Main Street to Mainframes : Landscape and Social Change in Poughkeepsie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Flad, Harvey K.

Series:

SUNY Series, an American Region: Studies in the Hudson Valley Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Urban renewal.

Hudson River Valley (N.Y. and N.J.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (576 pages)

Edition:

2nd ed.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, 2026.

Summary:

Traces the history of Poughkeepsie's development from the nineteenth through the twentieth and into the challenges of the twenty-first century.Main Street to Mainframes is an in-depth study of a small American city and its evolution in the twentieth and early twenty-first century.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Illustrations

Illustration Credits

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments from the First Edition

Acknowledgments from the Second Edition

Preface

Introduction

A Framework

Reading the City

City and Region

Part I. Before 1900

One The Valley Setting

River, Mountains, Valley

Valley People

What Happened to the First Inhabitants?

A Level Playing Field?

Why So Many Slaves in the Valley?

River Towns Tap Their Hinterlands

Hudson, Kingston, and Newburgh Before 1900

Slowing Urban Growth

Knockouts in the 1890s

Two Poughkeepsie Grows from Village to City

Waterfront Developments

Improvement Party Dreams

Immigrants Build a Railroad

Avenues to Acceptance

Industry Takes the Riverfront

Locating Social Classes in the New Shape of the City

Post-Civil War Economic Inequality in Poughkeepsie

Employment for Women and African Americans

Traditional Handicrafts Decline

Dairy Processing Becomes an Industry

Three Improvements and Conflicts in the Late Nineteenth Century

Pioneering in Higher Education

The Post-Civil War Boom Brings Public Improvements

The Booster as Philanthropist

African Americans Open Up White Schools

A Mobile Population in a Changing Economy

Valley People on the Move

Where Different Classes and Ethnic Groups Lived and Why

Residential Clustering: Irish, German, and African American Neighborhoods

A New Influx of Immigrants at the Turn of the Century

A Pluralistic Society

River Gentry in the Late Nineteenth Century

Acquaintance and Competition in the Valley

Part II. A Diversified Industrial Economy and Society

Four The Cityscape at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Hudson-Fulton Celebration

Trolleys Refocus Poughkeepsie

Urban Infrastructure Improvements

Changes to the Economic Landscape.

The Center of the Urban Region: Main and Market Streets

Union Street: A Working-Class Neighborhood

Mill Street: Lower to Upper in Social Space

Neighborhood Expansion South of Main Street

Developments North and East

Five A New Wave of Immigrants Changes the Citizenry

Newcomers From Italy

How Countrymen Helped a Teenage Newcomer

A New Polish World in Poughkeepsie

Eastern European Jews and the Ladder of Mobility

Americanization and Nativism in the 1920s

The Bottom Rung

Destitution

A Fragmented City

Six Municipal Reform and Urban Planning

Gardens and Violets

Transforming Treeless Streets

Class Differences in Recreation

Lucy Maynard Salmon Meets the City

Arousing the Public

Wishing for the City Beautiful

Battling Poughkeepsie's "Evils"

The Lonely Path of a Woman Reformer in a Male World

Laying Foundations for Reform

Promoting Urban Planning for Poughkeepsie

Myron West's Plan for Poughkeepsie

The City Tries to Annex the Town of Poughkeepsie

Seven Changes to the Space Economy Between the Wars

Bridging the Hudson

The Mid-Hudson Bridge

The Bear Mountain Bridge

Parkways

Taconic State Parkway

Highways

Val-Kill

Depression-Era Post Offices

Poughkeepsie Post Office

FDR and Conservation

Eight Business and Labor in the 1920s and 1930s

Main Street Retail

A Family Firm Grows

Attracting New Industries and Economic Growth

Workplace Conditions

Labor Conflict and Organization

A Low-Wage Town

Jobs for Young Women

What Did Wage Earners Think?

Organized Labor During World War II

Nine Depression in FDR's Home County

The Spiral Downward

Desperate for Relief

The Pundits' Optimism

FDR's Civil Works Administration

"Modernize Main Street"

Market and Main Streets

Pleasures in the Midst of Depression.

Recreation, Social Class, and Race

Change in the River Estates

"Suburban" Newcomers

Redlining in the City of Poughkeepsie

Part III. IBM Remakes the Region as Its Largest Employer

Ten Technological Revolution Transforms the Region: IBM

IBM's Patriarch: Thomas Watson Senior

Choosing Poughkeepsie for Wartime Manufacture

IBM's Wartime Workforce

IBM Begins to Reshape the Landscape

Corporate Paternalism

"Mr. IBM" in Poughkeepsie Is Bill Mair

Miss Kenyon's Mansion Becomes "The Lab"

IBM Enters the World of Electronics

IBM's New Facility in Kingston

Upgrading IBM's Workforce

IBM's Impact on Local Retailing

Corporate Culture Changes Under Tom Watson Jr.

