The Industrial Revolution and the Emergence of Boston's Central Business District

Clark University

The Industrial Revolution and the Emergence of Boston's Central Business DistrictAuthor(s): David WardSource: Economic Geography, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Apr., 1966), pp. 152-171Published by: Clark UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/141915 .

Accessed: 09/05/2014 10:25

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Clark University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic Geography.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.138 on Fri, 9 May 2014 10:25:01 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=clark

http://www.jstor.org/stable/141915?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE EMERGENCE OF BOSTON'S CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT

David Ward

Dr. Ward is assistant professor of geography at the University of British Columbia.

Gd EOGRAPHICAL contribu- tions to the analysis of the central business districts of

North American cities have tended to focus upon either their extent and internal structure or their relationships to the commercial structure of cities as a whole.1 These investigations have enlarged our conceptions of the contemporary spatial organization of the urban economy. To the historical geographer, however, the internal complexity of the central business district presents rather a different analytical challenge. M\/Jany of the functions performed within the contemporary central business district emerged during the course of the nineteenth century when those technical and organizational changes associated with the industrial revolution transformed the dimensions and complexity of all parts of western cities.2 To be sure, the central business district has experienced many changes over the past fifty

1 Cf. Raymond E. Murphy: Central Business District Research, in Knut Norborg, Edit.: Proceedings of the IGU Symposium in Urban Geography, Lund, 1960 (Lund, Sweden, 1962), pp. 473-483.

2 The term "industrial revolution" encom- passes a wide range of social and economic changes and rightly belongs to the realm of historiography. In this paper it is used as a vehicle to express those technical and organizational changes which directly affected the pattern of accelerated urban growth between about 1840 and 1920.

years, but, nevertheless, those original conditions which sustained the rapid expansion and differentiation of business activities during the nineteenth century may well cast some additional light upon inherited locational factors as distinct from those factors which are related to the contemporary functional organization of the city.3

This paper proposes to explore the effects of the industrial revolution upon the dimensions and complexity of Bos- ton's central business district. The large seaports of the northeastern coast of the United States which form the nuclei of contemporary Megalopolis exhibit a complete record of those distributional changes which occurred within large cities during a period of rapid industriali- zation and heavy immigration.4 Inland American cities, however, according to their position with respect to the sinuous and often discrete form of the westward moving frontier of settlement, were con- ceived at progressively later dates. Consequently, the impact of the industrial revolution upon the internal spatial structure of these more youthful cities was not only compressed into a shorter

I Cf. James E. Vance, Jr.: Emerging Patterns of Commercial Structure in American Cities, in Norborg, op. cit., pp. 485-518.

4Jean Gottmann: Megalopolis, The Urban- ized Eastern Seaboard of the United States (New York, 1961).



THE EMERGENCE OF BOSTON'S CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT 153

period of time but was also profoundly affected by the precedents established and experience gained in eastern cities. Thus, although the development of the central business district has varied according to the circumstances and chronology of regional economic growth, Boston and the other large northeastern seaports provide us with examples of the contemporaneous relationships between the industrial revolution and the early development of the central business district.

THE ORIGINAL NUCLEUS OF

SPECIALIZED COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY

During the medieval period European towns had established street markets along the line of major thoroughfares, and, in the succeeding centuries, these facilities for local and regional trade had been improved and enlarged by the construction of market halls. Many colonial American towns followed these European precedents, and, in Boston, Faneuil Hall was built near to the original waterfront for the purposes of local commerce as well as for its more publicized function as a public meeting place (Fig. 1)A. Although the market was enlarged in 1805, it still proved to be inadequate to cater to Boston's expand- ing commercial needs, and, in order to avoid congestion in the central parts of the town, unsatisfactory open markets were established on the edge of the town. Only in 1828 were the central marketing facilities enlarged and made more accessible by the construction of the new Quincy 1/Iarket House and two flanking warehouses on land reclaimed by the infilling of several obsolete docks and the demolition of the adjacent disorderly buildings (Fig. 1).6

These facilities, however, served only the needs of local commerce in provisions

5 Walter M. Whitehill: A Topographical History of Boston (Cambridge, 1959), p. 42.

and consumer supplies. Port towns also cater to the needs of foreign commerce, and, as the volume of foreign trade and the size of vessels increased, wharves and warehouses were enlarged and improved. Throughout the colonial period the Long Wharf into the Town Cove (Fig. 1) had fulfilled the needs of foreign commerce, but during the Napoleonic Wars the neutral American trading activities with the belligerent nations greatly increased the volume of Boston's foreign commerce.7 In the three years before 1807, when Jefferson placed a prohibitive embargo on neutral trade, Boston's colonial waterfront was sub- stantially enlarged by the activities of the Broad Street Improvement Com- pany. To the south of the Long Wharf several small wharves and dilapidated buildings were demolished and replaced by Broad Street, a wide thoroughfare parallel to the waterfront and housing new brick warehouses. At the same time the new India Wharf was constructed into the harbor from Broad Street to serve, as its name suggests, the needs of a growing segment of the town's foreign commerce (Fig. 1).8 With the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars Boston's foreign trade, after an uncertain start, resumed its vigorous growth and, by 1838, another large wharf had been constructed in the vicinity of the Broad Street improvements. This new Central Wharf was lined with two four-story warehouses with accommodation for 54 stores (Fig. 1).'

6 Ibid, p. 95; Edward Stanwood: Topography and Landmarks of the Last Hundred Years, in Justin Winsor, Edit.: A Memorial History of Boston, Volume IV (Boston, 1881), pp. 25-65; and Boston City Document No. 91: Report of the Special Commission giving the History of Public Markets in Boston (Boston, 1870), pp. 12-14.

7 Samuel E. Morison: The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860 (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 160-212.

