The Working Man S Reward

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.

"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. Leapfrogging out of town along with Chicago's assembly-line factories, Chicago's early suburbs were remarkably diverse. These suburbs were marketed 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, " in the words of one evocative advertisement, 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, as well as an evolving twentieth-century discourse about the racial attributes of property values. Because Chicago presented itself as a paradigmatic American city and because numerous Chicago-based experts eventually instituted national real-estate programs, Chicago's early growth affected the growth of twentieth-century America. Framed by two working-class riots against suburbanization in 1872 and 1919, spurred from both above and below, this work shows how Chicagoans helped form America's urban sprawl and examines the roots of America's suburbanization, synthesizing the new suburban history into the diversity of America's suburbs"--

Since the 1920s, the United States has seen a dramatic reversal in living patterns, with a majority of Americans now residing in suburbs. This mass emigration from cities is one of the most fundamental social and geographical transformations in recent US history. Suburbanization has not only produced a distinct physical environment—it has become a major defining force in the construction of twentieth-century American culture. Employing over 200 primary sources, illustrations, and critical essays, The Suburb Reader documents the rise of North American suburbanization from the 1700s through the present day. Through thematically organized chapters it explores multiple facets of suburbia’s creation and addresses its indelible impact on the shaping of gender and family ideologies, politics, race relations, technology, design, and public policy. Becky Nicolaides’ and Andrew Wiese’s concise commentaries introduce the selections and contextualize the major themes of each chapter. Distinctive in its integration of multiple perspectives on the evolution of the suburban landscape, The Suburb Reader pays particular attention to the long, complex experiences of African Americans, immigrants, and working people in suburbia. Encompassing an impressive breadth of chronology and themes, The Suburb Reader is a landmark collection of the best works on the rise of this modern social phenomenon.