Sanitary and Social Chart of the Fourth Ward of the City of New York to illustrate the Necessity of Elevated Railways
- Title:
- Sanitary and Social Chart of the Fourth Ward of the City of New York to illustrate the Necessity of Elevated Railways
- Alternate Title:
- Sanitary and Social Chart of the Fourth Ward of the City of New York
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Pulling, E.R. & F.J. Randall
- Date:
- 1866
- Posted Date:
- 2024-04-25
- ID Number:
- 2480.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2480_01Adj.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1800 - 1869
- Subject:
- Money & Finance
New York City
Disaster/Health/Environment
Politics & Government
Railroads - Measurement:
- 46 x 57 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This remarkable map of the deplorable living conditions in downtown Manhattan was published twice, in two consecutive years, in pursuit of two fundamentally different political goals. It first appeared in a massive study by social reformers determined to improve public health, the "Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens’ Association of New York upon the Sanitary Condition of the City" (1865). The version here is the identical map with a revised title and legend. It was republished the following year by the directors of a private company "to Illustrate the Necessity of Elevated Railways" as they sought political and public support - over the objection of the Mayor and local merchants - to build a rail line from lower Manhattan north to the Bronx and beyond.
The original map, the only of its kind in the 1865 Citizens’ Association Report, was entitled "Sanitary and Social Chart of the Fourth Ward of the City of New York, To accompany a report of the 4th Sanitary Inspection District, Made to the Council of Hygiene of the Citizens' Association, By E.R. Pulling, M.D., assisted by F.J. Randall." It illustrates the squalid living conditions in the then Fourth Ward of Manhattan, an area bounded roughly by what is today the Municipal Building on the West and the South Street Waterfront on the East River.
Residential buildings are shown in either pink ("Private Dwellings") or beige ("Tenant Houses and Residences where the Space to each Occupant is less than eight hundred Cubic Feet''). It is immediately clear that more than 90 percent are vastly overcrowded tenements, with a family of six, for example living in an area smaller than 20 x 30 feet. Small square boxes on the map with an "X" in them denote "Privies," and the many solid black boxes represent "Privies in an extremely offensive condition." The stars on the map indicate "Insalubrious Localities," and those with two or three stars show locations of recent cases of Typhus, Typhoid Fever or Smallpox.
The Citizens' Association Report played a pivotal role in persuading the New York State legislature to enact public health reforms for New York City after years of successful opposition by corrupt Tammany Hall administrations. See generally Brieger 1966. The Association was organized in December 1863 by a group of city leaders including Peter Cooper, John Jacob Astor, Jr., August Belmont and Hamilton Fish. It established a Council of Hygiene and Public Health, consisting of reform-minded doctors determined to prepare "a set of clear and extensive facts about the health conditions of the city - facts that would overcome the inertia of the legislators and facts which would once and for all disprove the data from the [Tammany-led] City Inspector's Office." Brieger 420.
The Council divided the city into 29 "Sanitary Inspection Districts" and recruited 31 doctors to "inspect" the districts and report on a meticulously detailed set of "Leading Points of Sanitary Inquiry." Report xxi-xxxv. When the survey was completed in November 1864, the reports of the physician-inspectors filled 17 folio volumes. It was "according to numerous commentators, the most complete sanitary survey ever made, and certainly an important landmark in the history of public health in America," indeed "in the history of epidemiology." Brieger 421. When the survey's leader summarized its preliminary findings in great detail before a legislative committee, the New York Times (which had strongly supported public health reform for years) devoted the entire first two pages of one edition to reprinting his testimony under the headline "Our Sanitary Condition. The Metropolitan Health Bill. . . . The Causes of Disease and Death. How They May Be Removed. Necessity of Sanitary Inspection." New York Times, March 16, 1864, p. 1. (The other news of the day - including updates on the Civil War! - was printed in a "Supplement" that began on page 3.)