8 Whitehill, op. cit., p. 85. 1 Ibid., p. 86.



1 54 ECONTomic GEOGRAPHY

e N w T H~~~~~NOT EN

B

{EACON

HILL

u t- _ t ~~STATE FANEUIL~w

BOSTON \9

BACK SAY //\ \

/ / ~SOUTH END \

,f j_ 8osro ; FORT HILLJ NCV

l~ vSaCAAV~R

MWAC OW COIVE |r

/ i ffi l l t S ~~~~~~~~~~~FLLED AREAS

/ S F ^ | / ~~~~~~~~~~~MILE

FIG. 1. Commercial facilities in mid-nineteenth century Boston (generalized from the Boynton Map of 1844 and the Colton Map of 1855).

Thus, even as late as 1840, after several decades of sustained commercial expansion, most of Boston's warehouses lined that small section of the waterfront which was equipped with large wharves to the south of State Street

and the Long Wharf while local trade was conducted in the newly enlarged market facilities and numerous small wharves to the north of State Street (Fig. 1). Apart from the waterfront and market hall facilities, most merchants




conducted their business at their place of residence while the differentiation of commercial activities into specialized distributional, merchandising, and financing segments was extremely limited. Handicraft industries demonstrated a much greater tendency to concentrate on particular streets within the town, but specialized manufacturing as well as specialized commercial activities occupied only small sections of the town in the early nineteenth century. Most buildings and most districts were multi- functional. ?

THE DEVELOPMENT OF RAILROAD TERMINAL FACILITIES

Although the waterfront warehouses and the market halls represented the only concentrations of specialized commercial premises within the town in 1840, the construction of no less than eight independent railroads from Boston into the surrounding country between 1835 and 1855 (Fig. 2) provided a new incentive for the expansion of specialized commercial facilities. At first, however, passenger traffic far exceeded that of freight while until after the Civil War, the volume of maritime commerce remained much greater than that of the railroads.11 Moreover, owing to the considerable amount of building on the peninsular site of Boston, the railroad companies experienced great difficulties in obtaining terminal locations near to the existing centers of commercial activity on the waterfront or indeed sites which would have enabled the railroads to provide their own waterfront facilities."2 In order to establish flat, spacious terminal sites near to the contemporary

10 Cf. Carl Bridenbaugh: Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in North America: 1743-1776 (New York, 1955), pp. 250-291.

11 Edward C. Kirkland: Men, Cities and Transportation: A Study in New England History (Cambridge, 1948), p. 174; and Anony- mous: Boston's Railways: Their Condition and Prospects (Boston, 1856), pp. 66-68.

built-up area almost all the railroads into Boston constructed their facilities on filled land reclaimed from the flats and coves adjacent to the peninsula (Figs. 1 and 2).

Four major railroad terminals were established on the site of the former M\'J ill Pond which was situated on the northwest section of the peninsula and which had long since ceased to perform its original function as a source of power. Although an attempt had been made to fill the Mlill Pond with material derived from Beacon Hill in the early nineteenth century, the completion of this process required the capital resources and locational priorities of the railroad companies."3 The Mill Pond provided a location on the peninsular nucleus of Boston but at some considerable distance from the existing commercial activities on the waterfront, and no efforts were made to provide related waterfront facilities near to the new terminals. Of the railroads which entered the town from the south and southwest, the Boston and Providence Company was satisfied with an isolated terminal on the edge of the Back Bay, well removed from the waterfront (Fig. 2), but the Boston and Worcester Company brought its line from the Back Bay across the neck of the peninsula to the South Cove, where it arranged for the filling of 55 acres of flats for terminal and real estate developments (Fig. 1). By 1855 two further railroads had established terminals in this vicinity (Fig. 1).

The original enterprise of the Boston and Worcester Company resulted in the construction of terminal facilities, a luxury hotel, an ocean wharf, and six miles of new streets before. the depression

12 These difficulties were by no means unique to Boston because of its peninsular setting. Cf. J. R. Kellett: Glasgow's Railways, 1830- 1880: A Study in " Natural Growth," Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd Series, 17, 1964, pp. 354-368.

1' Stanwood, op. cit., pp. 30-32.



156 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CHARLESTOWN / EAST BOSTON

FITCHBURG CAMBRIDGE BOSTO A 1845

LOWELL EASTERN 1835 EASTERN L P 1839

1854 BOSTON AND MAINE CUNARD

BEACON 1845W F1 I'/ \ HILL NUCLEUS OF

,H A) BUSINESS ACTIVITY

FORT ID BOSTON AND sour-H HILL

BSON AND COVE BOSTON AND NEW YORK

PROVIDENCE CENTR ENAL 1855 1835 BOSTON AND CNRL 15

WORCESTER OLD COLONY 1835 1845

BCK BAY

SOUTH

BAY SOUTH BOSTON

1/2 MILE

FIG. 2. Boston's railroads: routes and terminals c. 1855 (based on the Colton Map of 1855).

of 1837 curtailed the dimensions of the venture. The ocean wharf was envisaged as the terminus of a regular Liverpool steam packet service, while it was also hoped that the railroad to Worcester would form the first section of a direct railroad route to the then leading inland metropolis of St. Louis.14 The confident aspirations of the promoters of this effort to coordinate the new means of

14 Ibid., p. 33; and Whitehill, op. cit., pp. 103-105.

land and oceanic communication re- ceived an encouraging stimulus when, in 1842, the Western Railroad Company, which connected with the Boston and Worcester at the latter town, completed its track to the Hudson River near Albany. This direct through route to the Hudson gave Boston a most promising start in the contemporary efforts to provide a through railroad from the Atlantic coast into the old Northwest.15

15 Kirkland, op. cit., p. 137.




Within Boston, however, this speculative venture in the South Cove was separated from the existing nucleus of commercial activity by the residential districts of the South End and Fort Hill (Fig. 1), and, although the promoters may well have expected their new terminals to attract oceanic commerce, the facilities provided were quite inadequate in both depth and size for the new and larger steamships. Consequently, in the same year that Boston gained railroad access to the Hudson Valley, the Cunard Steamship Company designated Boston as its North American terminus but established its facilities in East Boston where there was deep water and abundant space for new wharves (Fig. 2).16 These new facilities were, however, not only on the opposite side of the town from the South Cove but also separated from the peninsular mainland of Boston by the Charles River. Since only the Eastern Railroad to Salem had its terminal at East Boston, all passengers and goods had to be ferried across to Boston proper (Fig. 2).

