This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

 

Readings

LEC # TOPICS READINGS
1 Introduction  
2 Parks

Blodgett, Geoffrey. "Frederick Law Olmsted: Landscape Architecture as Conservative Reform." Journal of American History (March 1976): 869-889.

Cranz, Galen. "Changing Role of Urban Parks: From Pleasure Garden to Open Space." Landscape (Summer 1978): 9-18.

Stewart, Ian R. "Politics and the Park." New York Historical Society Quarterly (July/October 1977): 124-155.

Amazon logo Olmsted, Frederick Law, Jr., and Theodora Kimball, eds. Forty Years of Landscape Architecture: Central Park. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973, pp. 18-67. ISBN: 9780262650069.

Amazon logo Rosenzweig, Roy. Eight Hours For What We Will. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985, chapter 5. ISBN: 9780521313971.

Amazon logo Olmsted, Frederick Law, Jr., and Theodore Kimball, eds. Frederick Law Olmsted Landscape Architect, 1822-1903. Vol. 2, New York, NY: Putnam, 1973, pp. 451-465. ISBN 9780262150095.

3 Amusement Parks

Coney Island. P.B.S., 1991. (Film)

Amazon logo Kasson, John. Amusing the Million. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1978. ISBN: 9780809001330.

Amazon logo Peiss, Kathy. Cheap Amusements. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1986, chapter 5. ISBN: 9780877225003.

Amazon logo Findlay, John M. Magic Lands: Western Cityscapes and American Culture After 1940. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993, chapter 2. ISBN: 9780520084353.

Amazon logo Davis, Susan G. Spectacular Nature: Corporate Culture and the Sea World Experience. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997, chapter 3. ISBN: 9780520209817.

4 Discussion of Term Papers  
5 Suburbs "Palos Verdes Protective Restrictions." Palos Verdes Bulletin 4 (February 1928): 4-5.

Amazon logo Fogelson, Robert M. Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780300108767. (Forthcoming)
6 Tenements

Amazon logo Lubove, Roy. The Progressives and the Slums: Tenement House Reform in New York City 1890-1917. Pittsburgh, PA: Greenwood Press, 1974, chapters 2, 4, and 5. ISBN: 9780837174877.

Amazon logo Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives. New York, NY: Bedford, 1996, chapters 1-8, and 21. ISBN: 9780312117009.

Amazon logo Flagg, Ernest, Robert A. Woods. "The New York Tenement-House Evil and Its Cure." In The Poor in Great Cities. New York, NY: Ayer, 1971, pp. 370-392. ISBN: 9780405031311.

Amazon logo Newman, Oscar. Defensible Space. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1973, chapter 2. ISBN: 9780020007500.

Amazon logo Freedman, Jonathan. Crowding and Behavior. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman, 1975, chapters 1 and 5. ISBN: 9780716707509.

7 Skyscrapers

Amazon logo Goldberger, Paul. The Skyscraper. New York, NY: Knopf, 1983, chapter 1. ISBN: 9780394715865.

Amazon logo Jordy, William H., and Ralph Coe, eds. American Architecture and Other Writings by Montgomery Schuyler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961, pp. 442-452. ISBN: 9780674019003.

Amazon logo Fogelson, Robert M. Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1850-1930. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003, chapter 3. ISBN: 9780300098273.

Neil, J. M. "Paris or New York? The Shaping of Downtown Seattle, 1903-14." Pacific Northwest Quarterly (January 1984): 22-33.

Civic Development Department, Chamber of Commerce of the United States. "Economic Height of Buildings: The Skyscraper Attacked and Defended." Washington, DC, 1927, pp. 3-31.

8 Department Stores

Tarr, Joel A. "The Chicago Anti-Department Store Crusade of 1897." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (Summer 1971): 161-172.

Amazon logo Barth, Gunther. City People. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1982, pp. 110-147. ISBN: 9780195031942.

Amazon logo Benson, Susan Porter. Counter Cultures. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987, chapter 3-4. ISBN: 9780252060137.

Amazon logo Boorstin, Daniel J. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York, NY: Random House, 1973, chapter 10. ISBN: 9780394487243.

Amazon logo Leach, William. True Love and Perfect Union: The Feminist Reform of Sex and Society. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1980, pp. 222-237. ISBN: 9780465087556.

Amazon logo Strasser, Susan. Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market. New York, NY: Smithsonian Books, 1995, chapter 8. ISBN: 9781560986546.

9 Supermarkets

"Piggly Wiggly Contract Requirements, Etc." Memphis, 1919.

Amazon logo Keats, John. What Ever Happened to Mom's Apple Pie? Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1976, pp. 101-107, and 127-134. ISBN: 9780395242988.

Amazon logo Packard, Vance. The Hidden Persuaders. New York, NY: Pocket, 1984, chapter 10. ISBN: 9780671531492.

Sicilia, David B. "Supermarket Sweep." Audacity (Spring 1997): 11-19.

Amazon logo Longstreth, Richard. The Drive-in, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914-1941. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000, chapter 4. ISBN: 9780262621427.

10 Armories Amazon logo Fogelson, Robert M. America's Armories: Architecture, Society, and Public Order. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780674031104.
11 Public Baths

Williams, Marilyn Thornton. "Philanthropy in the Progressive Era: The Public Baths of Baltimore." Maryland Historical Magazine, 1977, 118-131.

———. "New York City's Public Baths." Journal of Urban History (November 1980): 49-81.

Wilkie, Jacqueline S. "Submerged Sensuality: Technology and Perceptions of Bathing." Journal of Social History (Summer 1986): 649-664.

Bushman, Richard L., and Claudia L. Bushman. "The Early History of Cleanliness in America." Journal of American History (March 1988): 1213-1238.

Amazon logo Hoy, Suellen. Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996, chapter 4. ISBN: 9780195111286.

Gerhard, Wm. Paul. "The Modern Rain-Bath." American Architect and Building News, 10 February, 1894, 67-69.

12 Zoos

Horowitz, Helen. "The National Zoological Park: 'City of Refuge' or Zoo?" Records of the Columbia Historical Society of Washington, D.C. (1973-1974), pp. 405-429

Horowitz, Helen. "Seeing Ourselves Through the Bars." Landscape (1981): 12-19.

Amazon logo Turner, James. Reckoning with the Beast. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780801866777.

Amazon logo Berger, John. About Looking. New York, NY: Vintage, 1992, pp. 1-26. ISBN: 9780679736554.

13 Cemeteries

Amazon logo Aries, Philippe. "The Reversal of Death: Change in Attitudes Toward Death in Western Societies." In Death in America. Edited by David Stannard. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1975, pp. 134-158. ISBN: 9780812276954.

French, Stanley. "The Cemetery as Cultural Institution: The Establishment of Mt. Auburn and the Rural Cemetery Movement." American Quarterly (March 1974): 37-59.

Amazon logo Farrell, James J. Inventing the American Way of Death 1830-1920. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1980, chapter 4. ISBN: 9780877221807.

Amazon logo Sloane, David Charles. The Last Great Necessity: Cemeteries in American History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, chapter 7. ISBN: 9780801851285.

Amazon logo Kasson, John F. Rudeness & Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1990, chapter 5. ISBN: 9780809034703.

Amazon logo Schuyler, David A. The New Urban Landscape. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, chapter 3. ISBN: 9780801832314.

14 Conclusion