Without the new inventions such as electric companies, bridges, skyscrapers, and new forms of transportation, Urban life would not have been the same in the late 19th century and the early 20th century.
After the invention of the light bulb and other utilities that needed electricity, the need and want for public electricity was very high. Edison Electric Illuminating company was the first electricity company in America. On September 4,1882 they started up their 27 ton generator that powered 1,100 lights. The price that they were charging was even competitive enough to compete with gas prices. Soon more and more electrical companies emerged, and by the end of 1900 there were 30 companies distributing and generating electricity.
The electrical companies also helped solve a big problem with skyscrapers. No one wanted to walk up 5 or more flights of stairs so buildings had to be shorter, but with electricity now being accessible to buildings it now allowed them to have elevators. The first skyscraper was finished on January 1, 1885, it was designed and built by William Le Baron Jenny from Massachusetts. Many architects before him had trouble getting building to be very tall, and now where near skyscraper tall. Building were nearly impossible to make taller then 5 stories. The construction of them was also very dangerous and expensive. Then in the 1870s there was a new method of constructing tall buildings, using cast iron and steel beams. This made buildings much taller and allowed for even more people to live in a smaller space.
More people living in a smaller space caused the need for new bridges and road. The reason bridges could not before the 1870s be that long was just like how buildings could not be that tall, the builders did not have strong enough materials to build them with. The use of steel beams, cast iron, and a new form of bridge, the suspension bridge, allowed for bridges like the Brooklyn bridge to be built. The Brooklyn Bridge was finished in 1833 and is still in use. Over 600 workers worked on it, and it helped connect Manhattan and Brooklyn. The need for larges bridges was not the only transportation problem. Many cities needed roads to accommodate the heavy traffic flow. Streets were too narrow and not paved. Cities soon developed new was to pave roads, but that still did not solve the traffic problem.
Cities started to realize that everyone needing their own personal form of transportation in a urban environment was not going to work, it was just way too crowded. Many cites turned to public transportation in an effort to solve their transportation issues. The only problem was they did not have enough space to put a big train running through a city, so they had to find new forms of transportation. In 1870 New York
opened the first elevated railway in an attempted to solve the transportation problem. In Richmond Virginia the first electric trolley was constructed in 1888. By the end of 1895 more than 850 towns had electric trollies. For some cities such as Boston electric trolleys were not enough to solve their transportation issue. The trolley lines were moved underground in Boston to not take up space above group, therefore inventing subways. The first subway in Boston was finished in 1897. Soon New York got a subway too. It was the largest subway in American. It was 9.1 miles long and had 28 stations.
All of these inventions allowed for cites to become even more urbanized. Solving the problems in these cities often created new ones, but it did not keep the inventors from trying to solve all of the problems that came with an Urban life.
Sources:
1.Conedison is the first electrical company supplying electricity to homes in New York. This is their website.
2.This website page on history.com tells some of the history of the Brooklyn Bridge.
4. This an Guardian article about the history of cities and it talks about the first skyscrapers.
5.This is an website for the Transit Museum and it talks about the kinds of transportation in history and when they were invited, where and how.
6. This is a history.com article about the first subway to open in the USA.
7. This is an article by the New York Subway Organization about the first above ground subway in the USA.
8. This is the book we are learning from in class. I researched about skyscrapers, transportation, and electricity in it.
