An American Urban Residential Landscape, 1890–1920: Chicago in the Progressive Era
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An American Urban Residential Landscape, 1890–1920: Chicago in th ...

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Table of Contents

List of Figures and Table

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

Abbreviations

xvii

Introduction

1

Chapter 1: An American Ideology of Improvement

17

The Rise of Improvement

26

Disseminating Improvement

33

Urban Improvement

40

Conclusion

50

Chapter 2: Real Estate Businessmen and the Improved Property Market

53

Improvement and Chicago’s Real Estate Businessmen

59

Advertising and the Commodification of Improvement

68

Professionalization and Regulation

77

Conclusion

83

Chapter 3: “Active in Good Works”: NIAs

85

The Origins of Chicago’s NIAs

92

Membership

99

The Politics of Improvement

104

Objectives

111

Practices

118

Organizational Structure

124

Conclusion

128

Chapter 4: “Street Trees”

131

“Nature” and Chicago

135

Trees in the City

138

Street Trees and Real Estate Businessmen

144

Street Tree Species and Pest Control

148

NIAs

151

The City Forester and Institutionalization

157

Conclusion

169

Chapter 5: Local Prohibition and the Limits of Improvement

171

Prohibition as an Improvement Objective

174

Organizational Characteristics of the HPPA

178

“Local Option”

187

Amalgamation With the Illinois ASL and the Transformation of the HPPA

192

The HPPA and the University of Chicago

199

Reform and Reaction: Real Estate Businessmen

202

Racism, Ethnicity, and the Unraveling of the HPPA

205

Conclusion

211

Chapter 6: “All Negroes Were Black”: Anti-Improvement and the Expanding Web of Segregation

215

NIAs, Real Estate Businessmen, and the History of Segregation

221

African American and Interracial Grassroots Improvement

226

“Undesirables” and the Discourse of Anti-Improvement

232

Poor Housing, Vice, and African American Anti-Improvement

235

A “Fantasy of Blackness” and the Expanding Web of Segregation

238

Conclusion

250

Conclusion

253

Endnotes

263

Selected Bibliography

345

Index

379