common, which comprised the present City Hall had been paved and gaslit as far north as Thirteenth Daniel Schaffer (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University
Park and the land adjacent to it, and the Collect Pond Street across most of the island. 20 At midcentury
Press, 1988), pp. 14-16. Mar-
to the north. By the end of the eighteenth century urban development had reached Madison Square, cuse's and Spann's essays, along
a patchwork of gridded plats lay between the Park and by the opening of the Civil War outlying residen- with Hartog, Public Property,
chap. II, are the best treat-
and Houston Street. Some had been created by the tial neighborhoods were being built in the Thirties ments to date of the evolution
city from its common lands in the decades after the and Forties (cat. no. 136; fig. 4). of New York's plan between
the Revolution and the mid-
Revolution. Others were laid out by private land- In the second quarter of the nineteenth century
nineteenth century, and they
owners as urban development moved northward. In New York was an irregular collection of mostly regu- are the sources of the follow-
the east Henry Rutgers issued ground leases for his lar grids, a patchwork but not a labyrinth. As a cor- ing paragraphs, unless other-
wise noted.
farm along the East River, laying the foundations respondent to Putnam)s Monthly noted, in terms more 20. Watson, Annals and Occur-
of the present Lower East Side. In the west Trin- measured than those of most of his contemporaries, rences of New York City,
pp. 144-45.
ity Church, a major landowner in Manhattan from lower Manhattan was "quite irregular. This irreg-
21. "New-York Daguerreotyped.
colonial times to the present, subdivided some of ularity, however, is in the position of the streets, Group First: Business-Streets,
its properties, notably to create Hudson, or Saint rather than in their direction:' as he demonstrated by Mercantile Blocks, Stores, and
Banks;' Putnam's Monthly l
John's, Square as an elite residential enclave focused comparing lower Manhattan to a baby's bootee with (February 1853), p. 124.
on Saint John's Church, Trinity's chapel of ease. The a few misplaced threads. 21
section of Broadway that passed through these pri- Although the old city was no medieval maze, it was
vate grids was the scene of the most active retail com- dramatically different from those parts north of
mercial development during the three decades after Houston Street (and especially north of Fourteenth
1825 (cat. no. 123). 19 Street) that were shaped by the single most dramatic
6 ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY

A. Bowling Green
B. Wall Street
C. Broadway
D. The Park
E. Chatham Square
F. The Bowery
G. Hudson (Saint John's)
Square

1. Castle Clinton
2. Branch Bank of the
United States
3. City Hall
4. Old Almshouse
5. The Rotunda
6. New York State Prison
7. Vauxhall Gardens

Fig. 3. New York Settlement in 1820, 1999. Line drawing by Sibel Zandi-Sayek, after Egbert L. Viele, Sanitary and Topographical
Map of the Ci-ty and Island ofNew York, 1865, reprinted in Paul E. Cohen and Robert T. Augustyn, Manhattan in Maps,
1527-1995. (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1997)

22. Cohen and Augustyn, Manhat-
tan in Maps, p. 102; Hartog,
Public Property, pp. 167-75.
physical project to achieve civilization and urbanity,
the Commissioners' Plan of 18n (fig. 5). This was the
work of a blue-ribbon panel appointed by_ the state
legislature in 1807 to make a long-range plan for the
city's growth after the Common Council and prop-
erty owners had been unable to agree on a satisfactory
course of action. The three commissioners in· turn
hired John Randel Jr. to survey the island. Together
Randel and his employers established the all-
encompassing framework for nearly every subsequent
urban development in Manhattan.
Randel made three large maps on which he later
drew the plan chosen by the commissioners, a grid that
was divided into 200-by-800-foot blocks extending
up the island as far as 155th Street. For a decade after
the plan's publication, the young surveyor and his
assistants tramped Manhattan placing marble posts
at the sites of all future intersections, although the
regulation and construction of streets and avenues
proceeded on a block-by-block basis as urbaniza-
tion moved northward over the course of the nine-
teenth century. 22
In creating the plan the commissioners and their
surveyor carefully considered the nature of cities and
the future of their own, as they made clear in the
"Remarks" issued to accompany William Bridges's
 INVENTING THE METROPOLIS: CIVILIZATION AND URBANITY 7

A. Bowling Green
B. Broadway
C. Wall Street
D. The Park
E. Five Points
F. Chatham Square
G. The Bowery
H. Hudson (Saint John's)
Square
I. Tompkins Square
J. Washington Square
K. Stuyvesant Square
L. Union Square

1. Castle Garden
2. Trinity Church
3. Custom House
4. Branch Bank of the
United States
5. Second Merchants'
Exchange
6. American (Barnum's)
Museum
7. Astor House
8. City Hall
9. Old Almshouse
10. The Rotunda
11. A. T. Stewart store
(The Marble Palace)
12. Edgar H. Laing stores
13. New York Halls of Justice
and House of Detention
(The Tombs)
14. E. V. Haughwout store
15. Niblo's Garden
16. New York University
17. La Grange Terrace/
Colonnade Row
18. Grace Church
19. Bellevue institutions

