Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City

Catherine McNeur

Published by Harvard University Press 2014

Taming Manhattan

Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City

Catherine McNeur

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674735989

Overview
Contents

About this book

From 1815 to 1865, as city blocks encroached on farmland to accommodate Manhattan’s exploding population, prosperous New Yorkers developed new ideas about what an urban environment should contain—ideas that poorer immigrants resisted. As Catherine McNeur shows, taming Manhattan came at the cost of amplifying environmental and economic disparities.

Author / Editor information

McNeur Catherine :

Catherine McNeur is Assistant Professor of History at Portland State University.

Reviews

Tells an odd story in lively prose. This book implicitly alludes to the urban revival now stretching from Portland, Ore., to Portland, Me., but whatever your thoughts on brewpubs and bike lanes, you probably haven’t read a municipal history that has a mayor ‘ready to tackle the hog problem.’ …The city McNeur depicts in Taming Manhattan is the pestiferous obverse of the belle epoque city of Henry James and Edith Wharton that sits comfortably in many imaginations. McNeur’s town is a ‘veritable manure factory’ in which some 10,000 horses each deposit up to 40 pounds of manure a day, while the East River serves as a repository for human waste… [Taming Manhattan] is a smart book that engages in the old-fashioned business of trying to harvest lessons for the present from the past.
-- Alexander Nazaryan New York Times

Nearly two centuries before the Occupy Movement, New Yorkers rich and poor clashed over what shape their young city should take. In this superb history, McNeur recovers the bitter battles over feral hogs and untamed dogs, public parks, safe and pure food, effective sanitation, and the fate of the underclass. Making a safer and cleaner city for some, she concludes, also created a shadow city of poverty and filth for others. Taming Manhattan is a thrilling, vivid expedition into Gotham’s wild and often violent past.
-- Matthew Klingle, author of Emerald City

In the decades before the Civil War, New York was rapidly becoming the largest and most important city in the western hemisphere. But mad dogs and wild pigs roamed its streets; garbage heaps, squatters, and shantytowns were commonplace; parks and public open spaces were practically non-existent; and epidemic disease was a constant threat. Catherine McNeur’s Taming Manhattan tells us how New York was literally cleaned up and transformed from a health hazard to an emerging world city. And she does it with beautiful prose, careful research, and persuasive argument. Altogether an excellent book.
-- Kenneth T. Jackson, editor of The Encyclopedia of New York City

[A] fine book which make[s] a real contribution to urban biography.
-- Joseph Rykwert Times Literary Supplement

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Mad Dogs and Loose Hogs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	6
2. Unequally Green Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
3. The Dung Heap of the Universe Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
4. Hog Wash and Swill Milk Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	134
5. Clearing the Lungs of the City Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Epilogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	224
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	300
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 350
Illustrations
- Other: 37 halftones

eBook

Published: November 3, 2014
ISBN: 9780674735989