Gilded Age - Urban Life

Urban Life

Society itself underwent significant changes in the period following the Civil War, most notably the rapid urbanization of the North. As a result of increasing demand for unskilled and skilled workers, most European immigrants went to mill towns and, especially, industrial cities. New York, Philadelphia and especially Chicago saw rapid growth. Louis Sullivan became a noted architect using steel frames to construct skyscrapers for the first time while pioneering the idea of "form follows function". Chicago became the center of the skyscaper craze, starting with the ten-story Home Insurance Building in 1884–1885 by William Le Baron Jenney.

Expansion required a better transportation system than horse-drawn street cars. Electric trolleys and street railways were the rage in the 1880s, followed by elevated railways and subways in the largest cities. Most factory workers, however, lived in nearby tenements and walked to work. As immigration increased in cities, poverty rose as well. The poorest crowded into low-cost housing such as the Five Points and Hell’s Kitchen neighborhoods in Manhattan. These areas were quickly overridden with notorious criminal gangs such as the Five Points Gang and the Bowery Boys.