life at the turn of the 20 th century chapter 8. objectives: to analyze significant turn-of-the...
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Life at the Turn of the 20th Century
Chapter 8
Objectives:
• To analyze significant turn-of-the century trends in such areas as technology, education, and mass culture.
Urban Planning
• Skyscrapers – built because of limited space
• Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright – leading architects
• Louis Sullivan’s Wainwright Bldg.
• St. Louis, Missouri
• Burnham’s Flatiron
Building
• New York City
• First slender tower
• Frederick Law Olmsted – landscape designer - led movement for planned urban parks. He designed Boston’s Emerald Necklace parks.
• Central Park in New York was a haven from busy city life.
Bow Bridge in Central Park
New Technologies:
1. Printing revolution – used wood pulp to make cheaper paper led to more newspapers and higher literacy rates
2. Orville and Wilbur Wright – first successful air flight lasted for 12 seconds. Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Turn of the Century Public Education:
• School 12-16 weeks per year
• Ages 8-14
• Strict discipline, physical punishment
• By late 1880’s, kindergartens began to be popular
• By early 1900’s, high schools offered variety in courses, including sciences, social studies, & vocational courses.
• A-Am. mostly attended private high schools with no help from the gov’t.
• Not until late 1940’s did education become available to majority of A-Am.
• Even immigrants were more encouraged to go to school.
• Only a small number of students attended colleges and universities, but between 1880-1920, numbers quadrupled.
Education affected culture:
• As education improved, people’s culture improved.
• Art galleries, libraries, and museums opened.
• At least one art gallery in every major city.
• Important Am. artists: Thomas Eakins and Robert Henri emphasized social realism.
• The Ashcan School of art portrayed urban poverty and everyday life.
• Public libraries called “poor man’s universities” opened.
• Realism also affected literature.
Writers:
• Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
• Theodore Dreiser
• Willa Cather
• Stephen Crane
• Jack London
Mark Twain
• “Dime novels” were popular novels that glorified the West.
• Many people didn’t want to read realism.
• African-Ams were excluded from libraries and art museums, and basically all other cultural events.
Rise of Mass Culture:
• Middle class Americans shared cultural activities by the late 1800’s – called mass culture.
• Amusement parks opened = Coney Island in NYC.
• Bicycling and tennis became popular sports, even for women.
• New snacks became common such as Coca Cola and Hershey’s chocolate bars.
Spectator sports rose in popularity. (boxing and baseball)
• Baseball – 1869 – first professional team called Cincinnati Red Stockings
• 1876 – National Baseball League and 1900 –American Baseball League
• 1903 – first World Series• Negro National League was formed in
1920
• There were also many other new forms of entertainment.
• Vaudeville theatre formed. These were performances including songs, dancing, juggling, slapstick comedy, chorus lines, etc. became popular.
• The circus of Barnum and Bailey hosted the “Greatest Show on Earth”, 1871.
• The first one-reel movie, 1903. An 8 minute silent feature called “The Great Train Robbery” debuted in 5 cent theatres called nickelodeons.
• Ragtime music blended A-Am. spirituals and European music forms, originated in the south.
• Scott Joplin’s ragtime compositions made him famous in the early 1900’s.
• Ragtime paved the way for jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll.
Joplin
Mass production and circulation of newspapers rose.
U.S. newspapers used sensational headlines to sell papers
• Joseph Pulitzer started the first Sunday newspaper edition, first comics, first sports coverage, and first women’s news page.
• His newspaper was the New York World.
Randolph Hearst
Joseph Pulitzer
• William Randolph Hearst – Pulitzer’s biggest competitor, published scandals and exaggerated stories of sensational events that became known as sensationalism or “yellow journalism”.
• Newspapers also advertised new kinds of shopping.
• Marshall Field’s in Chicago was the first department store.
• Chain stores such as Woolworth’s opened. Sold cheap goods…nickel and dime store.
• Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck brought retail to small towns through catalogs.
• By 1896, the Post Office developed RFD
– rural free delivery to every home.
• Despite this new prosperity, social reform was needed...
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