The distribution of the new terminal facilities in Boston was thus affected by the availability of land of suitable dimensions and characteristics rather than by the need for the most effective communication with the existing center of commercial activity. This primacy of factors of site over those of situation did, however, also indicate the confidence of both the railroad enterprises and the Cunard Company in the capacity of their new spacious facilities, notwithstanding their peripheral and widely separated locations, to attract and to stimulate new commercial activities in their vicinity. But, in the two decades before the Civil War, Boston's foreign commerce remained entrenched in the far-flung

16 \XWilliam H. Sumner: A History of East Boston with Biographical Sketches of Early Proprietors (Boston, 1858), pp. 619-627.

carrying trade and neither western nor trans-Atlantic commerce tempted the merchant community from their tradi- tional sources of trade. Moreover, Boston's merchants also neglected the marketing of the growing textile production of the port's immediate hinterland so that the fruits of Boston's capital increasingly tended to move in the direction of New York.18

In 1848 the Cunard Steamship Com- pany decided to re-establish its major North American terminus at New York, and Boston became merely a poorly served intermediate station. Later steamship companies followed the Cunard's precedent and, ironically, East Boston became one of the leading centers of clipper ship construction and outfitting.19 Similarly, enterprise in the provision of direct railroad contact with the West languished, and, in 1865, the West- ern Railroad extended precisely as far west as it had in 1842 when it reached the Hudson, while its traffic was actually declining.20 Under these circumstances, the new terminal facilities had at first an extremely limited effect upon the emergence of specialized commercial facilities. Indeed, the development and enlargement of new commercial accommodations occurred in close proximity to the small but growing focus of financial and insurance facilities on the upper end of State Street (Fig. 3) which served the credit and informational requirements of the carrying trade.

17 Hamilton A. Hill: Boston's Trade and Commerce for Forty Years, 1844-1884, American Statistical Association, 1884, pp. 1-20; Oscar and Mary F. Handlin: Commonwealth: A Study in the Role of Government in the American Economy, Massachusetts: 1774-1861 (New York, 1947), p. 190.

18 Caroline F. Ware: The Early New England Cotton Manufacture (Boston, 1931), p. 186; and Hill, op. cit., pp. 1-12.

19 Sumner, op. cit., pp. 699-700. 20 Charles F. Adams: The Canal and Railroad

Enterprise of Boston, in Winsor, Edit., op. cit., pp. 111-150.




THE EMERGENCE OF FINANCIAL

FACILITIES AND ASSOCIATED

WAREHOUSES

Although during the first four decades of the nineteenth century the facilities for specialized business activities had been enlarged, they still retained their original location near the waterfront or the market halls. During the same period, however, the rapid expansion of financial and insurance facilities to serve the needs of the carrying trade and of the textile industry of Boston's hinterland resulted in the emergence of a new center of business activity. In 1812 there were only four banks in Boston, but by 1837 there were 37 of which no less than 22 were situated on State Street.2' In 1844 Boston housed 25 commercial banks, two savings banks and 27 insurance companies and all except three had their premises on State Street.22

These developments on State Street were often in buildings which had long combined the functions of residence and counting house. As many of Boston's more prosperous merchants adopted new homes in exclusively residential districts beyond the colonial limits of the town, however, their original residences were at first converted into banks and insurance offices but later demolished to make way for larger and more appropriate structures. Until the turn of the eighteenth century, many wealthy merchants lived near the historic seats of public authority and political influence on State or King Street as it was known in the colonial period.28 During the early

21 Stanwood, op. cit., p. 53. 22 Norman S. B. Gras: The Massachusetts

First National Bank of Boston: 1784-1934 (Cambridge, 1937), p. 93.

23 In the later decades of the colonial period the North End housed many families of wealth, particularly those associated with the court, but certainly maintained no monopoly of Boston's great houses. Cf. Whitehill, op. cit., 1959, pp. 32-33.

decades of the new nation, however, the increasing spatial demands of commerce and the changing residential tastes of the merchant community encouraged the abandonment of their former homes to exclusively financial activities. Indeed, several years before most merchants abandoned their original homes, the State Government had been removed from the old State House on State Street to a more spacious setting on the edge of the town near the Common (Fig. 3). The location of this original nucleus of the financial district was thus an inheritance from one of the former residential priorities of men of wealth and public influence.

The new financial quarter was situated relatively near to the market halls but at a considerable distance from both the existing warehouses on the waterfront and the newly established railroad terminals on the lVMill Pond or South Cove (Fig. 3). After about 1830, however, almost all the new warehouse construction in Boston occurred on the southern margins of the financial district and on that side of State Street opposite the food markets (Fig. 3).24 The new warehouses were substantial granite structures, often four or more stories in height and covering entire blocks. By 1860 the southward expansion of the new facilities had already invaded the exclusive residential district of the South End (Figs. 1 and 3), which was barely a generation old.25 The dimensions of this expansion of the warehouse quarter indicated the prosperity of Boston's carrying trade in the two decades before the Civil War while its location expressed the needs for close functional connections

24 Alex C. Porter: Changes in the Value of Real Estate in Boston: The Past One Hundred Years (Bostonian Society, Collections, 1, 1880), pp. 57-74.

25 Tontine Crescent, one of the most impressive residential developments of the Federalist era, was demolished in 1858 after a life of less than 60 years; \Vhitehill, op. cit., p. 54.