Fig. 4. New York Settlement in 1860, 1999. Line drawing by Sibel Zandi-Sayek, after Egbert L. Viele, Sanitary and Topographical
Map of the City and Island ofNew York, 1865, reprinted in Paul E. Cohen and Robert T. Augustyn, Manhattan in Maps,
1527-1995 (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1997)

published version. In a famous passage they
reported that "one of the first objects" they had con-
sidered was
whether they should con.fine themselves to rectilinear
and rectangular streets, or whether they should
adopt some of those supposed improvements by circles,
ovals, and stars, which certainly embellish a plan,
whatever may be their effect as to convenience and
utility. In considering that subject, they could not
but bear in mind that a city is to be composed prin-
cipally of the habitations of men, and that strait-
sided, and right-angled houses are the most cheap to
build and the most convenient to live in. The effect 23. "Remarks of the Commission-
ers for Laying out Streets and
of these plain and simple refl,ections was decisive. Roads in the City of New
York, under the Act of April 3,
1807," in Manual of the Corpo-
In addition, they wanted to devise a plan that would
ration of the City of New York,
mesh with "plans already adopted by individuals" in a edited by David T. Valentine
way that would not require major adjustments. 23 (New York: The Council,
1866 ), p. 756.
The product was New York's famous grid. Look-
ing back half a century after the creation of the
Commissioners' Plan, Randel boasted that many of its
opponents (who objected to the costs of the improve-
ments and to their conflict with already established
land uses and building dispositions) had been forced
to admit "the facilities afforded by it for the buying,
8 ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY

Fig. 5. John Randel Jr., cartographer; adapted and published by William Bridges, This M.ap of the City ofNew York and Island ofManhattan as Laid Out by the
Commissioners, 18n. Hand-colored line engraving on copper. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Geography and Map Division

24. John Randel Jr. (1866), quoted
in Spann, "Greatest Grid,"
p. 26.
25. On the new economic theories,
see Joyce 0. Appleby, Economic
Thought and Ideology in Seven-
teenth Century England (Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press,
1978); for their influence
in the early republic, see
Joyce 0. Appleby, Capitalism
and a New Social Order: The
Republican Vision of the 1790s
(New York: New York Uni-
versity Press, 1984).
26. "Remarks of the Commis-
sioners."
27. [Samuel L. Mitchill], The Pic-
ture of New-York; or, The
Traveller's Guide, through the
Commercial Metropolis of the
United States, by a Gentleman
Residing in This City (New
York: I. Riley and Co., 1807),
pp. 128-43,
28. Edward K. Spann, The New
Metropolis: New York City,
184-o-1857 (New York: Colum-
bia University Press, 1981),
pp. 144-45.
29. "Washington Market:' Gleason's
Pictorial Drawing-Room Com-
panion; March 5, 1853, p. 160.
and improving real estate, on streets, avenues, and
public squares, already laid out and established on the
ground by monumental stones and bolts." 24
Still, the 18n plan was not simply a partition for
resale. Although it has been criticized for its lack of
public squares and broad processional avenues con-
ducive to civic grandeur and ritual, these already
existed in the old city. As the plan was being drawn, a
monumental new city hall was rising on the Park
at the head of Broadway (cat. nos. 186, 254), then and
throughout the antebellum era New York's principal
processional street.
The Commissioners' Plan can most accurately be
described as the embodiment of an economically
informed vision of urban society. It was created at a
time when large-scale merchants and public officials
were converting to economic theories that envisioned
commerce as an all-encompassing, impersonal, sys-
tematic exchange of commodities rather than, as it
had traditionally been regarded (and still was by many
small traders), a series of discrete, highly personal,
morally tinged relationships. 25
This sense of trade as a commodity .system was
incorporated most explicitly in the commissioners'
provision of a large marketplace (for foodstuffs and
other "provisions") between First Avenue and the
East River, and Seventh and Tenth streets. Eventually,
they argued, householders would recognize that their
time and money could be more efficiently spent
shopping in a centralized venue than among the city's
many dispersed marketplaces. At the same time, ven-
dors would enjoy a more stable clientele and a more
predictable demand, which "has a tendency to fix and
equalize prices over the whole city?' 26
The commissioners' vision, unexceptionable to
modern eyes, marked a radical change in the time-
honored conception of the relationship between
urban government and the markets. One of the func-
tions of European and American city governments
was to protect the food supply. City officials determined
the sites of marketplaces, rented stalls, set market hours,
controlled the quality, weight, and sanitary condition
of goods sold, and most of all regulated prices. In the
early nineteenth century New York had one main
market, the Fly Market, replaced by Fulton Market in
1816 ( cat. no. 120 ), and seven local ones. 27 At midcen-
tury there were thirteen. 28 The Commissioners' Plan
envisioned a single large market whose prices would
be governed by competition rather than law. This was
the de facto system by the middle of the nineteenth
century when, as one journalist noted of Washington
Market, the traditional rules for pricing, quantity, and
quality, although stringent, were "dead letters, for
they are seldom or never carried into execution?' 29
Increasingly New York's city government stepped
away from economic regulation and devoted itself
instead to creating the infrastructure that would
enable an ostensibly benign system to operate freely.

