The Suburb Reader

Becky Nicolaides is Associate Professor of History and Urban Studies and Planning at the University of California, San Diego. Andrew Wiese is Professor of History at San Diego State University.

List of Figures Acknowledgements Preface, Kenneth T. Jackson Introduction Part I. The Emergence of Suburbia, 1750-1940 Chapter 1. The Transnational Origins of the Elite Suburb Documents: 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nature," 1836 2. W.H. Bartlett, "New York, from Weekhawken," 1840 3. John Claudius Loudon, The Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion, 1838 4. Andrew Jackson Downing, The Architecture of Country Houses, 1850 5. Alexander Jackson Davis, "Site of Llewellyn Park, and Villa Sites on Eagle Ridge in Orange and West Bloomfield, New Jersey, 1857." 6. Present-day photographs of Llewellyn Park, New Jersey 7. Riverside Improvement Company, "Riverside, Progress Prospectus," 1869 Essays: 1. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (1985) 2. Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (1987) 3. John Archer, "Colonial Suburbs in South Asia, 1700-1850, and the Spaces of Modernity," in Roger Silverstone, ed., Visions of Suburbia (1997) Chapter 2. Family and Gender in the Making of Suburbia Documents: 1. Catharine Beecher, "How to Redeem Woman's Profession from Dishonor," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1865 2. Catharine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, The American Woman's Home, or Principles of Domestic Science, 1869 3. Palliser's New Cottage Homes and Details, 1887 4. William S. Sadler, "The Suburban and the City Child," Suburban Life, 1910 5. Grace Duffield Goodwin, "The Commuter's Wife, A Sisterly Talk by One Who Knows Her Problems," Good Housekeeping, 1909 6. Harriet Beecher Stowe, "The Handy Man," Saturday Evening Post, 1869 7. "Twenty Miles Out: Indiscretions of a Commuter's Wife," House Beautiful, 1925 8. "Something That You Can Work at Summer Evenings After Supper," from Eugene Wood, "Why Pay Rent?" Everybody's Magazine, 1910 9. "Home, Safeguard of Liberty," H. Morton Bodfish, History of Building and Loan Associations in the United States, 1931 Essays: 1. Gwendolyn Wright, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (1988) 2. Margaret Marsh, "Suburban Men and Masculine Domesticity, 1870-1915," American Quarterly (1988) Chapter 3. Technology and Decentralization Documents: 1. Nathaniel Parker Willis, "Steam Ferry in New York Harbor," 1840 2. "The Doleful History of Omnibus Horse," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1860 3. Horsedrawn Streetcar, Grand Junction, Colorado, 1887 4. "Our Street Railroads," [Oakland] Daily Evening Tribune, 1876 5. Electric Trolley of the Denver and Interurban Railway, ca. 1910s 6. Automobile and Man in Deep Snow as Streetcar Passes, 1929 7. Palliser's New Cottage Homes and Details, 1887 8. Suburban Men and Furnace from Henry Cuyler Bunner, The Suburban Sage, 1896 9. "On the Line at Nine" Eden Electric Washing Machine, House Beautiful, 1923 10. Frederick W. Coburn, "The Five-Hundred-Mile City," The World Today, 1906 11. Herbert Ladd Towle, "The Automobile and Its Mission," Scribner's Magazine, 1913 Essays: 1. Henry Binford, The First Suburbs: Residential Communities on the Boston Periphery, 1815-1860 (1985) 2. Gwendolyn Wright, Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago, 1873-1913 (1980) Chapter 4. Economic and Class Diversity on the Early Suburban Fringe Documents: 1. Ernest Burgess, "Urban Areas," in T.V. Smith and Leonard D. White, eds., Chicago: An Experiment in Social Science Research, 1929 2. William Dean Howells, Suburban Sketches, 1872 3. Graham Taylor, Satellite Cities: A Study of Industrial Suburbs, 1915 4. Harlan Douglass, The Suburban Trend, 1925 5. "Department store branches in suburbs succeed, multiply," Business Week, 