Urban Castles

About this book

In the first comprehensive investigation of the role of landlords in shaping the urban landscapes of today Jared Day explores the unique case of New York City from the close of the nineteenth century through the World War II era. During this period tenement landlords were responsible for designing and shaping Americas urban landscapes building housing for the citys ever-growing industrial workforce. Fueled by the illusion of easy money entrepreneurs managed their buildings in ways that punished compassion and rewarded neglectand created some of the most haunting images of urban squalor in American history. Urban Castles mines a previously uninvestigated body of tenant and landlord newspapers journals and real estate records to understand how tenement landlords operated in an era before tenant rights developed into a central issue for urban reformers. Day contends thatperhaps more than any other group of property ownersurban landlords stood upon the very fault lines of class ethnicity and race. In contrast to many urban histories set in executive boardrooms and state houses and which chronicle struggles between large corporations government officials and organized labor this fascinating work deals with the more chaotic world of small-scale entrepreneurs and their frequently antagonistic relationships with their customersworking-class tenants. Urban Castles is a richly informative chronicle of the dark underbelly of Americas emerging welfare state. The neglected side of this important story covered by Days research says much about the sea changes in landlord-tenant relations and urban policy today.