Even had they wished to continue regulation, New
York's superior harbor (cat. no. 121) and good fortune
in controlling access to the easiest inland route, which
were the foundations of its power, also integrated it
into a world economy no longer susceptible to local
control. 30 The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 and
the completion of the transatlantic cable in 1858
reinforced the city's position as a key node in the
geography of trade (cat. nos. 307-309 ).
The Commissioners' Plan, revised in minor ways
and published in definitive form in 1821, laid out both
the intellectual assumptions and the physical frame-
work within which New York grew throughout the
antebellum period. The theoretically grounded belief
in a systematic economic order inspired a conception
of the city as a spatial system that would articulate all
uses and all users, permitting maximum freedom of
individual action while ensuring transparent overall
order. Again this differed from traditional concepts,
which regarded urban spaces as static, unrelated aggre-
gations of adjacent properties gathered around public
spaces. Early-nineteenth-century writers sometimes
used the analogy of a table, with a grid of "cells:' each
of which varies independently in its values but stands
in clear relationship to every other one. It was an appro-
priate metaphor for the image of the articulated grid,
which the New York commissioners shared with their
merchant counterparts in other cities throughout the
new nation. 31
INVENTING THE METROPOLIS: CIVILIZATION AND URBANITY 9
In New York, as in other American cities, public 30. Amy Bridges, A City in the
Republic: Antebellum New
officials threw themselves into the business of regu- York and the Origins of Ma-
lation with a vengeance, cutting and filling and chine Politics (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press,
smoothing to make Manhattan Island resemble as
1984), p. I.
closely as possible the flat surface and regular lines of 31. Dell Upton, "Another City:
the Commissioners' Plan. The Collect Pond and the The Urban Cultural Landscape
in the Early Republic;' in
Swamp, the Beekman property east of City Hall Park, Everyday Life in the Early
were drained, watercourses were filled, the shoreline Republic, edited by Catherine
E. Hutchins (Winterthur,
was extended, and, one by one, hills were leveled and
Delaware: Henry Francis Du
valleys and ravines filled (cat. no. 124). The Evening Post Pont Winterthur Museum,
complained in 1833 of the many plans "for opening 1994), pp. 67-70; Dell Upton,
"The City as Material Culture;'
new streets, widening others, ploughing through in The Art and Mystery of
church yards, demolishing block after block of build- Historical Archaeology: Essays
in Honor ofJames Deetz,
ings, for miles in length, filling up streets so that you
edited by Anne E. Yentsch and
can step out of your second story bed room window Mary C. Beaudry (Boca Raton,
upon the side walk, and turning your first story par- Florida: CRC Press, 1992),
pp. 53-56.
lors and dining rooms into cellars and kitchens, with 32. Untitled item, Evening Post
various other magnificent projects for changing the (New York), February 26, 1833.
33. Quoted in Cohen and Augus-
appearance of the city, and for preventing any part of
tyn, Manhattan in Maps,
it from ever getting a look of antiquity." 32 "The great p. 108.
principle which governs these plans is, to reduce the 34. E. Porter Belden, New-York:
Past, Present, and Future;
surface of the earth as nearly as possible to dead level;' Comprising a History of the
complained the poet and academic Clement Clark City of New-York, a Descrip-
tion of Its Present Condition
Moore. 33 Moore was right, but his objections and
and an F,stimate of Its Future
those of his fellow landowners had less to do with the Increase, 2d ed. (New York:
intention than with the assessments levied against G. P. Putnam, 1849 ), p. 37;
Edward Wegmann, The Water-
them for work adjacent to their properties. Supply of the City of New York,
1658-1895 (New York: J. Wiley
and Sons, 1896), pp. 3-10;
The campaign to supply the city with water, the most
"Corporation Notice" (adver-
conspicuous and, in some New Yorkers' minds, the tisement), New-York Evening
most heroic effort to regulate the city, strikingly illus- Post, September 30, 1826, p. 3.
35. Jane Mork Gibson, "The Fair-
trates the power of the systematic urban vision. New mount Waterworks;' Philadel-
Yorkers obtained their water from wells far into the phia Museum of Art, Bulletin
84 (summer 1988), pp. 2-n;
nineteenth century. As neighborhoods were popu-
Gary A. Donaldson, "Bringing
lated, the city typically ordered the provision of wells Water to the Crescent City:
and pumps along with the paving of streets. The ear- Benjamin Latrobe and the
New Orleans Waterworks
liest efforts to create a systematic water supply also System;' Louisiana History 28
depended on wells. 34 One after another those few of (fall 1987), pp. 381-96.
36. Hartog, Public Property, pp. 8,
these schemes that progressed beyond the planning
21-24, 62-68.
stage failed. Even as other cities, such as Philadelphia
and New Orleans, managed to get their water systems
under way, New York's efforts stalled. 35
The major difficulty lay in the conception of the
government's role. City corporations like New York's
had traditionally accomplished major public works by
offering construction incentives to private landown-
ers. 36 At the beginning of the nineteenth century the
