How did municipal governments respond to the challenges of urban expansion?

> CHRONOLOGY

1871
  • Boss Tweed’s rule in New York City ends.

  • Chicago’s Great Fire breaks out.

1883
  • Brooklyn Bridge opens.

1893
  • World’s Columbian Exposition opens.

  • Panic on Wall Street touches off major economic depression.

1895
  • Boston Public Library opens in Copley Square.

1897
  • Nation’s first subway system opens in Boston.

Private enterprise, not city planners, built the cities of the United States. With a few notable exceptions, cities simply mushroomed, formed by the dictates of profit and the exigencies of local politics. With the rise of the city came the need for public facilities, transportation, and services that would tax the imaginations of America’s architects and engineers and set the scene for the rough-and-tumble of big-city government, politics, and bossism.