City water, city life : water and the infrastructure of ideas in urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago / Carl Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, Carl S.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Municipal water supply--United States--History--19th century.

Municipal water supply.

Waterworks--United States--History--19th century.

Waterworks.

Urbanization--United States--History--19th century.

Urbanization.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (340 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

A city is more than a massing of citizens, a layout of buildings and streets, or an arrangement of political, economic, and social institutions. It is also an infrastructure of ideas that are a support for the beliefs, values, and aspirations of the people who created the city. In City Water, City Life, celebrated historian Carl Smith explores this concept through an insightful examination of the development of the first successful waterworks systems in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago between the 1790s and the 1860s. By examining the place of water in the nineteenth-century consciousness, Smith illuminates how city dwellers perceived themselves during the great age of American urbanization. But City Water, City Life is more than a history of urbanization. It is also a refreshing meditation on water as a necessity, as a resource for commerce and industry, and as an essential-and central-part of how we define our civilization.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: City Water, City Life

2. The River, the Aqueduct, and the Lake: Bringing Water to Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago

3. The Individual and the Collective: Water, Urban Society, and the Public Good

4. Nature and Art: Water and the Reconciliation of the Natural and the Urban

5. The Urban Body and the Body of the City: Th e Sanitary Movement, the Temperance Crusade, and the Water Cure

6. The Flow of Time: City Water as Cultural Anticipation

7. Epilogue

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780226022659

022602265X

OCLC:

840887412