/ WEST END Q NORTH END

BEACON HILL

h STATE HOUSE OD MARKE'

PUBLIC \ S TRE 7 GARDEN THE COMMON

SOUTH END

8 > g < ~~~~~~~~~~~LIMITS IN 1850

\ /- a/ E j~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~- LIMITS IN 1875

\ f ^ / / ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~DIRECTION OF

\ f _ / i \ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~EXPANSION EXTENT OF GREAT

0 --8 4

FIG. 3. The expansion of Boston's central business district: 1850--1875.

between the carrying trade and the financial district.

Under the circumstances of a pedes- trian city, the speculative marketing and complicated credit requirements of the carrying trade required a location adjacent to the sources of market in-

formation. Moreover, transfer costs on the relatively valuable and compact commodities of the carrying trade were quite marginal to their total cost, while many items moved entirely by maritime commerce and had no reason to use the new railroad facilities. Consequently,



160 ECONOMIc GEOGRAPHY

the development of the new warehouse quarter alongside the financial district in the vicinity of an exclusive residential area and at some considerable distance from the existing waterfront and railroad terminals expressed the pre-eminence of the needs for accessibility to informational and credit facilities over those for minimum transfer movements between terminals and warehouses.

WORKSHOP MANUFACTURING IN THE WAREHOUSE DISTRICT

With the depression of 1857, however, Boston's carrying trade was to suffer a severe decline, and, during the Civil War, British screw steamships established a primacy on many of the routes which had formerly been served by Boston's sailing ships.26 But the needs of the carrying trade for return commodities and for outfitting services had sustained the expansion of manufacturing activities in clothing, footwear, and furniture and, in addition, the printing of adver- tisements and information. Until the middle fifties most of this manufacturing activity was conducted in small handicraft workshops within Boston but, with the expansion of foreign commerce and the increasing demands of the American South and California for cheap garments and footwear, some production tasks were " put-out " to rural homes and only finishing and skilled processes were performed in the central workshop.27 During the fifties several of Boston's craft industries were mechanized and reorganized so that manu- facturers who had formerly employed only a few skilled workmen and "put- out " most of their production were able to establish workshops which em-

26 Hill, op. cit., pp. 1-20. 27 George R. Taylor: The Transportation

Revolution (New York, 1951), pp. 211-220; and Blanche E. Hazard: The Organization of the Boot and Shoe Industry in Massachusetts before 1875 (Cambridge, 1921), pp. 59-63.

ployed unskilled workers in a minutely divided manufacturing process.28

Such technical innovations as the lathe and sewing machine permitted the use of small machines which were neither expensive of space nor specialized in their structural requirements so that the upper stories of vacant warehouses and even the attics of adjacent tenements were rapidly converted into workshop premises. Since the new workshops still required some of the finishing and skilled services of the old central workshop and since the organization of production and distribution remained in the hands of the merchant, the various segments of manufacturing process concentrated in the warehouse quarter from where the "putting-out" system had formerly been organized. Moreover, since the products of the workshops like those of the carrying trade catered to an elastic and uncertain market, the adjacence of their inherited premises to the sources of credit and market information was particularly advan- tageous.

Manufacturing activities thus supple- mented merchandising and storage in the warehouse quarter and stimulated even further the southward expansion of the business district into the adjacent residential area. The surviving residences on Fort Hill and in the South End (Fig. 3) were converted into tenements and their grounds filled with shacks and hovels to form a major focus of immigrant concentration within Boston. It was, in fact, this area of Irish immigrants that provided the unskilled labor for the newly mechanized manufacturing process. "External" economies derived from the facilities of the financial quarter and from the servicing trades of the

28 In Boston the sewing machines led to the development of relatively large units of production but elsewhere the new machines were more frequently "put-out" to contractors in nearby homes.




warehouse district itself as well as economies of rent and labor encouraged the growth of workshop industries within the business district.29

PUBLIC IMPROVEMENT SCHEMES WITHIN THE BUSINESS DISTRICT: 1866-1873

Until the close of the Civil War the expansion of warehouse accommodation and the conversion of residences into tenements had continued without any form of public regulation. The advantages of the warehouse facilities were already compromised by problems of traffic congestion while the adjacent and often interspersed tenements had become a major source of contagious diseases. Indeed the further expansion of warehouses was obstructed by Fort Hill (Figs. 1 and 3) on which most of the surviving residences had endured. In the cause of public health many of the unsanitary dwellings were removed, but in the cause of business needs the Hill itself was demolished and sub- divided for commercial premises.30 The fill derived from Fort Hill was used to remodel the old waterfront of Boston by the provision of a circumferential thoroughfare known as Atlantic Avenue around the southeastern margins of the business district (Fig. 3),31 In 1873 Boston's "Great Fire" consumed the south side of the warehouse district (Fig. 3), and all traces of the original residential function of the area were obscured. The civic authorities took advantage of the devastation to provide a new and wider pattern of streets and, with ironic belatedness, more capacious water pipes.32

29 Cf. Peter G. Hall: The Industries of London since 1861 (London, 1962), p. 64.

30 James M. Bugbee: Boston under the Mayors, in Winsor, Edit., op. cit., p. 272 and Stanwood, op. cit., pp. 25-65.

31 Josiah Quincy: Atlantic AvenlLe: Its Rela- tions to the Mercantile and Econon-mical Inter- ests of the City (Boston, 1873), pp. 1-2.

32 Bugbee, op. cit., pp. 272-276.

The removal of Fort. Hill and the construction of Atlantic Avenue partly improved the accessibility of the southern section of the warehouse district to the South Cove railroad terminals, but, nevertheless, the small intervening area was still crowded with immigrant housing (Fig. 3). During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, however, Boston's merchants, who had been confronted with a prolonged commercial depression and a permanent diminution of the carrying trade, turned their attention to the formerly neglected export trade in western staples.88 A new railroad was constructed to Albany while waterfront terminal facilities were enlarged in East Boston, Charlestown, and later in South Boston (Fig. 2). Each railroad company developed independent suburban transfer facilities, and the co- ordination of the well separated terminals with each other and with the central warehouse quarter was delayed until the turn of the century when the eclipse of the grain export trade forced the railroads to improve their local services and, in particular, their terminal transfer procedures.34 Moreover, after the brief period of reconstruction which followed the Great Fire, the depression of the mid- seventies greatly curtailed civic expendi- ture and public initiative which may have independently improved the accessibility of the warehouse quarter to the South Cove terminals. The need to regulate the expansion of the warehouse district was, like the need to co-ordinate the railroad terminal facilities, neglected for another generation.

