Taming Manhattan Research Papers

Taming Manhattan is about the economic, physical and social changes that urbanized Manhattan from country side and farmland, during the antebellum era, to the city it has become today. It was not the New York City we think about today, “With the municipal government struggling to keep up with the growing city, the streets were left in disarray…” (7) There was manure from livestock such as pigs and cows, dogs roamed the streets freely and trash lined the streets. These were all very common views in Manhattan at the beginning of the 19th century. The government, or the “corporation”, as many New Yorkers called it tried to pass laws that would help clean up the city. They put a ban on loose dogs and pigs, but law enforcement did not enforce these
laws, therefore the attempts to clean up the city were unsuccessful. Manhattan was a filthy city where the residents and council members wanted it to be more refined but did not have the assertiveness to enforce the laws trying to clean up the city. City officials tried to help clean up the city by planting trees and build parks. At first, members of the city council saw the trees as a burden and not helpful. Trees rapidly started showing up around the city, creating a real estate boom. Trees had the ability to raise property values tremendously. These trees were maintained through private funds even though they were on public property. This led to trees being planted in wealthy neighborhoods. Someone walking down the street could tell when they were walking through a nicer neighborhood with the presence of trees. Cholera took the city by storm due to the close living conditions and terribly managed waste removal from the streets along with other factors. Cholera was caused by bacteria that was transmitted through contaminated water supplies. Since manure was collected and kept at nearby docks it was for cholera to spread into the water supplies. About half of everyone infected with cholera died shortly after showing symptoms. (109) Wealthier classes of New York bought and imported water from other places in the area, causing most affected by the outbreak to be the poorest classes, since they still used pump water. Cholera would eventually make a comeback over fifteen years after the first outbreak in 1832. The poor and the wealthy struggled over the urbanization of Manhattan.
When the lawmakers proposed a law that would establish a tax collection for dog licenses the wealthy wrote letters while the poor would block dog catchers. The government tried to regulate the manure business at one point also. “The average horse left behind thirty-five to forty pounds of manure each day” (101), most of which ended up in the streets. Horses were what made the city run during this era. Manure was collected and recycled into fertilizer, then it was sold back to farmers outside the city in return for hay and grain to feed the livestock in the city. New York city earned $19,033.45 in one year from its street scrapings. This accounted for seventy-five percent of what they made from street scrapings. Cleaning up the streets became a battle of between private contractors, with the lowest bidder usually winning. New York’s rapidly rising population made the disposal of food an enormous task. The waste was burned and not put in landfills like it would be later on. Therefore, this led to the rise of small shantytowns on the edge of the city. These little towns were mainly made up of the poorest of the poor just trying to scrape by. Due to the sore view, and putrid smell coming from these towns the wealthy petitioned and eventually shut down these towns where waste was stored and processed. The result was worse, waste was dumped into the Hudson river, which created a layer of litter and trash around
Manhattan. When you think of Manhattan today, you probably think of Broadway and the epic symbol of arts and culture that is Manhattan. You probably would not guess that it used to have dogs roaming freely, livestock and manure lining the streets. From 1815 to 1865 so much had to be done to clean up the streets and many battles over the urbanization had to be won, that turned Manhattan into the mecca for arts that it is today.