University of Virginia Library

29. CHAPTER XXIX.
ON CITIES.

In this connection and chapter, and moved by certain
things recorded in the two previous chapters, the author is
induced to break through the proprieties of historical narrative,
and, after a hortatory sort, to submit a few observations
on cities and large towns. Discoveries are being
pushed, and revelations made, in the principal cities of the
civilized world, that, like the old tragedies, awaken terror
and pity; and while sensibility is shocked, philanthropy is
puzzled. What shall be done with the intemperance, licentiousness,
beggary, disease, theft, that abound? Police-courts,
benevolent societies, houses of refuge, foundling hospitals,
are instituted; the pulpit and the press unite in the
work of reformation. But as it is said the Ocean drives
back the waters of the Amazon, so this evil deluges and
prostrates the attempt to remove it. What is the cause of
the preponderating and disproportionate vice of our cities?
Why is there nearly ten-fold more crime and misery, in a
given city population, than in the same country population?
The answer is contained in one word, — Density — that the
people are too crowded. You create a city; you multiply its
facilities, you open inlets to it from all the region round
about; you boast of its growth, and all at once, like King
Edward, before-mentioned, you see a thousand little devils
jumping about your wealth and your increase. Then you
begin to cry out for sorrow. This density originates the
Wynds and Closes of Edinburgh; it gives to London its St.
Giles; it develops itself in the Faubourgs of Paris; it turns

to Ann-street and Half Moon-place, in Boston, and the Five
Points and Park Row, in New York. Out of it come what
are named dens of infamy, haunts of iniquity. Density, —
high houses and narrow streets blocked together, inlaid most
mosaically with each other, — we designate as the root of the
difficulty. From this spring stem and branches, or secondary
and tertiary calamities. First comes a want of ventilation,
and bad air; — this generates every species of moral and
physical distemperature. Next appears filth, and this turns
into a hot-bed of sorrows. This density of the city, like
night, which it too truly represents, is a covert for vice. In
it the lewd and the rascally nestle; to it, from all parts of
the country, the criminal and the vicious flee for shelter.
To over-people a given spot has the same effect as to overload
the stomach, — there must be pain and disorder. Why
should God's children, and Christ's little children, live in
garrets and cellars? It was one of the Divine promises to
Jerusalem, that the streets of the city should be full of boys
and girls playing in the streets thereof! How could this be
fulfilled in any of our modern cities? Willis reproaches
the New Yorkers, that they are not willing to live more
than one layer deep. It was a dispute of the Schools, how
many angels could dance on the point of a cambric needle,
and not fall off. Will the Home Journal — Home? — designed
to bless and beautify the homes of our people, —
will it tell us how many stories, or bodies deep, our people
can live, and be comfortable, virtuous and happy?

In the State of Maine, we have understood, some distance
up the Kennebec river, near the lumbering region, is a
place where it is commonly reported the Sabbath stops. So,
in New York, if we are correctly informed, during the hot
season, the Sabbath stops, and the people are obliged to go
to Hoboken, or Staten Island, or Brooklyn Heights, to find

it. If these layers go on increasing, how long before there
will be no Sabbath at all? Prithee, Mr. Willis, let the people
spread, that they may have a Sabbath, and worship, and
enjoyment, and breath, in their own city, of a Sunday.

In Rome, says Beckman, “for want of room on the earth,
the buildings were extended towards the heavens. In Hamburg,
the greater part of our houses are little less than sixty
feet high.” He adds that it is difficult to extinguish fires in
these high-housed regions. Are such things a model, even
with Palladio to back them up?

Cities, according to Mr. Alison, may have been the cradles
of ancient liberty; they may have contributed, according
to M. Say, to the overthrow of Feudalism; let it
be, in the language of a writer before me, that “the spirit
of independence was awakened in the streets of Boston,
while it slumbered on the banks of the Connecticut;” yet
if, under the guiding genius of convenience and parsimony,
we suffer them to go on crowding, — if like Jeshurun they
only wax fat and grow thick, — like him, they will behave
very unseemly.

But of the past we can only speak remedially, while of
the present and the future we can speak more radically and
decisively. A certain tendency, not only to city charters
but to city actuality, prevails in the nation. Villages are
changing to towns, and towns swell to cities. What would
we have done? As the cardinal error of cities is Density,
we would redeem them by Openness. Exterior walls are
gone out of use, for the reason perhaps that the walls are all
on the inside; as is related of the Irish, there are no old
rags or cast-off hats seen in the windows of their houses, because
they are exhausted on the bodies of the people. We
would make a clean breach through these walls; or, rather,
as we are speaking prospectively, we would not suffer such