city decided to undertake in its own name an ambi-
tious plan to obtain water from the Bronx River. It
was opposed by those who did not believe that the
city should take on a project with uncertain financial
returns and by others who regarded such works as
IO ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY
37. Wegmann, W11ter-Supply,
pp. 11-12.
38. Belden, New-York, p. 38;
Wegmann, W11ter-Supply,
pp. 12-14; "Pure and Whole-
some Water," New-York Mirror,
11nd Ladies' Liter11ry G11zette,
December 22, 1827, p. 190.
The Manhattan Company
merged with Chase National
Bank in 1955 to become the
Chase Manhattan Bank.
39. "Pure and Wholesome Water:'
p. 190.
40. Wegmann, W11ter-Supply,
pp. 16-37; Larry D. Lankton,
The 'Pr11cticllhle"' Engineer:
John B. ]er'Pis 11nd the Old
Croton Aqueduct (Chicago:
Public Works Historical Soci-
ety, 1977), pp. 4-16.
41. Wegmann, W11ter-Supply,
pp. 49-51, 57-59; Lankton,
"Practic11ble"' Engineer, p. 24.
42. "'The Croton Aqueduct," Niles'
N11tion11l Register, July 16,
1842, pp. 308-9; Wegmann,
Water-Supply, pp. 39-40, 55 .
43. "Croton Aqueduct," pp. 308-9.
The editors added that the
Egyptian-style architecture of
the distributing reservoir was
"well fitted by its heavy and
imposing character for a work
of such magnitude."
44. Belden, New-York, p. 41.
Fig. 6. Map of the Great Fire ofDecember 16, J83s:-Wood
engraving, from Atkinson's Casket n (January 1836), p. 38.
Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester,
Massachusetts
business opportunities rather than public obligations
and wished to reap the profits themselves. Some of
the latter, including Aaron Burr, obtained a charter as
the Manhattan Company in 1799 and set up operations
on Chambers Street. They dug a well, built a small
reservoir, and began to lay wooden pipes through the
streets of the city. 37
In the early nineteenth century state legislatures
commonly allowed private undertakers of public proj-
ects such as waterworks and canals to establish banks
in order to finance themselves. The Manhattan Com-
pany's·charter permitted them to raise capital as they
saw fit and to make whatever use they wished of it
over and above the costs of building and operating
the works. The company concentrated its efforts on
its banking enterprise and pumped only as much water
as was necessary to protect its franchise, a practice that
it maintained until the end of the nineteenth century,
fighting off all attempts to charter bona fide water
companies to serve New York. 38
By the 1830s the water supply desperately needed
reconstruction: public wells had become polluted,
and firemen were hampered by lack of water in extin-
guishing major fires, such as the conflagration of
December 16 and 17, 1835, which destroyed much of
lower Manhattan's business district (cat. nos. no, n1;
fig. 6). 39 With the publicly financed construction of
the Erie Canal to offer as precedent, the city negoti-
ated with the state the right to explore potential
sources of water from newly drilled wells on Manhat-
tan Island, from the Bronx River, and from the more
distant Croton River. Engineer David B. Douglass
was hired to draft a report, which favored the Croton
River as the only source capable of supplying the
anticipated population of the city over the next sev-
eral decades. When the Common Council and the
voters approved the project, Douglass was named
project engineer and began work in May 1835. His
lack of progress led to his replacement in the fall of
1836 by John B. Jervis, an engineer who had learned
his profession during eight years' employment in the
construction of the Erie Canal. 40
Within a year construction of the water system was
in full swing along the forty-one-mile aqueduct that
connected a dam, created six miles upstream from
the mouth of the Croton River, to a double receiv-
ing reservoir between Sixth and Seventh avenues and
Seventy-ninth and Eighty-sixth streets, in an area that
would later become Central Park. From there water
was conducted to a distributing reservoir on Murray
Hill (cat. no. 90 ), on the present site of the New York
Public Library. 41
The builders' most vexing problem was to devise a
means of carrying the water across the Harlem River.
After considering an inverted siphon under the river
and a pipe laid across a suspension bridge (the sugges-
tion of renowned suspension-bridge builder Charles
Ellet), the Water Commission and its engineers chose
to build a 1,450-foot aqueduct, now known as High
Bridge, across the river (cat. no. 91 ). 42
The Egyptian-style architecture of the distributing
reservoir and the High Bridge's resemblance to a
Roman aqueduct were meant to remind New Yorkers
that their new waterworks rivaled the greatest mon-
uments of antiquity. The Baltimore-based Niles'
National Register wondered whether New Yorkers
were aware of the magnitude of their achievement. In
constructing "this stupendous structure" they were
"surpassing ancient Rome in one of her proudest
boasts. None of the hydraulic structures of that city,
in spite of the legions of slaves at her command,
equal, in magnitude of design, perfection of detail,
and prospective benefits, this aqueduct?' 43 Guide-
book writer E. Porter Belden agreed that the aque-
duct dwarfed all modem engineering works and rivaled
ancient Rome's Aqua Marcia and Anio Novus. 44
The waterworks projects called into question some
basic assumptions that underlay the sense of the city
as a system, specifically the beliefs that the pursuit of

