Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T17:05:00.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Walkers in the Street: American Writers and the Modern City

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Michael Cowan
Get access

Extract

Walking in the city is as old as cities themselves. Most of the world's urban inhabitants have usually gotten around on foot and, consequently, have mainly experienced their cities as pedestrians. What Constantinos Doxiadis notes of classical Greek cities has been true of most urban life until well into the industrial era: “Man was compelled to walk through a whole complex of buildings and live within them in order to achieve his end.” This end has traditionally included not merely physical mobility but also social and cultural goals; as one urban historian recently observed, traditional streets “tend to act both literally and metaphorically as exterior rooms in the city. They function as places as well as links.” The street is, as sociologist Robert Gutman suggests, “a social, a political, and a psychological fact. … No matter what the image of the street, it has always included a set of assumptions about who should own and control it, who would live on it and use it, the purposes for which it was built, and the activities appropriate to it.” Walking in the city has thus been from the start a complex human act, no less so in American cities than elsewhere.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 6 , October 1981 , pp. 281 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

NOTES

1. Quoted in Wedgwood, Roland, “Doxiadis' Contribution to the Pedestrian View of the City,” in Lewis, David, ed., The Pedestrian in the City (Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1966), p. 291.Google Scholar

2. Ellis, William C., “The Spatial Structure of Streets,” in Anderson, Stanford, ed., On Streets (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978), p. 117Google Scholar. This important collection of essays also contains an excellent bibliography on streets, street life, and pedestrian-planning issues, pp. 385–99.

3. Gutman, Robert, “The Street Generation,”Google Scholar in Anderson, , On Streets, p. 249.Google Scholar

4. Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809)Google Scholar, Book 3, Chap. 6, and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Labaree, Leonard W. et al. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964), esp. pp. 75–76, 126.Google Scholar

5. Gutman, , “The Street Generation,” p. 251.Google Scholar

6. Kouwenhoven, John A., The Columbia Historical Portrait of New York: An Essay in Graphic History (New York: Doubleday, 1953)Google Scholar, offers stimulating observations on ways in which technological innovation has affected perspectives on the burgeoning city; see esp. pp. 188–94, 239–41, 248–59, 351, 359–61, and 381–87.

7. Breines, Simon and Dean, William J., The Pedestrian Revolution: Streets Without Cars (New York: Random House, 1975)Google Scholar: Rudofsky, Bernard, Streets for People: A Primer for Americans (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969)Google Scholar; Bramilla, Roberto and Longo, Dianni, For Pedestrians Only: Planning, Design, and Management of Traffic-Free Zones (New York: Watson-Guptill, 1977)Google Scholar. See p. 6 of this last book for the call for a “Declaration of Rights for Pedestrians.” Other examples of recent planning interest in the pedestrian include Pushkarev, Boris S., Urban Spaces for Pedestrians: A Report of the Regional Plan Association (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Halprin, Lawrence, Cities (New York: Reinhold, 1963)Google Scholar; and Specter, David Kenneth, Urban Spaces (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1974).Google Scholar

8. Whitman, Walt, “A Broadway Pageant,” in Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition, ed. Blodgett, Harold W. and Bradley, Sculley (New York: New York University Press, 1965), p. 243Google Scholar (I. 16), and Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961), pp. 50–54.Google Scholar

9. Thoreau, Henry David, “Walking,” in Excursions and Poems (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906), pp. 209, 216–17Google Scholar. The same volume also includes “A Walk to Wachusett” and “A Winter Walk.”

10. Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, ed. Shanley, J. Lyndon (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), esp. pp. 115–22.Google Scholar

11. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, “The Celestial Railroad,” in Mosses from an Old Manse, ed. Bowers, Fredson et al. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974), pp. 186–206Google Scholar. For indications that Hawthorne's and Thoreau's responses were more widely shared, see Trent, George D., ed., The Gentle Art of Walking (New York: Random House. 1971), passim.Google Scholar

12. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The House of the Seven Gables, ed. Bowers, Fredson et al. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1965), pp. 159–66.Google Scholar

13. Melville, Herman, Moby-DickGoogle Scholar, Chap. 1, and idem, Pierre, Book 26, Chap. 5.

14. Poe, Edgar Allan, “The Man of the Crowd,” in Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), 506–15.Google Scholar

15. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Our Old Home: A Series of English Sketches, ed. Bowers, Fredson et al. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1970), p. 215. Italics added by me.Google Scholar

16. Cooper, James Fenimore, A Residence in France: with an Excursion Up the Rhine, and a Second Visit to Switzerland, Vol. 1 (London: Richard Bentley, 1836), 210.Google Scholar

17. The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), p. 499.Google Scholar

18. Ellison, Ralph, Invisible Man (New York: Random House, 1952), p. 118.Google Scholar

19. For a fuller discussion of Emerson's meditations on the relationship of rapid transportation and urban experience and of his exploration of the possibilities for a creative “overview” of modern urban life, see Cowan, Michael, City of the West: Emerson, America, and Urban Metaphor (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1967), esp. pp. 47–52 and 201–7.Google Scholar

20. Although this essay resists exploring the fascinating impact that advanced electronic media such as television and motion pictures have had on our experience of the modern city, we might only note the ability of such media to manipulate urban spaces by juxtaposing a wide range of objects and scenes in a quick sequence of frames.