33 Kirkland, op. cit., pp. 362-372; and Wal- ter Z. Ripley: Railroads; Rates and Regulation (New York, 1913), pp. 24-25.

31 Otis CIapp: The Port of Boston: A Study and A Solution of the Traffic and Operating Problems of Boston and Its Place in the Com- petition of the North Atlantic Seaports (New Haven, 1916); Massachusetts Senate Document No. 401: Report of the Terminal Commission on Terminal Facilities (Boston, 1916), pp. 220-221.




THE SPECIALIZATION OF THE

WAREHOUSE DISTRICT ON

WHOLESALE TRADE

The warehouse quarter, which was by far the largest segment of the central business district in 1875, continued to expand southwards during the last two decades of the nineteenth century (Fig. 4). The warehouse premises were, moreover, increasingly devoted to wholesale trade as workshop manufacturing activities moved to new quarters and as retail- ing assumed greater economic and locational autonomy. The expansion of local trade in dry goods and also in food and provisions necessitated a considerable enlargement in the accommodations for the central organization of regional distribution. In Boston the dimensions of this enlargement of the warehouse district were increased by the contemporary increase in the volume of the wool and leather trade which served a far larger market than that of Boston's immediate hinterland. The wool merchants had formerly conducted their trade to the north of State Street along the waterfront near the market halls (Fig. 1), but during and after the Civil War the wool trade increased and the merchants gradually occupied new and larger accommodations in that part of the warehouse district which lay adjacent to the financial section of the business district (Fig. 4).>1 The leather trade had pre- viously been widely distributed throughout the North End (Fig. 1), but with the increase in the volume of imports the leather merchants moved to new premises in that part of the warehouse district which fronted on Atlantic Avenue and the old waterfront south of State Street (Fig. 4)>36

35William T. Davis, Edit.: The New England States: Their Constitutional, Judicial, Educa- tional, Commercial, Professional, and Industrial History, Volume IV (Boston, 1897), p. 1965.

36 IdeMn.

Under these circumstances, those workshop manufacturing industries which had depended upon economies of rent could no longer afford warehouse accommodation and, with the exception of certain sections of the printing industry, adopted new quarters beyond the limits of the central business district. The footwear industry was able to syn- chronize the complicated series of production processes and reap economies of scale in large suburban factories.37 In contrast, the clothing industry was unable to enlarge the scale of operation and gradually moved into the tenement districts of the North and West Ends where Jewish immigrants, in particular, achieved economies of rent and labor by means of the "sweatshop" system of production.38 Although the clothing sweatshops were often beyond the immediate limits of specialized commercial premises, the tenement districts were still sufficiently close to the business district to preserve the industry's need for access to market information. The wholesale trade in both clothing and footwear, however, remained in the warehouse quarter (Fig. 4). The southward expansion of the warehouse and the wholesale premises occurred at a time when the correspondingly greater distance between warehouses and the financial quarter became less critical because of the provision of telephone facilities.

To the north of State Street the market halls had provided cramped accommodation for the fresh food and provision trade, but, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the - assembly

37Edgar M. Hoover: The Location of the Shoe Industry in the United States, Quar. Journ. of Econs., Vol. 47, 1933, pp. 254-276.

38 Horace G. \Wradlin: The Sweating System in Massachusetts, Journal of Social Science, Vol. 30, 1892, pp. 86-102; and United States Senate Document No. 2309, Serial No. 3140: Report of the Committee on Manufactures on the Sweating System, 1893, pp. 227-231.




/ ~~~~~~~MILL POND / WEST END \ NORTH END

BEACON HILL

/ ADMINISTRATION MEAT /

EMEGING RETAIL H I PRODUCEISO

RDEN STH E COMMON L\ LIT I- 8

EMRIN RECLTAIN PROVISIONS..... X /

W H 0 L/l.S 0 /4

FIG. 4. Th/ expansin of Botrl business district: 875-1890LIMITS IN 1875

X f \ / v ,~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ LIMITS IN 1890

>SUTH COVE /

\ / f / } ., ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~SUBDIVISIONS a_ / / / t / ~~~~~~~~~~~~~DIRECTION OF

/ / / / \ ~~~~~~~~~~~EXPANSION

t / / ~~~~~~~~~~MILE

FIG. 4. The exp- nisionl of Bosto l's ce ltral business district: 1875-1890.

and distribution of food increased in scale and, like that of dry goods, differentiated into distinct retail and wholesale segments.39 From the nucleus of the market halls the trade on fresh food and

39 Boston City Document No. 91, op. cit., pp. 24-25.

provisions expanded along the waterfront both to the north and south of State Street and also segregated into three specialized precincts. The original market halls concentrated on fresh food, the waterfront to the north of the halls on fish and meat, and the waterfront to




the south on general provisions (Fig. 4). The continued expansion of the warehouse quarter and to a lesser degree of financial premises restricted the southward growth of the food trades, and, by 1920, most of the wholesale food markets were located on the northern side of State Street and had invaded parts of the North End tenement quarter (Fig. 5). The Italian immigrants of the North End, however, provided much of the labor and later engrossed the manage- ment and ownership of the food trades. The survival of this residential district on the tip of the peninsula in the face of business expansion partly reflected the needs of the food industry for adjacent low rent housing for laborers whose hours of work were frequently early and often inconvenient.40

