The Lung Block
Plagues, Parks, and Power in Progressive-Era New York
Erschienen am 15. Juli 2024
252 Seiten
978-0-8229-9001-7 (ISBN)
Beschreibung
Public health, housing, poverty, and immigration dominated social and political discourse in early twentieth-century New York, much as they do today. The Lower East Side provided an urban environment where infectious disease and other public health concerns flourished. One city block in particular, known in muckraking circles as "The Lung Block," housed four thousand first- and second-generation Americans in dilapidated tenements where deadly tuberculosis spread uninhibited. The Lung Block looks at a 1903 reform crusade to demolish this working-class tenement neighborhood and replace it with a park. Progressive reformers aimed to confront the area's moral and environmental dangers, but their conceptualization of the problem and methods for addressing it placed them into direct conflict with the hand-to-mouth priorities of the residents. The campaign and its eventual failure illuminate the formidable social barriers distancing urban reformers and the marginalized populations they intend to help.
Weitere Details
Person
Adrienne deNoyelles is a writer and researcher who earned her PhD in American history from the University of Florida.
Inhalt
- Cover
- CONTENTS
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- CHAPTER 1: "To Rob Consumption of Its Terrors": Germ Theory, Hermann Biggs, and the "New" Tuberculosis
- CHAPTER 2: "City of the Living Death": Tuberculosis, Lawrence Veiller, and the Tenement House Commission of 1900
- CHAPTER 3: "The Plague in Its Stronghold": Lilian Brandt, Ernest Poole, and the Committee on the Prevention of Tuberculosis
- CHAPTER 4: "'Lung Block' or Park-Playground-Which?": Jacob Riis, "City Wildernesses," and the Crusade for "Breathing Spaces" on the Lower East Side
- CHAPTER 5: "'My Poor People Need Homes, Not Parks": James Curry and Working-Class Counterperspectives on Reform
- CONCLUSION: Redemption(?) of the "Lung Block"
- NOTES
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- INDEX
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