Ongoing Change in IBM's Workforce

The Stretch Computer Project

Work Worlds at IBM Poughkeepsie After 1956

Eleven IBM Triumphs with the 360 Mainframe Computer

The Laborious Birth of a Great Success: The 360

A Short-Lived Local Start-Up Competitor: Cogar

IBM's Growth After the 360

Benefits in Job Security, Housing, and Education

Occupational and Geographic Mobility Among IBMers

IBM Facilities Siting Furthers Suburbanization in Dutchess

Poughkeepsie City Loses While Townships Gain

Where IBMers Concentrated in Residence

IBM's Impact on Local Economy and Government

Twelve The Quest for Inner-City Revitalization: Urban Renewal

Urban Decentralization

Traffic and Parking

Arterials

Main Street Hub

The Parking Dilemma

Main Mall

Housing

Waterfront

Thirteen Social Planning: The Model Cities Experiment

Model Cities

People's Housing Development Corporation (PHDC)

Battling the Bulldozer

Union Street

Bardavon Theater

Urban Dislocation

Fourteen Issues and Causes of the 1960s

Vietnam and Civil Rights

African American Activism

The Quest for Fairness in Housing.

Timothy Leary Brings "Drug Culture" to the Valley

The Campaign to Save Storm King Mountain

The Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference Intervention

Unusual Beacon Residents: Pete and Toshi Seeger

Pete Seeger, the River, and Scenic Hudson

The Sloop Clearwater

Fifteen Change in Higher Education in the Valley

Mobilizing for a Community College in Dutchess

James Hall, Leader with a Vision

The Marist Brothers Come to the Valley

Marist Becomes Coeducational and Run by Laity

Vassar College Ponders Its Future, Including a Move to New Haven

Vassar Chooses Coeducation

SUNY New Paltz and Bard College in the 1960s

The Culinary Institute of America Leaves New Haven for Hyde Park

Adams Fairacre Farms Brings Sophistication to Food Retailing

Higher Education and the Valley's Future

Continuity, Change, and Collegiality

Sixteen IBM Downsizes, but the Valley Recovers

IBM's Prosperity in the Early 1980s

The Struggle for Survival of Schatz Federal Bearing Company

Manufacturing Decline

IBM Faces Competition

The Awful Downsizing

Transitional Help for Those Laid Off

The Ripple Effect of IBM's Downsizing

Beginning the Turnaround

Attracting and Keeping Businesses

Chips and Software

From Chips to Brews and Z to Q

Part IV. Postindustrial Poughkeepsie and the Valley

Seventeen The Nonprofit Service Sector Grows in Importance

The Chamber of Commerce and United Way

Mary Keeley and Dutchess Outreach

Lateef Islam and the Family Partnership Center

Dutchess Outreach Twenty Years After Keeley

Other Services, Public and Private

Housing and the Unhoused

Educational Services

Eighteen Hospitals in Transition

Evolution of the Region's Health Care Industry

Growth of Group Medical Practices

Hospital Partnerships and Mergers

VBH-VBMC-Nuvance-Northwell.

The Aftermath of the Closings of the Hudson River State Hospital and the Hudson River Psychiatric Center

Nineteen Main Street Struggles to Return Amid Suburban Sprawl

Perceptions of Main Street and Main Mall

Main Mall Commission

Waterfront Advisory Commission

Perception at Century's End: Déjà Vu?

Suburban Sprawl

Twenty Civic Identity and Social Change in the 1990s

A Landscape of Racial Unrest

Tawana Brawley in the National Spotlight

Demographics

New Immigrants: Mexicans

New Immigrants: Asians

Social and Physical Renewal

Twenty-One City and Region at the End of the Twentieth Century

Regional Consciousness and Planning

A Regional Fabric of City and Countryside

Community and Regional Planning

Greenways

Walkway Over the Hudson

Rural Land-Use Change

Community-Supported Agriculture

Open Space Preservation: Public and Private

Balancing Rural and Urban Issues

Twenty-Two City and Region from the End of the Twentieth Century into the Twenty-First

Heritage Tourism

Springside

Heritage Landscapes

Creativity and Regional Revitalization

Community and the Arts: Poughkeepsie

Revitalization of Community Through the Arts: Hudson

Main Street Revitalization and the Arts: Beacon

Public or Private Community?

Twenty-Three Main Street and the Twenty-First-Century Cultural Landscape

Main Street Poughkeepsie

Regional Connections to the New York Metropolitan Area

Urban Core Revitalization

The Valley's Main Streets

Twenty-Four Landscapes of Social Change: 2010 to 2025

Rebuilding the Social Fabric

Demography and Economy

Spaces of Social Renewal

Hospitality and the Arts

Poughkeepsie's "Usable Past": Future Progress

Appendices

A. Redlining: Poughkeepsie's Residential Security Map, 1938.

B. Demographic Table: Population Change in Dutchess County, City, and Town of Poughkeepsie.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

979-88-558-0615-1

979-88-558-0616-8

OCLC:

1586549226