When the final Citizens' Association Report was published in April of 1865, it included a 350-page summary entitled "Evidence. Reports of the Sanitary Inspectors" for each District, and some 140 pages of overview and conclusions. The Times called it "a book demanding and arresting attention . . . remarkable . . . a book of philosophic spirit, practical illustration and humanitarian purpose - a book worthy of the age." New York Times, June 19, 1865, p. 2. Although the fight to create an independent public health agency for the City continued in Albany, the publication of the Citizens' Association Report was clearly a turning point, and legislation establishing the new Metropolitan Board of Health became law in February 1866.
At the same time, a very different political fight was playing out in New York as a result of the City's urgent need for mass transportation. See generally Roess 2013, 89-138. "By the middle of the 19th century, New York was choking on virtually intolerable congestion. Poorly-paved streets were filled with pedestrians, private carriages, horse-drawn omnibuses, horse-drawn streetcars, and merchants selling their wares." It was "dangerous, if not impossible" to cross Broadway during the day, and the pervasive use of horses "was a major health concern in its own right." Ibid. 89-90. Proposals for elevated railway systems and other means of mass transportation flooded the U.S. patent office and New York officials.
Under New York law, no rail system could be built in New York City without an express act of the state legislature in Albany. During the legislative session that ended in the summer of 1866, a number of bills had been introduced seeking such authority, but none had passed. Instead, the State Senate had appointed a Select Committee of politicians and engineers to review proposals and report back to the Senate. Nevertheless, on July 31, 1866, the New York City Common Council suddenly approved resolutions authorizing three different companies to begin constructing elevated railways on different routes along various streets including Greenwich, Broadway, Bowery, and Third and Ninth Avenue - and the New York Board of Alderman approved the resolutions on the same day. The companies contended that recent legislation authorizing the incorporation of elevated railway enterprises gave them the necessary state approval, but the Mayor immediately vetoed the resolutions as not only unlawful but deficient in a number of other respects. New York Times, August 1, 1866, pp. 2-3; August 14, 1866, p. 3.
As the various proposals had been floated over the years, almost all of them involved routes along Broadway, "the city's busiest street and its cultural and retail center." Broadway merchants and property owners opposed these plans, concerned not only about lost business during construction, but an adverse effect on real estate values. Their leader was Alexander T. Stewart, an immensely wealthy department store innovator whose five-story "Marble Palace" store at Chambers Street and eight-story "Iron Palace" at East 10th "bookended the fashionable part of the street." Nevius 2018. Perhaps fearing that the Council and Aldermen might override the Mayor's veto, Stewart sued all the officials on August 17 and obtained an immediate injunction prohibiting any further action. New York Times, August 18, 1866, pp. 3, 4.
The current map appeared in a hardbound volume published shortly after the Stewart injunction by the directors of one of the three companies, the "Broadway and Yonkers Patent Railway Company." This work, entitled "Expose of the Facts Concerning the Proposed Elevated Patent Railway Enterprise in the City of New York," was intended "to make such a statement of the facts relating to that enterprise as shall enable the public more correctly to judge of its merits and title to favor and encouragement." Expose 3. The Expose is in part a reprint of the legal documents and reprise of the legal arguments; in part a description of the technology and architecture of the project; and in part a rebuttal to the concerns of the Broadway merchants, including architectural renderings showing that the centerline of the proposed trains would be 18-1/2 feet from the front of Stewart's store at Chambers Street.
But the great bulk of the Expose is devoted to what the Directors present first in their list of pertinent facts: "The local and sanitary necessity." P. 9. The work begins with extensive excerpts from the Citizens' Association Report, including the report of Dr. Pulling from the Fourth Sanitary District, along with commentary. Pp. 10-23. (The Expose points out, at 21, that Stewart was a member of the Citizens' Association of New York and its Council, another coincidental link between these two maps.) The Directors' argument is that the "terrible evils depicted in the preceding pages can be successfully and permanently ameliorated by improved railway transportation, and not otherwise . . . . [It] can only be relieved by quick and cheap transportation . . . through the belt of high priced land ['where the rich reside'], to new localities on the northern end of the island" and beyond. P. 22. Readers were also referred to a lengthy Appendix on public health (pp. 54-71), virtually all of which is reprinted from the Citizens' Association Report.