1930 6. Images of decentralized retail 7. Photo Gallery: Early Suburban Diversity 8. Photo Gallery: Images of Suburban Social Diversity Essays: 1. David M. Gordon, "Capitalist Development and the History of American Cities" in William K. Tabb and Larry Sawers, eds., Marxism and the Metropolis (1978) 2. Richard Harris and Robert Lewis, "The Geography of North American Cities and Suburbs, 1900-1950: A New Synthesis," Journal of Urban History (2001) Chapter 5. The Politics of Early Suburbia Documents: 1. Adna F Weber, "Suburban Annexations," North American Review, 1898 2. "Highland Park, Very Well Satisfied, Is Deaf to Annexation," Detroit Saturday Night, 1928. 3. Thomas H. Reed, "Metropolitan Government," in Roderick D. McKenzie, The Metropolitan Community, 1933 4. Political consensus: examples from two L.A. suburbs, 1910 "The Election," The Glendale News, April 8, 1910 "Political Announcements," South Pasadena Record, March 17, 1910 5. Political acrimony in South Gate, California, 1925 "Letter to the Editor," South Gate Tribune, July 3, 1925 "Trustees Pass Light Bill," South Gate Tribune, July 17, 1925 6. Map of Los Angeles municipalities, 1940 Essays: 1. Ann Durkin Keating, Building Chicago: Suburban Developers and the Creation of a Divided Metropolis (1988) 2. Jon C. Teaford, Post-Suburbia: Government and Politics in the Edge Cities (1997) Chapter 6. Imagining Suburbia: Visions and Plans from the Turn of the Century Documents: 1. Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-morrow, 1902 2. Carol Aronovici, "Suburban Development," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1914 3. H.S. Firestone, "Firestone Park, Akron, Ohio: A Splendidly Conceived Housing Development of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company," 1919 4. F.E.M. Cole, "Chicago's Most Unique Suburb," Suburban Life, 1907. 5. Sears, Roebuck and Company, Honor Bilt Modern Homes, 1926 6. Clarence S. Stein, Toward New Towns for America, 1957 7. Frank Lloyd Wright, "Typical Street View at Civic Center, Broadacre City," 1958 Essays: 1. Margaret Crawford, Building the Workingman's Paradise: The Design of American Company Towns (1995) 2. Mary Corbin Sies, "'God's Very Own Kingdom on the Earth:' The Design Program for the American Suburban Home, 1877-1917" (1991) Chapter 7. The Other Suburbanites: class, racial, & ethnic diversity in early suburbia Documents: 1. "European versus American Homes," Chicago Tribune, 1890 2. "The Working Man's Reward," advertisement of S.E. Gross & Co., 1898 3. Sophonisba Breckenridge and Edith Abbott, The Delinquent Child and the Home, 1912 4. Margaret F. Byington, Homestead: The Households of a Mill Town, 1910 5. Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, "The Home of Contented Labor," 1927 6. Mary Helen Ponce, Hoyt Street: An Autobiography, 1993 7. Henry Aaron with Lonnie Wheeler, I Had a Hammer, 1991 8. Photo Gallery: The Other Suburbs Essays: 1. Becky Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (2002) 2. Andrew Wiese, Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (2004) Chapter 8. The Tools of Exclusion: From Local Initiatives to Federal Policy Documents: 1. Frederick Lewis Allen, "Suburban Nightmare," The Independent, 1925 2. Jesse Clyde Nichols, "When You Buy a Home Site You Make an Investment; Try to Make it a Safe One," Good Housekeeping, 1923 3. Restrictive Deed, Fairmount Addition, San Diego, Ca. 1911 4. Baker v. Engstrom, Superior Court of Cook County, Illinois, 1933 5. Arthur M. Weimer and Homer Hoyt, Principles of Urban Real Estate, 1939 6. The President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership, Home Ownership, Income and Types of Dwellings, 1932 7. Los Angeles City Survey files, Home Owners Loan Corporation, 1939 Essays: 1. Marc A. Weiss, The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry and Urban Land Planning (1987) 