Local Attachments: The Making of an American Urban Neighborhood, 1850 to 1920 (Creating the North American Landscape)

Local Attachments: The Making of an American Urban Neighborhood, 1850 to 1920 (Creating the North American Landscape) by Von Hoffman, Professor Alexander. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780801847103.

In Local Attachments Alexander von Hoffman explores the emergence of the modern urban neighborhood in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by examining Bostons outer-city neighborhood, Jamaica Plain. Like other American urban neighborhoods of the era, Jamaica Plain experienced the arrival of many ethnic groups, a house-building boom for members of every social class, and the creation of commercial, industrial, and recreational areas within its boundaries. Despite this diversity, a vital neighborhood culture bound the residents of the neighborhood together. Yet in the end, political reformers and twentieth-century mores shattered the unity of the turn-of-the-century neighborhood and contributed to a decline in the quality of urban life. Drawn from a wealth of primary sources and illustrated with more than fifty photographs and maps, Local Attachments offers a detailed look, from the inside out, of the evolution of urban America.