Growing Cities

At the dawn of the new century in 1800, America is still overwhelmingly rural, a land of simple farmers. The only real cities are the major ports, which are humming with commerce that maintains American ties to Europe.

Boston, New York and Philadelphia are the big commercial centers. Washington DC is under construction, soon to become the new capital, while Baltimore is suddenly becoming a major port on the upper Chesapeake.

Further south is Richmond, with its river connection to the sea, and the much busier port in Charleston. Pure farmland surrounds these isolated cities. Northern farms remain small, while southern plantations are larger.

Life in the big ports is altogether different from life on the farm. There are banks, libraries, theaters, museums, hospitals, colleges, alms houses and a whole array of community services, sometimes including a water system.


	Post Road The Boston Post Road (ORANGE line on map) is the major north-south road, extending through miles and miles of farmland to string together America's few cities. When it approaches New York from the south, it first crosses the Passaic River on a 500-foot-long bridge. Then, the road pushes through the marshy New Jersey Meadowlands on a three-mile-long gravel causeway laid on top of two layers of crisscrossed logs pressed into the muck. It ends abruptly on the west shore of the Hudson River, with a ferry providing the final connection to New York.



	Developing Culture Philadelphia is the center of American culture in 1800, with 700 new streetlights in the downtown area. There are five churches for Quakers, six for Presbyterians, three for Episcopalians, four for Catholics and three for the many German immigrants. The university is already 10 years old, while the Philosophical Society is 30, and the hospital 50. The library, founded by Benjamin Franklin, is nearly 60 years old, and has 12,000 books. A dispensary provides medical relief to the poor, while the Alms House offers housing. There is a natural history museum, two theaters and three banks (including the new Bank of the United States). City water is pumped up from the river, using two of America's first steam engines.


	Pavement and Water Philadelphia's gracious downtown streets are up to 60 feet wide, while Market Street is nearly twice as wide. They are paved with stones to keep carriage wheels from becoming mired in mud, and have a brick footway on each side, with curbstones. There are five public squares. The biggest cities in America are now large enough to begin grappling with some newly-discovered problems of living in dense neighborhoods. On the farm, you get your water from the well, and use the outhouse in the back yard to handle sewage. In the city, these conveniences are more difficult to manage. Philadelphia is the first city to build a powered water system, with tunnels and pumps to fill elevated storage tanks. A sanitary sewer system will come much later.


	Shipping Lifeline The Delaware River at Philadelphia is almost a mile wide, and deep enough to accept large sea-going vessels. Though far from the sea, the river at this point is still salty, with a six-foot tide. Trans-Atlantic shipping is vital, as manufacturing in America has barely begun. There are local tradesmen, like shoemakers, but they can only produce in small quantities. Virtually all manufactured items, including almost anything made from metal, still has to be shipped in from Europe. Actually, this is handy for the new American government, which barely needs to tax Americans at all. The government gets almost all its operating income from custom duties, which are taxes that Congress levies on a broad range of imported items.


	Levelling Hills After shipping is restored, the big ports enter an expansion phase that drives up property prices. New York and Philadelphia have room to grow, but Boston is hemmed on all sides in by water. As the demand for housing grows, a resourceful businessman decides to level Beacon Hill (and two other smaller hills) in order to provide additional building lots. Work crews dig up most of the hills, dumping the dirt as fill into Boston's Back Bay, which is too shallow to be suitable for shipping. The venture is a financial failure, but the extra fill increases Boston's buildable acreage substantially.


	Between the Cities America is still a solidly rural society, built on the labor of farmers and their families. The bustle of economic activity is largely confined to the handful of port cities, which few people have ever even visited. Instead, farmers spend their days bringing in the hay, milking the cows, and mending the fences. The countryside is blissfully quiet, with only the occasional clopping of horse hooves to punctuate the pervading silence. It's a world without machines, completely devoid of motorized equipment, and often lacking in conversation for extended periods. Except during the busy harvest season, the day ends soon after the sun goes down, which is quite early during winter months. Without electricity to light up the evening, people average nine hours of sleep.