Overview
Urban History/Women's StudiesReclaims the lost history of women's contributions to the development of American cities.
In the days between the Civil War and World War I, women rarely worked outside the home, rarely went to college, and, if our histories are to be believed, rarely put their mark on the urban spaces unfolding around them. And yet, as this book clearly demonstrates, women did play a key role in shaping the American urban landscape.
To uncover the contribution of women to urban development at the turn of the nineteenth century, Daphne Spain looks at the places where women participated most actively in public life-voluntary organizations like the Young Women's Christian Association, the Salvation Army, the College Settlements Association, and the National Association of Colored Women. In the extensive building projects of these associations-boarding houses, vocational schools, settlement houses, public baths, and playgrounds-she finds clear evidence of a built environment created by women.
Exploring this environment, Spain reconstructs the story of the "redemptive places" that addressed the real needs of city dwellers-especially single women, African Americans, immigrants, and the poor-and established an environment in which newcomers could learn to become urban Americans.
Daphne Spain is professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia.
Translation Inquiries: University of Minnesota Press
Synopsis
Urban History/Women's Studies
Reclaims the lost history of women's contributions to the development of American cities.
In the days between the Civil War and World War I, women rarely worked outside the home, rarely went to college, and, if our histories are to be believed, rarely put their mark on the urban spaces unfolding around them. And yet, as this book clearly demonstrates, women did play a key role in shaping the American urban landscape.
To uncover the contribution of women to urban development at the turn of the nineteenth century, Daphne Spain looks at the places where women participated most actively in public life-voluntary organizations like the Young Women's Christian Association, the Salvation Army, the College Settlements Association, and the National Association of Colored Women. In the extensive building projects of these associations-boarding houses, vocational schools, settlement houses, public baths, and playgrounds-she finds clear evidence of a built environment created by women.
Exploring this environment, Spain reconstructs the story of the "redemptive places" that addressed the real needs of city dwellers-especially single women, African Americans, immigrants, and the poor-and established an environment in which newcomers could learn to become urban Americans.
Daphne Spain is professor in the Department of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia.
Translation Inquiries: University of Minnesota Press
Publishers Weekly
The traditional view of "women's work" has placed it within the boundaries of the home, but in this important treatise, Spain argues that women have been transforming America's urban landscape for more than 100 years. A professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia, Spain focuses on the activities of women in urban spaces following the Civil War, when immigrant populations dramatically increased in the Northern states as Southern blacks fled the Reconstruction, and Europeans, Irish and Russians left their depressed economies. While men built skyscrapers and remolded the face of industrial commerce, it was the women who attended to the "municipal housekeeping," making cities safe and welcoming for their inhabitants, she points out. Without such women as Jane AddamsDthe founding mother of social work, whose volunteer-staffed "settlement house" in one of Chicago's most impoverished neighborhoods helped give immigrants a fighting chanceDcities would have collapsed under their own chaotic growth, she posits. Focusing on the YWCA, the Salvation Army and several other organizations, Spain charts the rise of volunteer and settlement movements in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and New York as well as in smaller Midwestern cities. Though highly academic in tone, this exhaustively researched book is a must-read for those interested in women's studies and urban planning. 73 b&w photos; six maps. (Dec. 31) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.