As part of this argument, the map from the 1865 Citizens' Association Report is reprinted, presumably from the original stone. This 1866 version is identical except for some minor changes to the "Explanation" at the left and major alterations to the title and authorship. Both maps are the "Sanitary and Social Chart of the Fourth Ward of the City of New York," but while the 1865 version was "To accompany a report of the 4th Sanitary Inspection District, Made to the Council of Hygiene of the Citizens' Association," the Expose map of 1866 was "to illustrate the Necessity of Elevated Railways." This straight-forward change reflected the purpose of the Expose.
But there is a mystery associated with the change in attribution. The original version was "By E.R. Pulling, M.D., assisted by F.J. Randall," and it was published by D. Appleton & Co. None of these names appears on the 1866 map here. Instead, it is "Published by the Harvey Patent Railway Companies," and the word "Harvey" is on a paste-on added after the 1866 version was first printed. (The copy of the Expose at Columbia is identical to this one, while the copy at Harvard has no attribution at all, only the title.) Who was "Harvey?" He is not one of the Directors of the "Broadway and Yonkers Patent Railway Company," all named in the Expose. Indeed, his name appears only once in the Expose, in a report from the company's patent attorney that "At your request I went to the Patent Office at Washington last week and searched for patents prior to Harvey's, and those now controlled by you, but I did not find any patent conflicting or interfering with them." Expose 33-34. And for that matter, what happened to the "Broadway and Yonkers Patent Railway Company," which seems to have vanished from public record after publication of the Expose?
It appears likely that sometime before the Expose was published, the "Broadway and Yonkers" had joined forces with Charles T. Harvey. Harvey was an acclaimed engineer, famous for his work on the Sault Sainte Marie Canal (Soo Locks) connecting Lake Superior with Lake Huron and completed successfully in 1855. He held a well-regarded recent patent for the design of an elevated railway, technology the Broadway and Yonkers intended to use but described in the Expose simply as "devised during the past year" by "one of the most successful practical engineers in this country." P. 3. Harvey was in fact the moving force behind another of the three companies that had been approved by the Common Council, the "West Side and Yonkers Patent Railway." He was also a "master politician" who proposed that his line run north on Greenwich Street and Ninth Avenue, "far enough away from Broadway that it wouldn't raise the ire of the street's merchants, New York politicians, or the rival omnibus companies." Nevius 2018; see Roess 2013, 100. The joinder of the Broadway and Yonkers with the West Side and Yonkers (and perhaps others contenders) would explain the attribution and paste-on by the collective (plural) "Harvey Patent Railway Companies."
Having been thwarted by the Stewart injunction, Harvey took his proposal to the Senate Select Committee in 1867, and it was chosen over more than 40 competitors. He proved his system on a test section along Greenwich in late 1867, and by 1869 New York's first elevated train was running, at least sporadically, as far north as 30th Street. However, one of Harvey's key investment houses collapsed in the Jay Gould Panic of 1869, and he was forced to give up control of the company to unscrupulous investors who soon dismissed him. Under new management, the line failed in 1870 and went into bankruptcy. Nevius 2018; Roess 2013, 93, 100-104.
Cornell University Library is pleased to present this digital collection of Persuasive Maps, the originals of which have been collected and described by the private collector PJ Mode. The descriptive information in the “Collector’s Notes” has been supplied by Mr. Mode and does not necessarily reflect the views of Cornell University. - Source:
- Directors of the Broadway and Yonkers Patent Railway Company. 1866. Expose of the Facts Concerning the Proposed Elevated Patent Railway Enterprise in the City of New-York. New York: Broadway and Yonkers Patent Railway Company.
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.