individual advantages would mesh smoothly into an
overarching general good and that government should
be a neutral arbiter rather than an active agent of
development. The interests of the Manhattan Company
directly conflicted with those of the city at large. Nor
was the Croton Waterworks as neutral as it seemed.
Its construction was embraced by the Democratic
city administration, which saw it as a way to employ
four thousand party faithful, mostly Irish, and was
driven forward by its contractors in the face of re-
peated strikes and disturbances on the part of their
underpaid, overworked laborers. After its completion
water was supplied to the populace only through
public hydrants and even then over the objections of
the water commissioners, who believed that ordinary
people "abused" the privilege. Only paying custom-
ers-well-to-do householders and businesses-had
water delivered directly to them. 45
Republican New York
A day of civic ritual and public merriment marked the
official opening of the Croton Waterworks on Octo-
ber 14, 1842. A parade moved from the Battery up
Broadway to Union Square, down the Bowery, across
East Broadway, and back to City Hall Park. The pro-
cession threaded its way through some of the most
emblematic New York spaces, connecting the elite
and plebeian shopping streets along Broadway and
the Bowery and the rich and poor neighborhoods at
Union Square and East Broadway. The last marchers
passed City Hall Park just as the head of the pro-
cession was returning to it down Chatham Street,
forming a human chain that tied the city's diverse
neighborhoods to the center of its political universe at
City Hall and the Park, where speeches and choral
odes solemnized the day.
These festivities produced a sense of oneness in
democratic fellowship among New Yorkers of all
classes (or at least among those who wrote about it).
It was the "proud consciousness which every citizen
of New-York felt that his or her own cherished and
honored city had, in this mighty undertaking, accom-
plished a work with no superior;' a "gratification such
as it is not often the pleasant lot of a municipal peo-
ple to enjoy;' wrote the New World. 46
After the parades, speeches, and illuminations the
New World's correspondent concluded:
There was much, ... very much-indeed we may
say everything-in this celebration-to excite
INVENTING THE METROPOLIS: CIVILIZATION AND URBANITY II
strongly the most grateful feelings and reflections. 45. Bridges, City in the Republic,
p. 130; Edwin G. Burrows and
... [T]here was the sense ofgrandeur always called Mike Wallace, Gotham: A His-
into being by the sight ... of a great multitude, tory of New York City to 1898
(New York: Oxford University
animated by one impulse, and moving or acting
Press, 1999), pp. 625-28;
in the attainment of a common object. Nor was Wegmann, Water-Supply,
the proud reflection absent, that under the benign pp. 64-65.
46. ''The Croton Celebration:'
influence of political institutions which give and New World, October 22, 1842,
secure to every man his equal share in the general p. 269.
47. Ibid.
rights, powers, and duties of citizenship; amid this
48. [Samuel Blodget], Thoughts
great convulsion, as it may be called-this mighty on the Increasing Wealth
upheaving and commingling of society-where and National Economy of the
United States of America
half-a-million of people were brought together into (Washington: Printed by Way
one mass as it were, there was not a guard, a and Groff, 1801), pp. 7-10.
49. Dell Upton, "Lancasterian
patrol, a sentry, not even a solitary policeman,
Schools, Republican Citi-
stationed any where to hold in check the ebullition zenship, and the Spatial
of social or political excitement; that there was Imagination in Early
Nineteenth-Century Amer-
need of none. 47 ica," Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians
55 (September 1996),
The New World's observer articulated a characteris-
pp. 243-46.
tically republican vision of New York society, but one
that was rapidly fading by the time the Croton Water-
works opened. At its heart was the seductive image of
a diverse population acting freely but as though ani-
mated by a single will.
A republic was a polity of independent but related
citizens who shared essential values and qualities but
were differentiated in the degree to which they pos-
sessed them. Sometimes republicans made the point
by comparing citizens to currency, whose denomi-
nations represented various quantities of the same
essential value. The simile led one ambitious scholar
of "National Arithmetic" to attempt to set a mone-
tary value on the population of the United States and to
use that to calculate the inevitable increase in national
wealth. 48
The central theoretical problem of republicanism
was to reconcile economic and political liberty with
order and the notion of a single overarching public
good. How could one allow citizens the maximum
self-determination and still hope to have an orderly
society? As it was worked out by the earliest American
political theorists, a republic depended heavily on the
concept of virtue, a quality of character that prompted
its members to discipline themselves and to subor-
dinate personal interests to the larger good. Virtue
depended on the inculcation of common values into
citizens who, whatever their differences, all possessed
an inherent, trainable moral sense. 49 Because republi-
cans could not imagine the state's surviving without
roughly equivalent degrees of knowledge, values, and
goals among all its citizens, they asserted the neces-
sity of "republican equality;' of a society not rent by
12 ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY

