Why did American cities experience explosive growth in the late nineteenth century?

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Section Chronology

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Figure false: Russian Immigrant Family
Figure false: A Russian immigrant family is shown leaving Ellis Island in 1900. The white slips of paper pinned to their coats indicate that they have been processed. The family is well dressed, but the scarcity of their possessions testifies to their struggles. The woman carries her belongings in a white cloth sack, and the man holds a suitcase and bedding. Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside.

“WE CANNOT ALL LIVE IN CITIES, yet nearly all seem determined to do so,” New York editor Horace Greeley complained. The last three decades of the nineteenth century witnessed an urban explosion. Cities and towns grew more than twice as rapidly as the total population. By 1900, the United States boasted three cities with more than a million inhabitants — New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Patterns of global migration contributed to the rise of the city. In the port cities of the East Coast, more than fourteen million people arrived, many from southern and eastern Europe, and huddled together in dense urban ghettos. The word slum entered the American vocabulary along with a growing concern over the rising tide of newcomers. In the city, the widening gap between rich and poor became more visible. The gap was made more visible by changes in the city landscape brought about by advances in transportation and technology.

CHRONOLOGY

1880s

  • –Immigration from southern and eastern Europe rises.

1890

  • –Jacob Riis publishes How the Other Half Lives.

1890s

  • –African American migration from the South begins.

1892

  • –Ellis Island opens.

1896

  • –President Grover Cleveland vetoes immigrant literacy test.

global migration

image Movement of populations across large distances such as oceans and continents. In the late nineteenth century, large-scale immigration from southern and eastern Europe into the United States contributed to the growth of cities and changes in American demographics.