THE EXPANSION AND COALESCENCE OF

THE FINANCIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE

DISTRICTS

The southward expansion of the warehouse district was also made necessary by the encroachments of the financial quarter into its northern margins. In 1875 financial activities were still concentrated on the south side of State Street where they had first emerged in the thirties and forties (Fig. 3), but, by 1895, the banks and insurance offices had spread into adjacent sections of the warehouse district (Fig. 4). By 1920 even the wool warehouses had given way to financial activities (Fig. 5). During the same period professional services and public administration, which had grown around the State House (Fig. 4), spread southwards to coalesce with the newly enlarged financial quarter (Fig. 5). Until about 1875 public administration and associated services were confined to a small area around the State House (Fig. 3), and only as the role of

40 Frederick A. Bushee: Italian Immigrants in Boston, Arena, 17, 1896-1897, pp. 722-734.

public activity increased later in the century did this area expand and coalesce with the center of economic power.

Early in the nineteenth century this close association of administrative and financial functions had been separated by the establishment of new accommodations for state government on the edge of the town, but, by the turn of the nineteenth century, expansion from sep- arate nuclei brought about the emergence of a much more extensive area devoted to finance, administration, and associated professional services (Fig. 5). The expansion of the administrative and professional accommodations into the adjacent residential areas was, like that of the wholesale food markets, relatively restricted, for Beacon Hill, like the North End, proved to be an enduring residential district on the immediate edge of the business district (Fig. 5). Beacon Hill, however, as its more desirable adjacent business use might suggest, housed native Americans of wealth and status whereas the North End housed Italian immigrants.- Thus, unlike the wholesale dry goods warehouse district, the wholesale food markets and the administrative quarter of the business district did not extinguish their adjacent residential districts but rather expanded into the area between State Street and the Alill Pond railroad terminals within which residence and business had for long been interspersed (Fig. 5).

THE EMERGENCE OF RETAIL

DISTRICT

Until about 1880 the distribution of dry goods was in the hands of commission agents or merchants -who controlled parts of the manufacturing process. The consumer either obtained these goods directly from the warehouse or




/ WEST END 05 NORTH END (TENEMENTS) (TENEMENTS)

_,, BEACON HILL (TOWN HOUSES) |

PUBLIC \ HOLESALE FOOD/|

BACK GARDEN THE COMMON

BAY FIAC

| z/ X /<Pi ~~~~~WHOLESALE DRY GOODS / /

\ <\ / 7 m ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~LIMITS IN 1890

J LIMITS IN 1920

\ / /< DIRECTION OF EXPANSION

MILE 0 154

FIG. 5. The expansion of Boston's central business district: 1890-1920.

more probably from a general store.4" In 1875, apart from custom retail trade within the financial district, there was no clearly defined, specialized retail section devoted to ready-made consumer

41 Edward C. Kirkland: Industry Comes of Age (New York, 1962), pp. 262-277.

goods within the central business district. During the eighties, however, falling retail prices made it increasingly necessary for merchants to take advantage of marginal economies. The lower cost of bulk purchasing and the correspondingly greater incentive to in-



166 ECONOMic GEOGRAPHY

crease the volume of trade encouraged many wholesalers to develop direct selling to the consumer.42 With the expansion of wholesale trade within the warehouse quarter many merchants began to establish showrooms where their goods could be displayed to better effect. These showrooms were situated in more accessible and attractive parts of the central area of the city and, in Boston, concentrated between the warehouse quarter and the Common (Fig. 4).

By 1890 most of the newly electrified streetcar services converged on this district in order to gain access to the growing sources of employment in the central business district. The streetcar, in fact, made it possible not only for specialized showrooms to improve retail distribution but also for economies of scale and mass marketing to be achieved in the distribution of relatively ubiqui- tous items by means of the department store. Thus the retail quarter housed two contrasting types of retail activity: firstly, the large scale trade in a wide range of frequently needed items which drew both upon the hinterland served by the streetcars and upon the workers whose employment brought them into districts adjacent to the department stores, and, secondly, the sale of specialty items which were purchased less frequently but which demanded the newly enlarged threshold to survive.

In Boston, Washington and Tremont Streets carried many of the streetcar lines into the central parts of the city, and it was on these two streets that most of the early retail stores founded their first premises. Washington Street attracted large scale or department stores which depended upon a large volume of general sales while more specialized and expensive items developed retail premises on Tremont Street overlooking the

42 Report of the Industrial Commission, XIV (Washington, 1901.), pp. XII-XIV.

Common (Fig. 4). The southern section of that part of Tremont Street which fronted on the Common, for example, was almost entirely devoted to the sale of pianos.43 By 1920 the Common obstructed the further expansion of the retail quarter in that part of the business district which was also adjacent to the financial and warehouse districts so that retail premises expanded around the southern part of the Common and began to encroach upon the exclusive residential area of the Back Bay (Fig. 5). Thus the prior claims and sentimental attach- ment of Bostonians to Boston Common removed, from the market, land which was appropriately located for retail purposes and thereby affected both the direction of expansion and the location of the central retail district.44

THE IMPROVEMENT OF THE CENTRAL

BUSINESS DISTRICT

By the turn of the nineteenth century the enlargement of the limits of the central business district and the increase in the amount of local traffic on the narrow streets had created considerable problems of congestion. Since the improvements before and after the "Great Fire" of 1873, efforts to control and direct the expansion of business premises were extremely limited and indeed the first major efforts to alleviate the growing congestion within the business district were made by the private streetcar company. Public complaints about de- lays and discomfort in the journey to work by the streetcars encouraged the company to develop a rapid transit system by the construction of an elevated track between two of Boston's inner suburbs which skirted the edge of the central business district. This elevated

43Anonymous: The Metropolis of New Eng- land (Boston, 1889), pp. 65-69.

