Nature, the City, and the Family Circle: Domesticity and the Urban Home in Henry George's Thought

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-335
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Lipin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Single Tax ◽  
Urban Elites ◽  
The Family ◽  
Physical Consequences ◽  
Transportation Technologies ◽  
The City

This essay provides a reexamination of Henry George by focusing on how ideas about gender and nature informed one of the key objectives of the George movement: the transformation of the Gilded Age city into a metropolis of working-class suburbs tied together by single-tax funded public transportation. George was hardly a conservationist, and his understanding of nature was very different from those urban elites who sought to preserve nature. He simply did not accept the conservationist notion of depleted resources, which was inconsistent with his natural law belief in a boundless nature, a point that in turn grew out of the producerist emphasis of his political economy. Yet, George appreciated the need for a nonproductive relationship with nature, and he and his followers articulated this in terms of developing a healthier and more moral domestic environment. He applied such thinking to his political efforts in New York City during the mid-1880s, condemning the moral as well as the physical consequences of overcrowding that he blamed on land speculation. George enthusiastically embraced emerging transportation technologies as facilitators of mass residential decentralization. In so doing, he articulated a vision of a thoroughly reconfigured city that integrated nature into family life by enabling the development of a more spread-out metropolis.

The Billionaire’s Ambitions

Last Subway ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Plotch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
York City ◽  
Transportation Network ◽  
East Side ◽  
Legislative Session ◽  
Transportation Agencies ◽  
The City ◽  
Grand Vision

This chapter assesses the roles played by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and New York City mayor John Lindsay, as well as William Ronan, in transforming the transportation system. Ronan, Rockefeller, and Lindsay all realized that improving public transportation was critical to strengthening the economy of the city and the region. They were also well aware of the benefits of a Second Avenue subway, since all three of them lived on the Upper East Side. After Lindsay failed to reorganize the transportation agencies, Rockefeller and Ronan developed their own grand vision for the region's transportation network, and in December of 1966, Ronan stepped down from his post as secretary to begin implementing their plan. At the beginning of the state's 1967 legislative session, Rockefeller and Ronan announced their two-pronged approach. First, they proposed integrating the New York City Transit Authority and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) into the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority (MCTA). In addition, Rockefeller and Ronan would seek voter approval to borrow $2.5 billion that would be dedicated for roadway and public transportation improvements across the state. In 1967, the governor and Ronan obtained the support they needed to transform the transportation network, a feat that Lindsay had not been able to accomplish.

Suffrage and the City

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren C. Santangelo
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
York City ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Urban Experience ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
The City ◽  
Physical Layout

Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot uncovers the ways in which the demand for women’s rights intersected with the history, politics, and culture of New York City in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The city—its mores, rhythms, and physical layout—helped to shape what was possible for suffragists campaigning within it. At the same time, these activists helped to redefine the urban experience, especially for white, middle-class women. The fight for the vote in the nation’s largest metropolis demanded that suffragists both mobilize and contest urban etiquette, as they worked to gain visibility and underscore their cause’s respectability. Suffrage and the City demonstrates that the Big Apple was more than just a stage for suffrage action; it was part of the drama.

The Family and Business Life of Harriet Hubbard Ayer, Culminating in Fights over Her Person and Property

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-404
Author(s):  
Melanie Gustafson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Business World ◽  
Advertising Campaign ◽  
Cultural Attitude ◽  
The Family ◽  
Manufacturing Company ◽  
Patent Medicine

This article examines the rise and fall of the Recamier Manufacturing Company, a cosmetics and patent medicine firm established in New York City by Harriet Hubbard Ayer in 1886. Ayer invested in an extensive advertising campaign where she fashioned herself as a tragic figure forced into the business world. When faced with challenges to her “person and property,” she relied on a network of business and professional allies to protect her interests. An examination of Ayer's business career reveals how consumers responded to an emerging cultural attitude that experts of all types should play a role in the development of beautiful faces and strong bodies. The narrative of her life reveals, among other things, the pervasiveness of the idea of a woman's respectability during the Gilded Age.

Hospitals: N.Y. Appellate Court Denies Move to Privatize Public Hospital

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-203
Author(s):  
Robert Chatham
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Public Health System ◽  
Municipal Hospital ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Benefit ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Benefit Corporation ◽  
The City

The Court of Appeals of New York held, in Council of the City of New York u. Giuliani, slip op. 02634, 1999 WL 179257 (N.Y. Mar. 30, 1999), that New York City may not privatize a public city hospital without state statutory authorization. The court found invalid a sublease of a municipal hospital operated by a public benefit corporation to a private, for-profit entity. The court reasoned that the controlling statute prescribed the operation of a municipal hospital as a government function that must be fulfilled by the public benefit corporation as long as it exists, and nothing short of legislative action could put an end to the corporation's existence.In 1969, the New York State legislature enacted the Health and Hospitals Corporation Act (HHCA), establishing the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) as an attempt to improve the New York City public health system. Thirty years later, on a renewed perception that the public health system was once again lacking, the city administration approved a sublease of Coney Island Hospital from HHC to PHS New York, Inc. (PHS), a private, for-profit entity.

The Search for Order in Municipal Administration: Herman A. Metz and the New York City Experience, 1898–1909

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-74
Author(s):  
Ryan P. McDonough ◽  
Paul J. Miranti ◽  
Michael P. Schoderbek
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Internal Control ◽  
York City ◽  
Internal Controls ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Financial Reports ◽  
The Public ◽  
Operational Activities ◽  
The City

ABSTRACT This paper examines the administrative and accounting reforms coordinated by Herman A. Metz around the turn of the 20th century in New York City. Reform efforts were motivated by deficiencies in administering New York City's finances, including a lack of internal control over monetary resources and operational activities, and opaque financial reports. The activities of Comptroller Metz, who collaborated with institutions such as the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, were paramount in initiating and implementing the administrative and accounting reforms in the city, which contributed to reform efforts across the country. Metz promoted the adoption of functional cost classifications for city departments, developed flowcharts for improved transaction processing, strengthened internal controls, and published the 1909 Manual of Accounting and Business Procedure of the City of New York, which laid the groundwork for transparent financial reports capable of providing vital information about the city's activities and subsidiary units. JEL Classifications: H72, M41, N91. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

International Opera in Nineteenth-century New York

2020 ◽  
pp. 244-269
Author(s):  
Karen Ahlquist
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
World War I ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
Considerable Extent ◽  
World War ◽  
Metropolitan Opera ◽  
The City

This chapter charts how canonic repertories evolved in very different forms in New York City during the nineteenth century. The unstable succession of entrepreneurial touring troupes that visited the city adapted both repertory and individual pieces to the audience’s taste, from which there emerged a major theater, the Metropolitan Opera, offering a mix of German, Italian, and French works. The stable repertory in place there by 1910 resembles to a considerable extent that performed in the same theater today. Indeed, all of the twenty-five operas most often performed between 1883 and 2015 at the Metropolitan Opera were written before World War I. The repertory may seem haphazard in its diversity, but that very condition proved to be its strength in the long term. This chapter is paired with Benjamin Walton’s “Canons of real and imagined opera: Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1810–1860.”

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