City Water, City Life: Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago

by Carl Smith

A city is more than a massing of citizens, a layout of buildings and streets, or an arrangement of political, economic, and social institutions. It is also an infrastructure of ideas that are a support for the beliefs, values, and aspirations of the people who created the city. In City Water, City Life , celebrated historian Carl Smith explores this concept through an insightful examination of the development of the first successful waterworks systems in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago between the 1790s and the 1860s. By examining the place of water in the nineteenth-century consciousness, Smith illuminates how city dwellers perceived themselves during the great age of American urbanization. But City Water, City Life is more than a history of urbanization. It is also a refreshing meditation on water as a necessity, as a resource for commerce and industry, and as an essential—and central—part of how we define our civilization.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Urbanism

339 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Haley Afable]

mind numbingly boring but probably the shit for the freaks that love water history

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting history, and even though so much has changed in how these cities perceive their water sources and waterworks, it provides insights that help with understanding the structures of those systems today. Some of the most interesting parts for me, as an advocate for clean, safe, and affordable water more than a century after the period covered in this history:
- The relationship between building waterworks and taking on municipal debt. These systems were always extremely expensive and were built on the idea of recuperating costs through payments by users and these projects were some of the first to be funded through municipal bonds.
- Relatedly, that despite the general understanding of the importance of water access for healthy communities, this was always conceived of as a service paid for by individuals rather than a service provided by the city and paid for through revenue streams that accounted for the ability of users to pay and provided for equal access for all residents.
- The more general points about conceptions of nature as being in service to the industrious engineers, waiting to be exploited for the benefit of humanity. This point has been made in other histories of this period, but it was done well here as well.
- Same for the discussion of how proponents for water works reinforced the rhetoric of city and urbanist boosters who were looking to expand growth for their cities.

[Zoey MullerHinnant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, however keeps talking about the same topics over and over. In my opinion could have been half as long. I also wish it had gone more into urban and technical advancements and less about politics and government intervention, but that’s what I get for not looking into it more before committing.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating exploration of the physical and ideal infrastructure we so rarely think about, how we have distorted and taken for granted water as if it is endlessly flowing...

Didn't finish but studied in class. Sent to my grandfather to read, who retired from waterworks years ago.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite useful. Well structured. And I like how it is is multidisciplinary, weaving together history, poetry, art.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

The work explored how Americans mediated on water in the formative years of industrialization. Smith looked at Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, which all cities operated as rivals to New York City, with Philadelphia being surpassed as the nation’s center, Boston being relegated to a regional hub, and Chicago rapidly rising through the 19th century. In each case, he traced the development of their water system. He notes explicitly that it is not a ecological history or a history of infrastructure, but he is more interested in looking at how control over water shifted perceptions of cities. He asks 1) How did people understand citizenship in unprecedented times of growth, as disease and fire threatened all and caused municipal government to expand and raise revenue to support that expansion? 2) How did Urban America conceptualize the cityscape and nature that it replaced? 3) How did citizens connect their personal well-being to the city’s well-being, especially as the wealthy viewed the poor as bodies needing sanitation? 4) How did citizens see city life in the flow of the future, as access to clean water became to be seen as a civic duty?
Philadelphia’s water system came was built in spurts that used steam and later pump turbine technology from around 1790-1820, mainly in response to two immense breakouts of cholera in the 1790s, and extracted water from the Schuylkill River. Boston’s water works were built as a response to a fire in 1825, and that relatively late start enabled the city to have the latest in hydrolic technology to draw water from the Long Pond ten miles away. It took nearly twenty years before ground was broken. Finally, Chicago took water and dumped waste into Lake Michigan, which originally had a private water works company that provided polluted water with fish swimming in the pipes in the 1830s as the city rapidly grew, but the first public water works opened in 1851.
In all three cities, the debate was about whether to have the water works be public or privately run. In each case, it was an issue of civic pride for the works to be publically run, with plenty and wasteful free or cheap water for all. Philadelphia, whether the government in the late 18th/early 19th century was basically committees of merchants, it was early on decided that water was too important to be trusted to a private entity. Debates over water rates, artistic waterwork design, and public celebrations of the opening of water were used as an expression of overcoming, disciplining, and dominating nature, to the point it became a mechanical function of the city, unseen and expected. The control of water was pushed by three movements in the 19th century: 1) The sanitary movement, where it was necessary to wash bodies and places on a regular basis. 2) The temperance crusade, which water was touted as the perfect drink, as opposed to alcohol. 3) The water cure practitioners, whom say water as the cure for all ailments. Surprisingly, there is little mention of New York City, despite being the largest city in the United States for the entirety of the 19th century and beyond.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling comparative history of the development of Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago's water systems.