44 Walter I. Firey: Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Variables, Amer. Soc. Rev., Vol. 10, 1945, p. 144.




track provided not only a more con- venient and much faster service from the suburbs to the business district but also a loop line which linked various parts of the central business district itself (Fig. 6). In order to provide access into the central part of the business district several subways were constructed between 1900 and 1915 (Fig. 6).45

The scale of these improvements was quite inadequate to meet the needs of the growing number of daily commuters or to alleviate the increasing congestion within the business district. Indeed the failure of these improvement efforts demonstrated the inability of the private streetcar company to bear the entire responsibility of central congestion at a time when changes in the means of local transportation were occurring at a startling and unpredictable pace. The construction of elevated track and subways demanded heavy capital expendi- tures by the private transit company at a time when the process of electrifica- tion had only just been completed and when labor and material costs were rising rapidly.46 Under these circumstances, the harvest of cheaper costs made possible by the installation of improved capital equipment was never reaped. The company also found it increasingly difficult to make an operational profit capable of attracting capital funds on the basis of a uniform five cent fare to which it was held by charter.

The financial resources of the civic government were eventually utilized to construct most of the subways, and by, 1916 the city had contributed almost 20 per cent of the capital equipment of

45Massachusetts Senate Document No. 248: Report of the Public Service Commission and the Boston Transit Commission appointed to investigate the Services of the Street Railway Companies (Boston, 1914), pp. 3-18 and pp. 42-45.

46 Edward S. Mason: The Street Railway in Massachusetts: The Rise and Decline of an Industry (Cambridge, 1932), pp. 1-12.

the transit company.47 Nevertheless, operational profits continued to dwindle while the volume of passengers continued to increase, and just as the more flexible motor bus and automobile began to compete with the rapid transit system, the company passed in the receiver's hands. The alleviation of congestion was thus delayed and limited by the economic dilemma of the transit system and by the failure of the civic authorities to provide a more comprehensive diagnosis of the causes of congestion.

Traffic congestion within Boston's central business district was intensified by the wide separation of railroad and waterfront terminal facilities which had been developed to serve the needs of the export trade rather than those of local distribution. Although the southward expansion of the warehouse district had greatly improved the accessibility of wholesale merchants to that group of railroads with terminals in the South Cove, the difficulties in obtaining services to those parts of New England served by other terminals was extremely expensive of time and transfer costs.48 Public investigations of Boston's commercial predicament after the decline of the grain export trade publicized the unco- ordinated terminal facilities but rarely identified the different locational needs of terminals serving local as distinct from international trade. 49 ost en- quiries were pre-occupied with the defini- tion of appropriate administrative ma- chinery and, above all, with the intracti- ble problem of financing improvements. Consequently, the achievements of pub-

Gaston, Snow, and Saltonstall, Solicitors. to the Boston Elevated Railroad Company: Statement to the Special Commission appointed to consider the Financial Condition of the Boston Elevated Railroad Company (Boston, 1916), p. 40.

48 Massachusetts Senate Document Number 401, op. cit., pp. 220-221.

4 Massachusetts House Document Number 1615: Report of the Metropolitan Plan Coin- mission (Boston, 1912), pp. 1-2.




| * ~Sul IVA SQUARE

SOMRVL CHARLESTOWN SOMERVILLE

EAST

~-- / s.- _ \BOSTON

MAVERICK CAMBRIDGE SQUARE

TO CAMBRIDGE AVENUE

< STREE1 A \ S/STREE

BOYLSTON / I ~~~SAT /E ___

_<~~~~~~~~~ STREET ///SOT

BEACON

/RMN UM(NELNER/

TO BROOKLINE / TR/E WASlQINGTON / LSRE//BOSTO N

N ~~~STRE E T /

t ~~~SOUTH END4 LEGEND

v ~ ~~~ ~ ~~~~~~~ / I ,ELVA TE D SUBWAY

?, ___!2_____|_ * TERMINAL M I L E S SURFACE CONNECTION

FG 6. ROXB URY s

FIG. 6. Boston's rapid transit system in 1915.




lic enterprise in diverting intra-terminal traffic from the streets was even less impressive than that of removing local transportation from the streets. Never- theless, for the first time the predicament of the modern business district was faced, and limited efforts were made to facilitate internal movement.

CONCLUSIONS

The Sequence of Changes50

During the course of the nineteenth century, changes in the scale and organization of commercial and manufacturing activities and in the means of local and regional communication transformed both the dimensions and internal complexity of Boston's central business district. In the early nineteenth century specialized business accommodation was restricted to a small section of the waterfront and the market halls. By the early twentieth century specialized business and associated activities not only occupied an area somewhat larger than the entire extent of the town a century earlier, but had also differentiated into no less than four distinct segments which performed financial, administrative, and both retail and wholesale commercial functions. The emergence and expansion of these functions occurred at different rates during different periods of time, and, for at least a generation, workshop manufacturing activities occupied a large section of the warehouse accommodations within the business district.

The first distinct concentration of specialized commercial activities to develop beyond the immediate limits of the waterfront and the market halls was devoted to financial and insurance services,

50 A preliminary and more general effort to disentangle the developmental sequence of business activities was made by Norman S. B. Gras: The Development of the Metropolitan Economy in Europe and America, Amer. Hist. Rev., Vol. 27, 1922, pp. 695-708.

and, because these functions were highly valued by the merchant community, warehouse accommodations were developed nearby. These commercial premises also attracted workshop manufacturing activities which, like the carrying trade, valued proximity to the sources of credit and market information. By about 1875, warehouse premises occupied by far the largest segment of the business district while the banks on the upper end of State Street and the market halls at the waterfront remained relatively limited in their extent. The railroad terminals, established between 1835 and 1855, at first attracted almost no adjacent commercial building schemes and indeed, after the Civil War, concentrated their attention on suburban facilities to meet the needs of the grain export trade.