50. Gwendolyn Wright, Building excessive disparities, or excessively visible disparities, the call for self-denying virtue with a definition of
the Dream: A Social History of
Housing in America (New of wealth and condition. 50 virtue that stressed enterprise and self-reliance in pro-
York: Pantheon Books, 1981 ), Republican equality was most strongly emphasized m~ting one's own and one's dependents' welfare.
pp. 24-25.
in the "artisan republicanism" favored by craftsmen Self-interest would be restrained by the self-regulation
51. Ronald Schultz, The Republic
of Labor: Philadelphia Artisans and small tradesmen. Artisan republicanism endorsed of a market-based political economy, integrating dis-
and the Politics of Class, 1720- the workers' long-held belief that every economic parate individual goods into a common one. 54
1830 (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1993), pp. 6-7;
actor, high or low, earned a niche in society by pro- Republicans of all stripes hoped that universal
Margaretta M. Lovell, "'Such viding a service to the community and that each per- public education would inculcate republican equality
Furniture as Will Be Most
son consequently had a right to a "competency:' the and civic virtue. In early-nineteenth-century America
Profitable': The Business of
Cabinetmaking in Eighteenth- resources necessary to live an independent life with knowledge was still popularly imagined in Enlighten-
Century Newport," Winter- access to the necessities and comforts appropriate to ment terms: to list and classify was to know. At his
thur Portfolio 26 (spring 1991),
pp. 27-28; Sean Wtlentz,
his or her station. Self-respect demanded economic celebrated museum in Philadelphia, for example, the
Chants Democratic: New York independence as a sign of public recognition. For artist, scientist, and educator Charles Willson Peale
City and the Rise of the Ameri-
artisans, then, republicanism incorporated an ideal of amassed an ever-expanding collection of natural his-
can Working Class, 1788-18so
(New York: Oxford University independent existence based on the ownership of one's tory specimens and a portrait gallery of American
Press, 1984), pp. 61-103; How- own residence and place of business. Its echoes can patriots that grew to nearly one hundred paintings as
ard B. Rock, Artisans of the
New Republic: The Tradesmen
be heard in the commissioners' "Remarks;' in their he added politicians, American and European scientists
of New York City in the Age assumption that the city they laid out would primarily and artists, and (as he grew older) Americans famous
ofJefferson (New York: New
be a city of individual residences. 51 Artisan republi- for their longevity. Peale wished to create an articu-
York University Press, 1979 ),
pp. 142-43; Bridges, City in canism viewed society as a network of interdependent lated, totalizing system of knowledge that would edu-
the Republic, pp. 102-7. relationships and obligations. Artisans were respon- cate his fellow Americans for republican citizenship. 55
52. Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent,
pp. 51-61; Rock, Artisans,
sible for their apprentices' and employees' welfare, Given these assumptions, it is easy to understand
pp. 295-301; Wtlentz, Chants and their patrons were in turn responsible for theirs. how the grid might have been viewed as the spatial
Democratic, pp. 27-35; Elva
Artisans and merchants counted on a loyal clientele, order most likely to encourage republican equality by
Tooker, Nathan Trotter, Phila-
delphia Merchant, 1787-18s3 making unseemly competition among themselves coordinating citizens' activities and interests. The grid
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: unnecessary. 52 The historian John Fanning Watson, was particularly congenial to the republican concept
Harvard University Press, 1955),
pp. 60, 137-38.
who decried the "painted glare and display'' of capi- of knowledge, for it was thought to facilitate the sepa-
53. Watson, Annals and Occur- talist competition (even though he was one of its ration and classffecation (two ubiquitous watchwords
rences of New York City, p. 205.
prime movers in Philadelphia), emphasized this of antebellum cultural life) that Americans then val-
54. Appleby, Capitalism and a
New Social Order, pp. 14-15; difference as he looked back nostalgically on business ued in every aspect of human activity. New York's
Rowland Berthoff, "Indepen- practices in prerevolutionary New York. "None of gridded spaces satisfied the republican love of a kind
dence and Attachment, Virtue
and Interest: From Republican
the stores or tradesmen's shops then aimed at rivalry of order that could be laid out in a simple, quickly and
Citizen to Free Enterpriser, as now;' he wrote in 1843; "they were content to sell easily grasped scheme.
1787-1837," in Uprooted Ameri-
things at honest profits, and to trust an earned repu- Yet the prospects for republican community seemed
cans: Essays to Honor Oscar
Handlin, edited by Richard tation for their share of business?' 53 threatened by significant changes in the social and
Bushman et al. (Boston: Little, For some patrician conservatives, on the other hand, economic structure. Liberal republicanism's embrace
Brown, 1979), pp. 97-124.
55. Brooke Hindle, The Pursuit of
republicanism was a hierarchical concept that empha- of capitalist political economy even~ally eradicated
Science in Revolutionary Amer- sized the variations among individuals in the desirable the mutual dependency that artisan republicans advo-
ica, 173s-1789 (Chapel Hill:
qualities of citizenship. Those who traditionally ruled cated. Until the late eighteenth century employers
University of North Carolina
Press, 1956), pp. 260-62; John should continue to rule, but on the basis of superior had provided the necessities of life-food, shelter,
C. Greene, American Science virtue and wisdom rather than inherited privilege. clothing-in addition to or in place of wages, and had
in the Age ofJefferson (Ames:
Iowa State University Press,
Like artisans, although for different reasons, they wor- exercised broad control over their employees' lives.
1984), pp. 52-57; Robert E. ried about the consequences of extreme differences Male heads of households assumed the same rights of
Schofield, "The Science
between the top and the bottom of republican society. social and moral direction over those who worked for
Education of an Enlightened
Entrepreneur: Charles Willson They sought to marshal their personal social and cul- them as over their relatives. 56
Peale and His Philadelphia tural authority over their inferiors in defense of stability. Traditional labor relations disintegrated under the
Museum, 1784-1827," American
Studieno (fall 1989), p. 21;
Eventually a third variety, liberal republicanism, impact of the new commodity-driven, capitalist econ-
Charles Coleman Sellers, Mr. emerged as the dominant strain. This emphasized the omy. Employers rapidly abandoned responsibility for
Peale's Museum: Charles Willson
degree of personal liberty that was permitted if society their workers' social and spiritual, as well as their eco-
Peale and the First Popular
Museum of Natural Science and the economy were assumed to be governed by nomic, welfare, substituting a simple wage-labor sys-
and Art (New York: W. W. higher ordering forces that would act no matter what tem. Workers may have gained independence from
Norton, 1980), pp. 193,214.
individuals might do. Liberal republicanism replaced paternalistic supervision, but they were rarely paid

