Witch Hazel is the material supposedly used in the crafting of magic wands. Sitting here composing these notes, I have alternated between planning to give you a complete explanation and letting you uncover the meaning of the chapter title for yourself. What we'll be looking at here is variations on the them of the "natural". 19th Century Americans were far more interested in nature as "made" than in nature as "found"
Botanizing looks at the role women played in the development of the suburban landscape. The role is larger than I suspect many of you were aware of.
Shadows will suggest that it wasn't only the lure of the country which created borderlands, but a growing dislike for cities, as well.
For Monday, February 6
Read, in Stilgoe,
Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820 - 1939
Introduction, 1- 17
Section I. "Intellectual and Practical Beginnings"
"View"" 21
1. "Witch Hazel 22 - 26
2. "Botanizing" 27 - 37
3. "Shadows" 38 - 48
Frequently when we come upon a book which is heavily illustrated we sigh with relief because it means we have less to read. We then proceed to pretty much ignore the illustrations. The illustrations in Stilgoe are very important, and we lose a lot of value if we don’t spend serious time looking at and interpreting them. Stilgoe helps us see why suburbs are important places... perhaps the most politically potent places in America today (soccer moms, SUVs, and all that). As you read him, notice that the captions to his illustrations are very important. We tend to ignore captions: Don’t! It may take you a bit to get used to this book..
One of the major difficulties with this study--perhaps the only major difficulty-- is that the chapter titles are more poetic than informative. A "View", for example in 19th century terms, is picture drawn to represent a scenic vista. One still sees it used this way on picture postcards, occasionally. In this instance, the "view" described is on the preceding page.
Goudetias
The first Natural Science in which women participated was botany. This illustration represents the work of Jane Webb Loudon (1807 - 1858) To see more of her work click on the image
68th St. and Eleventh Avenue, New York City, in the mid-nineteenth century, It would be in the center of today's Upper West Side Manhattan. 68th Street now terminates one block from Eleventh. The view which appears when the cursor rolls over is looking eastward down 68th from Amsterdam Avenue. The earlier view represents an example of the kind of suburban slum of which Stilgoe speaks. Views and a short narrative of the Five Points District, a more urban area, can be seen by clicking on the illustraton above. See also HERE
For Thursday, February 9
Read, in Stilgoe
Section I. "Intellectual and Practical Beginnings"
The volume in which this article is located is part of the Making of America Project at the University of Michigan. In its original form it is a little awkward to use, as the only way to find it is by volume of the journal from which it was taken, followed by looking page by page. I've converted it into a .pdf file which may be a little easier to use.
Note, too, that as late as 1872 Copeland (p. 58) can complain about suburbs using language which would have been appropriate in Roman times: “Instead of these pleasing combinations, this blending of town and country, we enter every town between stiff houses, without a vine to decorate or a tree to shade, through the suburbs given up to squalid inhabitants, redolent with bad smells, the pathway disputed by rampant pigs or predacious cows.”
We may do a little gazetteerexercise in class, noting, as does Stilgoe, that many suburbs wind up being named in ways which include the word “Heights” or “Park”. Synonyms for these words were popular, too (words like “Hills,” “Highlands,” “Gardens,” and the like. Considering that early cities tended to be fronted upon water (like Bristol, for example) it stands to reason that the areas surrounding the city centers would be higher in elevation than the city centers were. But this does not explain why people chose to name them in this fashion. We're lucky. The Department of the Census has updated the American Factfinder with new data from the 2010 Census. They've changed the format slightly, too. But a little fiddling around and it starts to make sense. Why not play with it a bit before class?
This week we’ll introduce the second of the books for the course, and begin to look at the early roots of Suburbs as we know them today. As this section indicates, the beginnings were both theoretical and practical.
In the western country where the land is level or gently rolling it seems as if convenience and economy alike dictate that all roads should be made straight and at right angles, and that if the streets of a new town are wide enough to give good circulation to the air, no further thought need be given to reserving space for health or pleasure. While all would admit the advantage of varying the roads from straight lines in a hilly country, and the dullest person can be persuaded that it is no farther around than over a hill, but few will understand the expediency of curving roads where the surface is as open to travel in one place as another. This is a serious mistake and stamps all the new towns of the west with such a stereotyped resemblance that a traveler might be excused if, landed on a dark night at the wrong depot, he should go up the main street, turn to right or left, and try his door-key in the same number which marks his own house in his native town.
Robert Copeland, attacking the grid plan
Borderlands: Origins of the American Suburb introduces a landscape over time, but a landscape that addressed curiously timeless concerns. It makes no attempt to outline the great forces, economic, technological, religious, and otherwise, that comprise the “sociology of suburbia,” but deals rather with the theater in which “suburbans” chose to live in the century after 1820. It probes and pokes at visual things, and in a time when urban form receives so much scrutiny, it focuses on a purely marginal place, “commuter country,” the borderlands, the suburbs as Americans once knew them.