The revolution in urban transportation and the beginnings of mass consump- tion increased the scale and threshold of the local market and encouraged the emergence of distinct retail and wholesale sections of commercial activity. The warehouse quarter increasingly concentrated on the wholesale distribution of dry goods, while most manufacturing activities were displaced from the business district. Retail activities emerged for the first time as a distinct quarter at the focus of the local streetcar system and adjacent to the growing centers of central employment. The distribution of food also assumed a larger scale and a more specialized organization and expanded from its formerly cramped quarters in and around the market halls to coalesce with the warehouse district. At the same time financial, administrative, and associated functions greatly enlarged their role within the urban and regional economy and expanded from relatively small original foci to form an extensive segment of the central business district.



170 ECONoMIc GEOGRAPHY

The Location of Change

The technical and organizational changes in economic activities and the improvement of the means of local communication during the industrial revolution created both the need for and the possibility of an enlarged and more complicated organization of central business activities. But because these changes and improvements were cumu- lative and because expansion occurred at different rates at different times, the precise distributional consequences of the changing technology and organization were affected by the prior claims of existing buildings and activities. Indeed, existing facilities also proved to be an attraction to commercial activities notwithstanding disadvantages which may have been inherent in their locations. The financial district emerged within an old central residential area which had valued a location near the sources of political power and influence. Workshop industries utilized existing warehouse premises which were partly vacant because of a commercial depression. Even Boston Common, which at first attracted certain kinds of retail activity, later obstructed the expansion of retail premises in the most accessible and desirable part of the business district.

The various railroad terminals which had been established in Boston between 1835 and 1855 adopted peripheral locations where spacious sites were available and, owing to the lucrative trade in western grain which developed after the Civil War, neglected local transfer services. By the turn of the century, Boston had inherited a railroad terminal pattern which indicated the original responses of individual railroad companies to the land market in the mid- nineteenth century and the subsequent needs of international rather than re-

gional trade. Similarly, the expansion of the central business district into the adjacent residential districts was neither uniform nor complete. Residential districts of contrasting characteristics endured on the edge of both the administrative and professional quarter and of the wholesale food markets in spite of encroachment by business premises. Boston's central business district was not surrounded by a zone of "blighted" buildings awaiting demolition as business expanded but rather by residential districts of an extraordinary range of quality and social vitality.5'

The sequence of development of central business activities closely reflected the contemporary technical and organizational changes within the urban economy, but the precise location of these developments within particular cities involved the availability as well as the appropriateness of locations. M\'Jore- over, the antecedent characteristics of particular locations both attracted and obstructed commercial developments in their vicinity. The emergence of the central business district can be related to both the dynamic factors of economic change which sustained the process of urban growth itself and to the factors of inheritance and precedent which express the influence of pre-existing patterns of occupance. The new dimensions of the central business district were thus a consequence both of the changing contemporary processes of urban growth and of the partial inheritances be- queathed by each system of activity to its successor.52

Concentration vs. Congestion

The advantages of concentration made

51 David Ward: Locational Attributes of Central Residential Districts in Nineteenth Century Boston, Abstracts of Papers, 20th Int. Geog. Cong. (London, 1964), pp. 277-278.

52 Cf. John Rannells: The Core of the City (New York, 1956), pp. 35-50 and 184-185.




possible by the revolution in local communication and the economies of scale made possible by the technical and organizational revolution were never entirely fulfilled within the nineteenth century business district, for congestion inhibited local movement at an early date. The central business district never represented a functionally efficient organization of space which would have made possible the full realization of economies of concentration." Indeed both public and private improvement schemes were designed to alleviate, with only limited success, the causes of congestion within the central business district. Piecemeal efforts to improve local movement and to facilitate commercial growth were relatively successful in the late sixties and the early seventies, but, during the succeeding period of industrial depression and civic economy, these pioneer enterprises were severely curtailed. The rapid improvement in the speed and the increased density of the streetcar services not only further stimulated the expansion of the central business district but also rendered many of the early improvement ventures obsolete. By the turn of the century local movement both into and within the central business district was retarded and restricted by severe traffic congestion, and renewed efforts were made to alleviate the problem. The major achieve- ment of this period of improvement was the partial removal of the local streetcar system from the city streets by means of elevated tracks and subways, but, in the absence of related efforts to widen streets and to control traffic patterns, the more effective streetcar system simply further facilitated access to the business district. Neither information nor institutional procedures were ade- quate to identify and control the problem of congestion.

By about 1920 the diverse functions

of the contemporary central business district had emerged and concentrated in distinct segments of the urban core. Over the past 40 years the changes in the central business district have been relatively modest in contrast to the rapid expansion of suburban commercial facilities.54 The automobile introduced a new degree of flexibility into local movement while the increased use of high-rise construction has transformed the capacity of space within the business district. Since 1920 the expansion of commercial activities has been mainly concentrated either within the limits of the central business district or well beyond the influence of the urban core in the rapidly growing and more accessible suburban areas. The more flexible technology of the twentieth century has dispersed commercial activities into the growing suburban areas of the city. The limits and complexity of the central business district of many large cities represent an inheritance from the conditions of nineteenth century urban growth. Certainly, throughout the nineteenth century, the characteristic predicament of the de- veloping business district was the limita- tion of new economies of scale and concentration by the countervailing influence of diseconomies created by congestion. The economies of scale and concentration were progressively enlarged with each technical and organizational advance, but, because the spatial consequences of these advances were often unpredictable and frequently cumula- tive, congestion inhibited local movement. Even with a more flexible technology and more comprehensive regulation, this historic predicament of the central business district remains a challenge to the urban planner.

53Paradoxically this was an underlying as- sumption of a contemporary and pioneering effort to understand the internal spatial structure of the city. See Richard M. Hurd: Prin- ciples of City Land Values (New York, 1903).

51 Cf. Vance, op. cit., pp. 485-518.



Date post:	08-Jan-2017
Category:	Documents
Upload:	david-ward
View:	226 times
Download:	8 times

The Industrial Revolution and the Emergence of Boston's Central Business District

Documents