What old money neighborhoods stayed intact?

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by TempleGuy1000

I bet a common factor to many of the more suburban old money neighborhoods is that they were built around the big parks and/or near the older country clubs.

This is the old money area of Cincinnati that has already been mentioned in this thread. It has two country clubs:


The club on the left is closer to downtown, and is the older of the two. It is semi-famous in the golf world for having an old-school course that hasn't been significantly modified since it was built in 1895. I hadn't looked in a few years but there used to be a few online descriptions of this nutty course, but they've disappeared, and I was only able to find this:


Do you really, really, really, really, really, really like to golf? Ditch your loser old-fashioned in-city club and join us - we've got two 36-hole courses:


And this country club didn't survive...I believe that it's now a park:

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Docere

Cleveland (smaller city limits than Detroit) probably reached 100% wealth flight before any other city.



https://case.edu/ech/articles/s/suburbs

Detroit's large number of annexations in the 1910s and 1920s helped the city to retain elites for a number of decades, otherwise it would have probably seen a wealth flight around the same time as Cleveland. The city of Detroit's land area more than tripled between 1915 and 1926. This gave the city enough land to grow into for the next 2-3 decades before hitting a wall in the 1950s. I believe Cleveland's land area in 1910 was around 77 square miles, which would be 94% of its current day land area of 83 square miles.

[Docere]

Right, Detroit was a late bloomer among the Midwestern/rust belt cities, and it had rather expansive city limits. So relatively little pre-war suburbia.

Housing units built before 1940

Cleveland MSA 22.7%
Detroit MSA 12%

Cleveland suburbs 15.4%
Detroit suburbs 8.2%

http://demographia.com/db-oldhouse.pdf

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I believe Cleveland's land area in 1910 was around 77 square miles, which would be 94% of its current day land area of 83 square miles.

No, Cleveland had large annexation into the 1920s.

Land area from the Census Bureau:

1910: 45.6 mi^2
1920: 56.4
1930: 70.8
1940: 73.1



The key is at the image source.

1910s: FF to SS
1920s: SS to ZZ

In particular, TT is West Park, annexed in 1923.

Although the main wealth flight corridor, Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, had a largely stable city line since 1892 (annexation S).

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Docere

Right, Detroit was a late bloomer among the Midwestern/rust belt cities, and it had rather expansive city limits. So relatively little pre-war suburbia.

Housing units built before 1940

Cleveland MSA 22.7%
Detroit MSA 12%

Cleveland suburbs 15.4%
Detroit suburbs 8.2%

http://demographia.com/db-oldhouse.pdf

The difference is because Detroit built much more postwar suburbia than Cleveland. Cleveland and Detroit had about the same size population in 1910, both city and metro, so their built form would've been about the same then. Detroit also exploded in population between 1910 and 1940, so it probably had a much larger pre-1940 building stock.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

No, Cleveland had large annexation into the 1920s.

Land area from the Census Bureau:

1910: 45.6 mi^2
1920: 56.4
1930: 70.8
1940: 73.1

Got it. I think the point still stands, though. Detroit more than tripled in area, while Cleveland less than doubled.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Got it. I think the point still stands, though. Detroit more than tripled in area, while Cleveland less than doubled.

Yes, Detroit was a more drastic expansion:

1910: 40.8 mi^2
1920: 77.9
1930: 137.9

Also, Cleveland's piecemeal annexation was picking off municipalities that didn't have the concentrated wealth to fend off their neighbor. Lakewood, Bratenahl, Cleveland/Shaker Heights all held firm.

[Docere]

Exclusive municipalities were rare in Canada. This didn't really happen in Canadian cities, except in Montreal.

In Montreal, the wealth shifted from the Golden Square Mile to the independent city of Westmount in the early 20th century.

In Toronto, Forest Hill was the only independent exclusive municipality, which held out from 1923 to 1967. Wealthy neighborhoods were just as likely to be annexed as working class suburbs. Between the 1880s and 1912, the city took in Rosedale, Deer Park and North Toronto, and these areas were built up after the annexation of the land.

And today Westmount (still independent) and Forest Hill (part of Metropolitan Toronto in 1953, and annexed by the city of Toronto in 1967) are really more like wealthy intown neighborhoods than suburbs.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

In 1923, the Gold Coast was basically country, and there weren't even major arterials. Women didn't drive. There were few suburban schools of note. Public school districts were rudimentary and private schools were rare.

I assume you meant to say "northshore" and not "gold Coast", as the gold Coast was built-out in the 1860s -1880s.

In 1923, the northshore was not "the country" anymore. That would have been smack dab in the middle of the area's greatest period of major growth and transformation.

In 1910, the 7 primary lakefront communities of the northshore (Evanston, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, and Lake Forest) had a combined population of 43,427.

And 20 years later in 1930, that figure had swelled to 118,290, an increase of 172%!

In both time periods, roughly half the population was in Evanston itself, a trend that is still roughly true to this day (78K in Evanston in 2020, 100K in the other 6).

And all 7 of the communities had a commuter rail connection to downtown Chicago when the old C&NW north line (now metra's UP-N line) first started running regular commuter trains along the route in 1855 (just a single train each way/day in the early decades, with a much more robust schedule coming on line in the early 20th to accommodate the huge population growth along the route).

