Streetcar Suburbs - Railroad Suburbs

Railroad Suburbs

By 1830, many New York City area commuters were going to work in Manhattan from what is now the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, which were not part of New York City at that time. They commuted by ferries. In 1852, architect Alexander Jackson Davis designed Llewellyn Park in New Jersey, a planned suburb served by both ferry and steam railroad. In the 1840s and 1850s, the steam locomotive fostered the development of such New York City suburbs as Tarrytown and New Rochelle. The steam locomotive in the mid 19th century provided the wealthy with the means to live in bucolic surroundings, to socialize in country clubs and still commute to work downtown. These suburbs were what historian Kenneth T. Jackson called the "railroad suburbs" and historian Robert Fishman called a "bourgeois utopia".

Outside of Philadelphia, suburbs like Radnor, Swarthmore, and Villanova developed along the Pennsylvania Main Line. As early as 1850, 83 commuter stations had been built within a 15-mile radius of Boston. Chicago saw huge developments, with 11 separate lines serving over 100 communities by 1873. A famous community served was Riverside, Illinois, arguably one of the first planned communities in the United States, designed in 1869 by Frederick Law Olmsted.