Customer Reviews

Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston, 1870-1900

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This book is straight forward: Warner describes the process of suburbanization between 1870-1900 in Boston, Mass. Warner is focusing on a period of time that most contemporary American's would not equate with the process of "suburbanization", but it is this very approach that makes "Street Car Suburbs" so interesting.

Warner shows that the street cars and suburbs were both linked to the increasing wealth in the Boston area after the civil war. Capital was looking for places to be invested and both the wealthy and middle class found it in their interest to lay the foundation for suburban growth. The wealthy developed street car lines. In response, many members of the middle class engaged in small scale suburban "developments". Perhaps it the small scale of the street car suburb that will most intrigue the modern reader.

For the most part, the builders of street cars didn't develop the housing market. One explanation for this seeming discepancy is that the mortgage market for residences was most primitive during this time period. Warner shows that most of the small scale "developers" carried the mortgages of the buyers of their newly developed properties! This is a far cry from our world of today!

Warner's photos of various homes are excellent, and they make a fine counterpoint to the text. This book is an interesting treatment of a little known period of American suburban development.

Streetcar Suburbs is a well-written book, for which there are only limited reasons to still read. It's not that this 1962 classic is dated -- though by today's standards it is oddly silent on issues of gender, a core concept of the newer histories of American suburbs -- but rather, many of its key ideas have become incorporated other works broader in scope, like Kenneth Jackson's Crabgrass Frontier, so the pay off is less than it would be if the book were read shortly after publication. (This is particularly true of Warner's observations of the effects of various nineteenth-century transportation improvements on the form of the city. One point, however, that Warner emphasizes that I don't recall reading elsewhere is the importance of crosstown streetcar lines in determining where growth occurred within suburbs and the nature it would take.)

People interested in the following points might still find this worth their time.

1. Those with a special interest in Boston. This book provides a very rich history, including many historical photographs of different styles of houses, of the outward spread of Boston across the second half of the nineteenth century. Occasionally, the detail is a bit hard to follow for those who are not familiar with Boston, but local history buffs will find this a goldmine.

2. Those interested in how cities grow and maintain order in the absence of zoning regulations. Much of the latter half of the book gives a very rich history of the suburbs grew in a way that was at once homogenous in smaller clumps but also very diverse but orderly from a God's eye view. Warner is able, in a small amount of space, to take into account class, transportation technology, economic risk, cultural values, architecture and geography to create a compelling account for the growth Boston experienced.

This book I could still see having a place in college history classes, either one on nineteenth-century US history or on the history of New England. I'm glad to see that there is a Kindle edition so that it won't go out of print.

All ye people of the Parkways! Read all about the history of suburban Boston. It's all good! This is a scholarly study of the history of Roxbury, Dorchester, and West Roxbury (which includes Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, Mattapan, and Hyde Park.) Have you ever wondered why Washington Street in Roslindale looks the way it does? Why one street has mansions and the next has turn of the century boarders? And why does the bus run down one street and not another? Find out in Streetcar Suburbs: The Process of Growth in Boston. Cambridge tip: you can find cheapie copies of this book at the Harvard Press Bookstore. That's how I got mine.

This is a great book. Warner in this book does a great job of explaining of how streetcars allowed the development of Boston to unfold. The main thesis is that this form of mass transit allowed people to move away from the city and commute into work, but unlike before it was not only the wealthy who could accomplish this. Rather, it was the working class that could do this as well. The end result would be that the city would be built out and that the infastructure needed to maintain the city's vitality would follow as well. This would lead to the development of districts and bands of housing that would separate individuals from one another through residential segregation. The book is easily read and enjoyable in spite of its subject matter.

This book is important to anyone wanting to understand why the streetcar industry was such an imporant force in shaping America's cities. While it uses Boston as a case study, you can apply the same ideas in hundreds of cities and see how the same thing happened. Streetcars were the boom/bust speculative industry of their era, just as "dot-bombs" were the boom/bust of the recent era. Of course, real estate speculaton lives on, but street railways are no longer the tool.

My husband who has read this book several times now, asked me to read this book. This is not a subject I usually read about, but became very interested in because of the detail of stage's growth pattern's happen in. The history of the book has a special meaning for me with what my family engages in today & having personal items of people you will read about in the book. While I have never gotten to speak with Mr. Warner myself, my husband tells me that he is a sweet man and considered the expert in the field of Transit Orient Development & additionally done many things for the community for future generations.

It is very easy to see why so many City Planners & Transportation Planners view this book as a must read because so many foundation's of what we know how a city developments today in the United States come from these areas of Boston. You have Transit Oriented Development, & many of it sub-theory's, City Public Works, The first Deed Restrictions, The first Homeowner's Association, The first Large Scale Property Management concept's, & how Railroad's & Gas Company's tied them all together for the first suburb's of the United States. Concept's that even today I see playing out in my community of South Florida.

Mr. Warner has written his own history as the father of understanding how it all worked. Maybe today living in the information age, we will see him further expand upon a master piece of history & city planning.