enough to enjoy their freedom or to compensate for
some of the material benefits they had derived from
living under their employer's roofs. Artisan employers,
too, suffered the loss of a dependable living, as adver-
tising, display windows, and longer hours marked the
growing desire for customers' immediate patronage
rather than their long-term loyalty. 57
The new, rough-and-tumble, laissez-faire capitalism
transformed the lives of New Yorkers of all classes.
The old colonial mercantile and agrarian elite were
affected as surely as small shopkeepers, artisans, and
laborers. Those who clung to their former habits
entered upon a long decline, while others discovered
ways to profit from urban land speculation and invested
in banks, insurance companies, manufacturing, the
infrastructure, and retail sales. By the time of the Civil tom of New York's social and economic hierarchies. 62
War n5 millionaires resided in New York. They and
their predecessors of a generation or two earlier-
men such as banker John Pintard, auctioneer and
diarist Philip Hone (cat. no. 58), fur trader and land
speculator John Jacob Astor, merchant and art col-
lector Luman Reed (cat. no. 9 ), and banker and art · side of Washington Street between Christopher and
collector Samuel Ward-formed a self-designated elite
who increasingly retreated into luxurious seclusion. 58
The new elite dismayed many of their fellow citi-
zens, for republican equality survived in popular
sentiment even though it was theoretically outmoded
by liberal republicanism. At midcentury the journal-
ist Caroline M. Kirkland criticized the new rich of
Fifth Avenue for building houses "in luxury and
extravagance emulating the repudiated aristocracy
of the old world" (cat. no. 185 ). 59 Another journalist
took the opposite tack: those mansions were "the
spontaneous outgrowth of good old Knickerbocker
industry, enterprise and thrift, engrafted on a freedom-
loving and liberal spirit, and are scarcely possible under ingdale Insane Asylum, successor to the wing for luna-
any other than republican institutions?' Consequently
everything along Fifth Avenue was "suggestive of equal-
60
ity, although wealth has made that equality princely:'
The social and economic elite withdrew from their
traditional political activism in the quarter-century
before the Civil War, as they had from urban social
life, leaving politics in the hands of new, up-from-the-
ranks career politicians who catered to middling
and lower-class constituencies. As economic interests
diverged and ethnic and class divisions hardened, the
extension of the franchise · to all white men and
the active participation of working-class men in poli-
tics made the process of governing the city more
democratic, but also more fragmented and more diffi-
cult, and the eighteenth-century assumption of a sin-
gle public good collapsed. 61
INVENTING THE METROPOLIS: CIVILIZATION AND URBANITY 13
Republican values appeared to be threatened from 56. Appleby, Capitalism and a
New Social Order, pp. 59-78,
below as well as from above. By 1860 just under half 95-96; Blackmar, Manhattan
of the city's population was foreign born, with most for Rent, pp. 60-68.
57. Bridges, City in the Republic,
immigrants having arrived after 1845. Of these the
pp. 11, 50-54, 70-71; Blackmar,
Irish-born comprised about 30 percent of the popu- Manhattan for Rent, pp.
lation and the German-born another 15 percent. Only 61-68.
58. Cornog, Birth of Empire,
1.5 percent were African Americans, down from just p. 162; Blackmar, Manhattan
under ro percent in 1820. Their numbers had remained for Rent, pp. 36-43; Alan
Wallach, "Thomas Cole and
roughly stable since then as the white population
the Aristocracy," Arts Maga-
expanded, after having kept pace with the city's growth zine 56 (November 1981),
in the decades just before the opening of the Erie Canal. pp. 98, ro3-4; Spann, New
Metropolis, pp. 205-11.
In 1825 a few remained enslaved or held as indentured 59. C[ aroline] M. Kirkland, "New
servants under the provision of New York State's Grad- York;' Sartain's Union Maga-
zine of Literature and Art 9
ual Manumission Act of 1799. They were finally freed
(August 1851), p. 149.
in 1827, but African Americans remained at the bot- 60. "Fifth Avenue," Home Journal,
April 1, 1854, p. 2.
6r. Bridges, City in the Republic,
In the opinion of many middling and elite New pp. 62, 71-75, 127-31; Ryan,
Yorkers, these groups-immigrants and blacks- Civic Wars, pp. 8-u, ro8-13.
The wealthy continued to
formed the cadres of a vast army of paupers, crimi-
be active behind the scenes
nals, and lunatics. Beginning with the construction of as financial contributors and
the New York State Penitentiary on the Hudson River party functionaries, but their
authority was diminished.
62. Nathan Kantrowicz, "Popula-
Perry streets in Greenwich Village in 1796-97, the tion;' in The Encyclopedia of
New York City, edited by Ken-
city was encircled by a growing corps of institutions
neth Jackson (New Haven:
intended to rescue and reform New Yorkers-almost Yale University Press, 1995),
exclusively poor New Yorkers-from their failures as pp. 921-23; Rock, Artisans,
p. 14; Spann, New Metropolis,
republican citizens, substituting institutional oversight p. 430; Bridges, City in the
for the personal relationships and direct supervision Republic, pp. 39-41; Eric
Hornberger, The Historical
of dependents that well-off urbanites had abandoned
Atlas of New York City: A
with the ;:idvent of wage labor. 63 These new institutions Visual Celebration of Nearly
included the complex of a hospital, jail, workhouse, 400 Years of New York City's
History (New York: H. Holt
and almshouse built at Bellevue in 1816 to replace their and Co., 1994), p. 45; Shane
predecessors around City Hall Park; a third genera- White, Somewhat More Inde-
pendent: The End of Slavery in
tion of the same institutions built on Blackwell's (now
New York City, 1770-1810 (Ath-
Roosevelt) Island between 1828 and 1859; the Bloom- ens: University of Georgia
Press, 1991), pp. 38, 47, 53-55,
153-54.
tics in the old New York Hospital on lower Broadway; 63. [Thomas Eddy], An Account
the House of Refuge, or reform school, on the parade of the State Prison or Peniten-
tiary House, in the City of New-
grounds (Madison Square); and a dizzying assortment
York; by One of the Inspectors
of asylums-for deaf mutes, the blind, orphans, Jewish of the Prison (New York:
widows and orphans, Protestant half-orphans, Roman Isaac Collins and Son, 1801),
pp. 17-18.
Catholic orphans, friendless "respectable, aged, indi- 64. "The Benevolent Institutions of
gent females;' friendless boys, aged and ill sailors (the New-York;' Peterson's Monthly 1
(June 1853), pp. 673-86.
Sailors' Snug Harbor), magdalens (reformed pros-
titutes), and female ex-convicts. Peterson )s Monthly
counted twenty-two asylums plus eight hospitals in
New York City in 1853. 64
In addition to meticulously separating and classi-
fying their charges among these institutions, their
founders all assumed the need for separation and clas-
sification within each institution, and they assumed
as well that gridded spaces, like those that organized
14 ART AND THE EMPIRE CITY

