Editing Gilded Age (section)

==Urban life==
{{main|American urban history}}
[[File:Home Insurance Building.JPG|thumb|The [[Home Insurance Building]] in Chicago became the world's first skyscraper when it was built in 1885.]]

American society experienced significant changes in the period following the Civil War, most notably the rapid urbanization of the North.<ref name="auto3">{{Cite book|last=Schlesinger|first=Arthur Meier|url=http://archive.org/details/riseofcity18781810schl|title=The Rise of the City, 1878–1898|date=1933|location=New York |publisher=The Macmillan Company|others=Internet Archive}}</ref> Due to the increasing demand for unskilled workers, most European immigrants went to mill towns, mining camps, and industrial cities. New York, Philadelphia, and especially Chicago saw rapid growth. [[Louis Sullivan]] became a noted architect using steel frames to construct skyscrapers for the first time while pioneering the idea of "[[form follows function]]". Chicago became the center of the skyscraper craze, starting with the ten-story [[Home Insurance Building]] in 1884–1885 by [[William Le Baron Jenney]].<ref>{{cite book|first=Joseph J.|last=Korom|title=The American Skyscraper, 1850–1940: A Celebration of Height|url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_JVzYO1TyZ6AC|year= 2008|publisher=Branden Books|pages=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_JVzYO1TyZ6AC/page/n92 93]–94|isbn=978-0-8283-2188-4}}</ref>

As immigration increased in cities, poverty rose as well. The poorest crowded into low-cost housing such as the [[Five Points, Manhattan|Five Points]] and [[Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan|Hell's Kitchen]] neighborhoods in New York. These areas were quickly overridden with notorious criminal gangs such as the [[Five Points Gang]] and the [[Bowery Boys (gang)|Bowery Boys]].<ref>{{cite book|first=Tyler|last=Anbinder|title=Five Points: The 19th-century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NbQa9adIJfkC|year=2001|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=978-0-684-85995-8}}</ref> Overcrowding spread germs; the death rates in big city [[tenements]] vastly exceeded those in the countryside.<ref name="TindallShi"/>

Rapid outward expansion required longer journeys to work and shopping for the middle class office workers and housewives.  The working-class generally did not own automobiles until after 1945; they typically walked to nearby factories and patronized small neighborhood stores. The middle class demanded a better transportation system. Slow horse-drawn streetcars and faster electric trolleys were the rage in the 1880s.<ref>{{cite book|first=Robert M.|last=Fogelson|title=Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6X-WCewsP-AC&pg=PA408|year=2003|publisher=Yale U.P.|isbn=978-0-300-09827-3}}</ref>

In the horse-drawn era, streets were unpaved and covered with dirt or gravel. However, this produced uneven wear, opened new hazards for pedestrians, and made for dangerous potholes for bicycles and for motor vehicles. Manhattan alone had 130,000 horses in 1900, pulling streetcars, delivery wagons, and private carriages, and leaving their waste behind. They were not fast, and pedestrians could dodge and scramble their way across the crowded streets.

In small towns people mostly walked to their destination so they continued to rely on dirt and gravel into the 1920s. Larger cities had much more complex transportation needs. They wanted better streets, so they paved them with wood or granite blocks.<ref>David O. Whitten, "A Century of Parquet Pavements: Wood as a Paving Material in the United States And Abroad, 1840–1940." ''Essays in Economic and Business History'' 15 (1997): 209–26.</ref> In 1890, a third of Chicago's 2000 miles of streets were paved, chiefly with wooden blocks, which gave better traction than mud. Brick surfacing was a good compromise, but even better was [[Asphalt concrete|asphalt]] paving. With London and Paris as models, Washington laid 400,000 square yards of asphalt paving by 1882, and served as a model for Buffalo, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

By the end of the century, American cities boasted 30 million square yards of asphalt paving, followed by brick construction.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Schlesinger|first=Arthur Meier|url=http://archive.org/details/riseofcity18781810schl|title=The rise of the city, 1878–1898|date=1933|location=New York |publisher=The Macmillan Company|others=Internet Archive|pages=88–93}}</ref> Street-level electric trolleys moved at 12 miles per hour, and became the main transportation service for middle class shoppers and office workers. Big-city streets became paths for faster and larger and more dangerous vehicles, the pedestrians beware. In the largest cities, street railways were elevated, which increased their speed and lessened their dangers. Boston built the first subway in the 1890s followed by New York a decade later.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Fairfield|first=John D.|date=1995|editor-last=McShane|editor-first=Clay|title=Rapid Transit: Automobility and Settlement in Urban America|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2703240|journal=Reviews in American History|volume=23|issue=1|pages=80–85|doi=10.1353/rah.1995.0006|jstor=2703240|s2cid=144312718|issn=0048-7511|access-date=February 21, 2018|archive-date=July 25, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180725190811/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2703240|url-status=live|url-access=subscription}}</ref>