21. Cooper, James Fenimore, Excursions in Italy (London: Richard Bentley, 1838), 79–80.Google Scholar

22. Melville, Herman, Redburn: His First Voyage, ed. Hayford, Harrison et al. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1969), p. 227.Google Scholar

23. Howells, William Dean, A Hazard of New Fortunes, ed. Cook, Don L. et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976), p. 40.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., p. 76.

25. Ibid., p. 77.

26. Ibid., p. 183.

27. Ibid., pp. 183–84.

28. Ibid., p. 305.

29. Ibid., p. 422.

30. West, Nathanael, The Day of the Locust (1939; reprint, New York: New Directions, 1950), pp. 97–100.Google Scholar

31. Ibid., p. 31.

32. Ibid., pp. 165–66.

33. Ibid., p. 167.

34. Fuller, Henry Blake, The Cliff-Dwelters (1893; reprint, Ridgewood, N.J.: Gregg Press, 1968), pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

35. Norris, Frank, The Octopus: A Story of California (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1901), pp. 288–89.Google Scholar

36. Donnelly, Ignatius, Caesar's Column (1890; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 8–9, 290.Google Scholar

37. Sartre, in an essay on “American Cities,” showed a similar understanding of both the necessity and the availability of a new perspective on the modern metropolis when he noted that, “in order to learn to live in these cities and like them as Americans do,” he had to fly over them and view them in the context of the vast American landscape in which they were set. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Literary and Philosophical Essays, trans. Michelson, Annette (1955; reprint, New York: Collier, 1962), p. 114.Google Scholar

38. Mailer, Norman, The Presidential Papers (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1963), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar

39. Mailer, Norman, Cannibals and Christians (New York: Dial Press, 1966), p. 237.Google Scholar

40. Mailer, Norman, An American Dream (New York: Dial Press, 1965), p. 258.Google Scholar

41. Melville, Herman, “I and My Chimney,” in The Complete Short Stories of Herman Melville, ed. Leyda, Jay (New York: Random House, 1949), pp. 375–76.Google Scholar

42. Mailer, Norman, The Deer Park (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1955), pp. 45–46.Google Scholar

43. Vonnegut, Kurt Jr., Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade (New York: Delacorte Press, 1969), p. 159.Google Scholar

44. Trachtenburg, Alan, “The American Scene: Versions of the City,” Massachusetts Review, 8 (Spring 1967), 281–95.Google Scholar

45. James, Henry, The American Scene (1907; reprint, New York: Horizon Press, 1967), p. 74.Google Scholar

46. Ibid., p. 92.

47. Ibid., p. 83.

48. Ibid., pp. 186–87.

49. Ibid., p. 107.

50. Ibid., pp. 182, 197.

51. Petry, Ann, The Street (1946; reprint. New York: Pyramid, 1961), p. 119.Google Scholar

52. Ibid., p. 7.

53. Riis, Jacob A., How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (1890; reprint. New York: Hill & Wang, 1957), pp. 22–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54. Crane, Stephen, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, in Bowers, Fredson, ed., Bowery Tales (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1969), pp. 68–70.Google Scholar

55. Brown, Claude, Manchild in the Promised Land (New York: Macmillan, 1965)Google Scholar, and Thomas, Piri, Down These Mean Streets (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967).Google Scholar

56. Petry, , The Streets, p. 157.Google Scholar

57. Kazin, Alfred, A Walker in the City (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 108–9.Google Scholar

58. Ibid., p. 104.

59. Brown, , Manchild in the Promised Land, pp. 251–52.Google Scholar

60. Ibid., p. 412.

61. Lowry, E. D., “The Lively Art of Manhattan Transfer” PMLA, 84 (10 1969), 1628–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62. Passos, John Dos, Manhattan Transfer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925), pp. 154, 252.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., pp. 136–37.

64. Ibid., p. 399.

65. Ibid., p. 400.

66. Ibid., p. 83.

67. Ibid., pp. 84, 71.

68. Ibid., pp. 112–13.

69. Ibid., pp. 118–21.

70. Ibid., pp. 235–36.

71. Ibid., p. 246.

72. Ibid., p. 404.

73. Ellison, , Invisible Man (note 18 above), p. 335.Google Scholar

74. Ibid., pp. 198–202.

75. Ibid., pp. 319–20.

76. Ibid., p. 325.

77. Ibid., p. 330.

78. Ibid., pp. 332–33.

79. Ibid., p. 335.

80. Ibid., pp. 343–46.

81. Ibid., p. 403.

82. Ibid., p. 420.

83. Ibid., p. 7.

84. Ibid., p. 435.

85. Ibid., p. 431.

86. Salinger, J. D., The Catcher in the Rye (Boston: Little, Brown, 1951), p. 81.Google Scholar

87. Miller, Henry, Tropic of Capricorn (1939; reprint, New York: Grove Press, 1961), p. 227.Google Scholar