2. Kenneth T. Jackson, "Race, Ethnicity and Real Estate Appraisal," Journal of Urban History (1980) Part II. Postwar Suburbia, 1940-1970 Chapter 9. Postwar America: Suburban Apotheosis Documents: 1. Advertisement for Kelvinator appliances, American Home, 1944 2. "Line Forms Early in Sale of Houses," New York Times, 1949 3. Advertisements for Postwar Suburbs: Portland, Oregon; Tucson, Arizona; Long Island, New York, 1950, 1953 4. Photo Gallery: Postwar Suburbia 5. Elizabeth Sweeney Herbert, "This is How I Keep House," McCalls, 1949 6. Merrill Folsom, "Suburbia on Wheels" New York Times, 1955 7. D.J. Waldie, Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, 1996 Essays: 1. Dolores Hayden, "Building the American Way: Public Subsidy, Private Space" (2004) 2. Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (2001) 3. Barbara M. Kelly, Expanding the American Dream: Building and Rebuilding Levittown (1993) Chapter 10. Critiques of Postwar Suburbia Documents: 1. Malvina Reynolds, "Little Boxes" lyrics, 1962 2. William H.Whyte, Jr., The Organization Man, 1956 3. Photo of Park Forest, Illinois, commuters, 1953 4. Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects, 1961 5. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963 6. Illustration from "Why Young Mothers Feel Trapped," Reader's Digest, 1961 7. Jean Pascoe, "Suburban Woman's Lib: Turning Mrs. Into Ms.," McCalls, 1973 8. John Cheever, "O Youth and Beauty!" 1953 9. Carl Sandbag, "Chicago Suburb," Mad Magazine, 1974 10. Peter Blake, God's Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America's Landscape, 1964 11. Bennett M. Berger, "The Myth of Suburbia," Journal of Social Issues, 1961 12. Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community, 1967 Chapter 11. Postwar Suburbs and the Construction of Race ... Documents: 1. "Let Freedom Ring," Chicago Defender, 1948 2. "Real Estate: 'Exclusive... Restricted,' U. S. News & World Report, 1948 3. "FHA Asked to Curb Negro Housing Ban," New York Times, 1949, and "FHA Can't Prevent Housing Ban," New York Times, 1949 4. Charles Abrams, Forbidden Neighbors: A Study of Prejudice in Housing, 1955 5. Testimony of Jackie Robinson, Hearings Before the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Housing, 1959 6. Ralph Guzman, "The Hand of Esau: Words Change, Practices Remain in Racial Covenants," Frontier, 1956 7. Atlanta Housing Council, "Proposed Areas for Expansions of Negro Housing in Atlanta, Georgia," 1947 8. Open Letter, Southwest Citizens Association, Inc., 1954, and Atlanta resident to Mayor William Hartsfield, 1956 9. Selwyn James, "'We're Learning to Live Together,'" Redbook Magazine, 1957 10. Norman Rockwell, "New Kids in the Neighborhood," Look Magazine, 1967 Essays: 1. George Lipsitz, "The Possessive Investment in Whiteness," American Quarterly (1995) 2. Bruce Haynes, Red Lines, Black Spaces: The Politics of Race and Space in a Black Middle-Class Suburb (2001) Chapter 12. The City-Suburb Divide Documents: 1. William Laas, "'The Suburbs Are Strangling the City,'" New York Times Magazine, 1950 2. Lew Phelps, "Model Municipality: San Leandro, Calif., Manages to Surmount Many of the Problems That Plague Cities," Wall Street Journal, 1966 3. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Housing: Commission on Civil Rights Report, 1961 4. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968 5. Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools, 1991 Essays: 1. Peter O. Muller, The Outer City: The Geographical Consequences of the Urbanization of the Suburbs (1976) 2. Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (2003) Part III. Recent Suburbia, 1970-present Chapter 13. Political Culture of Suburbia Documents: 1. Letters to the Editor, Los Angeles Times, 1978 2. Neil H. Jacoby, "Would Prop. 13 Really Lighten the Load? Yes," Los Angeles Times, 1978 3. "The Message from California," Commonweal, 1978 4. Stephanie Simon, "20 Years Later, Prop. 13 Still Marks California Life," Los Angeles Times, 1998 5. Robert C. Wood, Suburbia: Its People and Their Politics, 1958 6. Kevin P. