Saturday, January 2, 2010

LIVING CONDITIONS IN THE 1800S

http://www.historyteacher.net/USProjects/DBQs2000/Images/DumbellTenement.jpg
This is a map of the Dumbbell tenement




http://www.archives.gov/research/american-cities/images/american-cities-061.jpg
Conditions of the living conditions in the 1800s













http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/divine5e/medialib/images/div0065.jpeg
Tenements in the 1800s








http://www.cable-car-guy.com/images/ny_9th_ave_el_001.gif
This is the fisrt elevated train opened in 1868 in New York that change the poeple living condition





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This is a new inventions and a new way of live in the 1800s that help people transport




http://www.officemuseum.com/IMagesWWW/1894_Masonic_Temple_20_stories_Unity_16_stories_to_its_left_Chicago_American_Photography.jpg
This is Chicago in the 1820

LIVING CONDITIONS IN THE 1800S
When the United States got the new inventions, big business, immigrants from around the world and cities start to grow. The living conditions of citizens change for good and bad. Migration, Native Americans, and African Americans help expand, by moving from rural areas to urban. For this cause, cities start to grow and with the new railroad people start to live far away from their jobs. However, more and more people start to get crow and speculators start to built many tenements. Littler by littler people start to transform an area to live into a slum with diseases, bad conditions, and pollution. light, air, and water are the most affect from this kind of living conditions and the government decided to make the "Dumbbell Tenement". I think the living conditions of citizens in big cities such as New York or New Jersey are the worst in the country.
Many new cities were bursting at the seams with newcomers. While millions of immigrants from around the world start to come, they were looking for a place to stay and setting in the cities. Woman and men from around the country and African American help by moving from small towns to big cities, or because they just want to find a new area to live. Other were the reasons for African America too, after the Reconstruction ended in 1877, segregation and acts of racial violence against them increased 150,000 black Southerners left the South after the 5 millions of them left in 1870. I believed in that number of people that moved from the south to a nearby cities, because I hear that still in the 1800s were people abuse and discriminate for their racial color. These were many reasons why cities grew and why people moved.
Before the Civil War , cities were small in area, rarely extending more than 3 or 4 miles across. I met people that live near their jobs used to walk. However with the new inventions such as horse-drawn, carriages that travel on rails and rail roads had changed the living conditions of the citizens in the United States. For this change some companies start to allow people to move outside the cities, and live in suburbs, or residential communities surrounding the cities. Thanks to this change of lifestyle, the first elevated trains was opened in 1868 in New York. Friends of my were happy because it allow commuters to bypass the congested streets. Another new invention that change more the lifestyle of the people in the city was the cable car introduced in San Francisco in 1873.
Buildings got change too. Many people were living crow in small apartments or sharing space with another family. The demands for big buildings with allot of space grew. In the late 1850 building got taller and taller than 5 floors and with tons of rooms. As cities expanded, specialized areas emerged within them. Banks, financial offices, law firms, and government offices were located in one central area Retail shops and department stores were located in another central neighborhood. Industrial,wholesale and warehouse districts formed a ring around the center of the city. I think all this kind of lifestyle and living conditions of people living in the 1800s had change allot, I see people that their live is getting easier than before.
Speculators also built many tenements, low-cost apartment buildings designed to house as many families as the owner could pack in. A group of dirty, run-down tenements could transform an area into a slum. Trees and grass disappeared Hundreds of people were crammed into spaces meant for a few families. Open sewers attracted rats and other disease-spreading vermin. Diseases start to appear such as cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and typhoid,thrived in crowded tenement conditions. Epidemics, such as the yellow fever that swept thought Memphis Tennessee, in the late 1870s. For this terrible sickness in the United States, scientists believed that lack of good ventilation helped disease spread. Light, air, and water was the most affected, and the government made the "Dumbbell Tenement" named for its dumbbell shape. Each building must to have narrowed in the middle, and gaps on either side formed air shafts to bring light and air to inside rooms. I saw many people specially parents that have small kids scared of this bad time of diseases in the United States. I think this new way of construction was a good salvation for many people. The living conditions in the 1800s were good and bad, because of new ways to make easy life and bad results of crow communities and diseases.