Urbanized America: The American Experience in the Classroom
Urbanized America: The American Experience in the Classroom
The early years of the twentieth-century saw a significant increase in economic inequality between the wealthiest Americans and the poorest. While the rich continued to bathe in their unregulated, post-industrial age economic success, the poor, largely represented by the overwhelming influx of new immigrants, remained trapped in an unrelenting cycle of poverty and adversity. Many struggled to find prosperity and acceptance in a country where some American citizens harbored foreign resentment and racism. Emblematic of the hardships they encountered is artist Everett Shinn’s chaotic scene of Lower East Side Jewish immigrants being evicted from their homes. This scene in downtown New York City is starkly contrasted with artist Childe Hassam’s romanticized view of an ethereal woman in her uptown home surrounded by beautiful objects likely acquired through European travel. She represents the prosperous post-industrial age, where wealthy patrons demonstrated their cultural sophistication through the acquisition and display of exotic, priceless objects in their homes.
The expanding urban population precipitated the introduction of new building materials in the development of high-rise buildings and tenements, revolutionizing urban living. Technological innovations like the electrified elevator and the Bessemer steel process replaced older building techniques and enabled the construction of high-rise buildings, the new symbols of American progress. However, overcrowding of the evolving urban landscape also gave rise to problems such as poverty, disease, and lawlessness. These issues ultimately led to crucial social reform and legislation, known collectively as Progressivism.
http://americanexperience.si.edu/historical-eras/modern-united-states/pair-eviction-tanagra/