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority, 1969 7. William Schneider, "The Suburban Century Begins: The Real Meaning of the 1992 Election," The Atlantic Monthly, 1992 8. Ronald Brownstein and Richard Rainey, "GOP Plants Flag on New Voting Frontier," Los Angeles Times, 2004 Essays: 1. Sylvie Murray, The Progressive Housewife: Community Activism in Suburban Queens, 1945-1965 (2003) 2. Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (2001) 3. Matthew D. Lassiter, "Suburban Strategies: The Volatile Center in Postwar American Politics" in Meg Jacobs, et. al., The Democratic Experiment (2003) Chapter 14. Recent Suburban Transformations, 1970-2000 Documents 1. David J. Dent, "The New Black Suburbs," New York Times Magazine, 1992. 2. Aaron McGruder, "What About Us, Granddad?" from "The Boondocks," 1999 3. Mark Bixler, "Latest Counts Released Today," Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 1999 4. Donna Gaines, Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia's Dead End Kids, 1991 5. Christopher Caldwell, "Levittown to Littleton: How the Suburbs Have Changed," The National Review, 1999 6. James Kaplan, "Too Rich for Their Blood," New York Times Magazine, 2000 7. Myron Orfield, American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality, 2002 8. Images of a Polarized Suburbia Essays 1.Timothy Fong, The First Suburban Chinatown: The Remaking of Monterey Park, California (1994) 2. Sarah Mahler, American Dreaming: Immigrant Life on the Margins (1995) Chapter 15. Our Town: Inclusion and Exclusion in Recent Suburbia Documents: 1. Paul Davidoff and Neil Newton Gold, "Exclusionary Zoning," Yale Review of Law and Social Action, 1970 2. Southern Burlington County N.A.A.C.P. v. Mount Laurel, 1975 3. Michelle Molz, "Hundreds Apply for Low-Cost Homes," [Cherry Hill, New Jersey] Courier-Post, 2003 4. Residents of Ethel R. Lawrence Homes, Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, 2002 5. Steve Goldstein, "Don't Even Think of Pink Flamingos," Philadelphia Inquirer, 1991 6. Susan Saulny, "On the Inside and Looking Out; Black Suburb Rebuffs Uninvited Black Visitors," Washington Post, 1996 7. David Boaz, "Gates of Wrath; Angry About Crime, Communities Have Good Reason to Fence Out the World," Washington Post, 1996 8. Edward J. Blakely, "Am I My Brother's Gatekeeper? The Fortressing of Private Communities Contributes to the Increasing Fragmentation of American Society," The Daily News of Los Angeles, 1998 9. Images of Gated Communities Essays: 1. Evan McKenzie, Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (1994) 2. Setha Low, Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (2003) Chapter 16. Future of Suburbia 1. Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, 1991 2. James Howard Kunstler, "A Crisis in Landscape and Townscape," 1996 3. Dolores Hayden, "What is Sprawl?" Hartford Courant, 2004 4. Paul Oyaski, "Warning; Sprawl is Hazardous to Your Health," 2002 5. Photo Gallery: Images of Recent Suburban Development North of Denver, 2004-2005 6. "Solutions: Under Development," Amicus Journal, 1996 7. Myron Orfield, American Metropolitics: The New Suburban Reality, 2002 8. Charter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, 1996 9. Photo Galley: New Urbanism 10. Robert Bruegmann, "The Paradoxes of Anti-Sprawl Reform," in Robert Freestone, ed., Urban Planning in a Changing World: The Twentieth Century Experience, 2000 11. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, 2000 12. Charles McGrath, "We Stayed for the Kids... and Stayed and Stayed: The Pleasures of Tending an Empty Nest," New York Times Magazine, 2000 Copyright Information Index