Shantytowns in the United States, 1820-1890

Shantytowns in the United States, 1820-1890

From the author: "This dissertation adds a missing piece to the history of the American working class by documenting an overlooked category of low-income housing and the ways in which these self-reliant communities were assigned cultural meanings at odds with their physical form. Using sources that range from photographs and oil paintings to novels and sheet music, the dissertation traces the shanty house type from frontier homesteads to urban shantytowns in turn-of-the-century New York and Brooklyn. It also examines their evolving cultural construction. Presented as domestic by their working-poor builders, shantytowns were nonetheless perceived as degraded by middle-class observers. This had public policy consequences, as shantytowns were razed and outlawed during the last decades of the nineteenth century."

Goff, Lisa

2010-05-00

en

Thesis/Dissertation

1820-1890; United States

323

Charlottesville, Virginia

Ph. D., History

University of Virginia

Shantytowns... @ University of Virginia

Shantytowns... @ Google Books