walls to exist. No street should be less than four rods in
width; no lane, or court, less than three. Dwelling-houses
should be blocked together in not more than twos. — Why,
alas! deem the “corner-lot” the most eligible, when every
house might look two ways? Why should “twenty-seven
feet front” mark the aristocracy? Why the middle one of
each suite of rooms dark and dungeon-like? — Churches
should be the most conspicuous buildings, and stand in lots
of not less than ten rods square. Every school-house should
have twenty-five square rods. Every dwelling-house should
be removed two rods from the street, and not more than two
families be permitted to reside under the same roof, and
within the same walls. There should be central, or contiguous,
reserves of land, of twenty or fifty acres each, for
public parks and promenades. There should be trees in
every street, without exception, — trees about the Markets,
trees in front of the shops, and on the docks, and shading
the manufactories. “A city,” says St. Pierre, “were it
even of marble, would appear dismal to me, if I saw in it
no trees and verdure.” The glory of Lebanon, the cedar,
came unto God's ancient city, the fir-tree, the pine, and the
box together, to beautify the place of his sanctuary. So
much for Openness. And this is what God gave us when
he lifted the sky so high above our heads, and extended the
earth so broadly at our feet, and made such a breathing-place
for his children to inhabit. This would “countrify”
the city, and that is what we desire. Mr. Downing, in a
recent Horticulturist, proposes a plan for the more specific
distribution of houses and streets, which combines much
taste, neatness, and utility.

What is requisite for this? Land, — and, primarily, this
is all. Our cities need not be less populous, but only more
dispersed. And have we not land enough? Look at our

towns everywhere that are growing into cities, bunching
together their houses, pinching their streets, stuffing skinny
apartments with men, women and children, as Bologna-meat;
mowing away, as in a hay-barn, family upon family;
digging cellars where the poor must hutch and burrow; cutting
down trees, stifling the green-sward, — and have they
not land enough? The fault is not wholly or primarily
with real estate owners. It lies in the people generally.
Every man is over-anxious to be near his business; so, in
advertisements of rents, “within five minutes' walk” of Wall-street,
or State-street, or the rail-road station, has become a
leading recommendation. Our merchants and mechanics
will not reside more than “five minutes” from their business;
and in this circle of “five minutes,” as a Maelstrom,
they draw their homes, their wives and children, their
peace and purity, — and within it, or very near it, must live
the Minister and the Doctor, the drayman and the porter,
the baker and the washerwoman. This is Socialism with a
witness.

Our wishes in this matter are not unreasonable or singular.
“The numerous instances,” says Dr. Emerson, of
Philadelphia, “wherein the mercenary character of individals
has tempted them to put up nests of contracted tenements
in courts and alleys, admitting but little air, and yet
subject to the full influence of heat, has often induced us to
wish there could be some public regulation whereby the evil
could be checked.” “Some provision of law should be
made,” say the Health Commissioners of Boston, “by which
the number of tenants should be apportioned to the size
and general arrangements of a house.”

“The number of cellars,” they add, “used as dwelling-houses,
is 586, and each occupied by from five to fifteen
souls.” There should be statute law against such things.

Very forcibly do this Committee remind us that “the whole
subject of streets, and ways, in respect to width, ventilation,
grade, and drainage, is one of very great and increasing
importance.” [See Report of the Cholera in Boston, in
1849.]

To our towns and villages as they are, — pretty, thriving,
hopeful, — let us say a word. Preserve, so far as possible,
the old homesteads; do not abandon fruitful gardens, and
venerable trees, and time-honored abodes, to shops and
tenements. There is land enough. Keep the burial-places
intact; embellish them, — beautify that sanctuary. Do not
allow petty speculators in lands to lay out your ways and
define your lots for you.[1] If strangers are coming to
reside amongst you, encourage them to settle a little further
back, where it will be for your interest to open new streets
and offer convenient grounds. All around you are millions
of forest trees, the most beautiful God has made; — the
elm, unequalled for its majesty; the pine, so glorious in
winter, so musical and balmy in summer; the maple, sweet,
clean, thrifty; the white birch, that lady of the woods; the
fir, whose dense foliage and spiral uniformity mingle so
well with the luxuriant freedom of the others; the walnut,
with its deep green and glossy umbrage. There are tupelos,
hornbeams, beeches, larches, cedars, spruces, all waiting to
be transplanted to your villages, yearning to expand in your
streets, and throw their refreshment and their loveliness
over your grounds and houses, over your old men and children,
your young men and maidens.

We do not say that Openness or trees will save the city
or the town; we do say that with such things, those rendezvous

and nests of sin and shame, filth and wretchedness,
— those pests of every sense, which torture sympathy and
exhaust munificence, which tax our religion and morality,
our learning and wisdom, to provide some mitigation of, —
will be rendered impossible.

Says the author of that admirable book, The Studies of
Nature, “I love Paris. Next to the country, and a country
to my fancy, I prefer Paris to every place I have seen in
the world. I love that city for its happy situation; I love
it because all the conveniences of life are assembled there,
— because it is the centre of all the powers of the kingdom,
and for the other reasons which gained it the attachment of
Michel Montaigne.” In like manner, and for the same
cause, as a New Englander, I say, I love Boston; and, as an
American, I love New York. Yet I cannot go to the extent
of the good man before me, who adds, “I should wish
there were not another city in France, — that our provinces
were covered only with hamlets and villages.” I could wish
there might be many cities in New England, and in America
— each, in its way, beautiful for situation, and the glory
of the earth around it.