Fig. 7. Alexander Jackson

Davis, architect and artist,
House of William C.H. Waddell,
Fifth Avenue and Thirty-eighth
Street, Perspective and Plan,
1844. Watercolor and ink.
The New York Public Library,
Astor, Lenox and Tilden
Foundations, Miriam and Ira
D. Wallach Division of Art,
Prints and Photographs, The
Phelps Stokes Collection

65. Quoted in Samuel L. Knapp, good citizens, could correct-civilize-errant ones. offenders as the standard of up-to-date prison design.
The Life of Thomas Eddy; Com-
prising an Extensive Corre-
By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, New York City's antebellum penal institutions followed
spondence with Many of the all large institutional buildings were planned on a grid this model, most notably in the jail portion of the
Most Distinguished Philosophers
of identical cells or rooms opening off one or both New York Halls of Justice and House of Detention
and Philanthropists of This
and Other Countries (New sides of a corridor. Ideally each prisoner, inmate, (1835-38), popularly known as the Tombs and built on
York: Conner and Cooke, or patient was assigned to a separate unit. This iso- Centre Street near City Hall to replace the old
1834), p. 76.
66. Belden, New-York, p. 49;
lated the subject and prevented infection of the Bridewell (cat. no. 83). Its architect, John Haviland,
"A Visit to the Tombs Prison, body or of the character, for as the Quaker mer- had made his reputation as the architect of the Eastern
New York City," Frank Leslie's
chant and reformer Thomas Eddy noted of prison State Penitentiary. In the House of Detention portion
Illustrated Newspaper, Novem-
ber 29, 1856, pp. 388-89; John inmates, where criminals were housed in groups, of the Tombs, a freestanding 142-by-45-foot block on
Haviland, "Description of the "each one told to his companions his career of vice, three levels, the 148 separate cells, "constructed after
House of Detention, New
York, 1835-38, and List of
and all joined by sympathetic villainy to keep each the model of the State Penitentiary at Philadelphia;'
Other Works," manuscript, other in countenance." 65 were additionally "divided into four distinct classes
1846, p. 6, Simon Gratz Col-
The New York State Prison at Auburn, converted to for prisoners, and rooms for male and female, white
lection, case 8, box 11, Histor-
ical Society of Pennsylvania, separate cells in 1819-21 partly at Eddy's urging, and and black vagrants" (cat. no. 82). 66 In this way, jailers
Philadelphia. the renowned Eastern State Penitentiary at Philadel- could mete out food, reading matter, labor, and
phia (1821-36) established separate cells for individual hum_an contact individually. Most important, in his
 INVENTING THE METROPOLIS: CIVILIZATION AND URBANITY 15

Fig. 8.ModestArtisan-Type
Houses, Gay Street, Green-
wich Village, New York,
buildings, second quarter
19th century; photograph
by Dell Upton, July 1998

cell, "where he is unseen and unheard, nothing can after the 1830s, they turned their main attention to the 67. Knapp, Life of Thomas Eddy,
p. 94.
reach [the convict] but the voice which must come to excitements of commercial society. 68. Fredrika Bremer, The Homes of
him, as it were, from another world." 67 the New World; Impressions of
America, translated by Mary
The failure of the cell system was evident by the
Selling New York Howitt, 2 vols. (New York:
1840s, and institutional discipline relaxed. When the Harper and Brothers, 1853 ),
Swedish novelist and travel writer Fredrika Bremer Liberal republicanism and capitalist enterprise had vol. 2, p. 605.

visited the Tombs in the 1850s, she found the pris- transformed the landscape of antebellum New York.
oners sharing cells and even worse, ''walking about, Until the late eighteenth century merchants and artisans
talking, smoking cigars." 68 Although New Yorkers commonly lived in or beside their places of business .
continued to voice hopes for republican community or work, in households that included their servants,

Fig. 9. Seth Geer, designer and builder, La Grange Terrace, Astor Place, buildings, 1833; photograph by Dell Upton, July 1998