The area I grew up in in east Wilmette around the Linden L station (which opened in 1912), was pretty much entirely built out by 1920.

As for schools, ETHS opened in 1883, Highland Park high school opened in 1900, and New Trier opened in 1901.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Detroit's large number of annexations in the 1910s and 1920s helped the city to retain elites for a number of decades, otherwise it would have probably seen a wealth flight around the same time as Cleveland. The city of Detroit's land area more than tripled between 1915 and 1926. This gave the city enough land to grow into for the next 2-3 decades before hitting a wall in the 1950s. I believe Cleveland's land area in 1910 was around 77 square miles, which would be 94% of its current day land area of 83 square miles.

cle’s land area today is 77 sq mi and 5 for water.

note it will likely pick up some or all of brokedown and battered east cleveland at some point when the state dissolves it (or share it w/cle hts), but thats only 3 sq mi..

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Docere

Cleveland (smaller city limits than Detroit) probably reached 100% wealth flight before any other city.



https://case.edu/ech/articles/s/suburbs

i cant think of any wealth concentration in the city of cle proper historically or certainly today after the grand euclid avenue millionaire’s row era ended (1860s-1920s).

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Yes, Detroit was a more drastic expansion:

1910: 40.8 mi^2
1920: 77.9
1930: 137.9

Also, Cleveland's piecemeal annexation was picking off municipalities that didn't have the concentrated wealth to fend off their neighbor. Lakewood, Bratenahl, Cleveland/Shaker Heights all held firm.

lakewood, cle hts and shaker hts are basically extensions of cle. in fact shaker sq itself is in cle city, which even confuses locals.

bratenahl is very small and one of several weird cle metro quirks, being nice lakefront surrounded by the city, but well apart from it. its wealthy, but i would think eastern suburbs much more so.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I assume you meant to say "northshore" and not "gold Coast", as the gold Coast was built-out in the 1860s -1880s.

In 1923, the northshore was not "the country" anymore. That would have been smack dab in the middle of the area's greatest period of major growth and transformation.

In 1910, the 7 primary lakefront communities of the northshore (Evanston, Wilmette, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, and Lake Forest) had a combined population of 43,427.

And 20 years later in 1930, that figure had swelled to 118,290, an increase of 172%!

And all 7 of the communities had a commuter rail connection to downtown Chicago when the old C&NW north line (now metra's UP-N line) first started running regular commuter trains along the route in 1855 (just a single train each way/day in the early decades, with a much more robust schedule coming on line in the early 20th to accommodate the huge population growth along the route).

The area I grew up in in east Wilmette around the Linden L station (opened in 1912), was pretty much entirely built out by 1920.

As for schools, ETHS opened in 1883, Highland Park high school opened in 1900, and New Trier opened in 1901.

Southern Westchester and the North Shore lakefront municipalities were built up around the same time.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

cle’s land area today is 77 sq mi and 5 for water.

note it will likely pick up some or all of brokedown and battered east cleveland at some point when the state dissolves it (or share it w/cle hts), but thats only 3 sq mi..

Got it. I tried to shortcut and ask ChatGPT but it let me down lol.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Docere

Southern Westchester and the North Shore lakefront municipalities were built up around the same time.

Cook County North Shore (Evanston and New Trier) are roughly equivalent to Southern Westchester. But Lake County is much newer.

Westchester, by 1930, had more than half of its current population. Lake County reached that stage by 1970.

And a lot of those older communities were still pretty rural. Railroad suburbs had very old neighborhoods in walking distance to the train station. But further out it was still country. Wilmette near the train station is very old, but West Wilmette is fully postwar and built around the auto. West Wilmette was probably farmland/woods with rural services until the postwar decades. Households had one car and women didn't drive so you generally had to be walking distance to train and shops/amenities.

[TempleGuy1000]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

This is the old money area of Cincinnati that has already been mentioned in this thread. It has two country clubs:


The club on the left is closer to downtown, and is the older of the two. It is semi-famous in the golf world for having an old-school course that hasn't been significantly modified since it was built in 1895. I hadn't looked in a few years but there used to be a few online descriptions of this nutty course, but they've disappeared, and I was only able to find this:

Cinci is a fascinating place. I hope to make it out there one day. It has all the hallmarks of a classic American city.

[Docere]

The 1922 Chicago Social Register:

https://archive.org/details/socialre...ge/14/mode/2up

[Docere]

A very quick glance suggests that about 70% of the Chicago elite lived in the city of Chicago in 1922. I'm assuming they're mostly Gold Coast - were there any other rich neighborhoods in Chicago then?

Among the suburbs, high representation in Evanston, Winnetka and Lake Forest.

[Crawford]

Most of the Chicago addresses on the register are in the Gold Coast. Right around Astor and the immediate lakefront blocks where Michigan Ave. ends. Astor, even today, is possibly the most prestigious Chicago street.

And yeah, Evanston seems heavily represented. It's an old town. Evanston was/is socioeconomically diverse, but the lakefront areas are rich.

I don't see much of Winnetka, Glencoe, Kenilworth and further out, but I just did a quick scan. Also I don't see Hinsdale, which is probably the most prestigious suburb outside of the North Shore.

[Docere]

It's probably a little early, a lot of the old-line establishmentarian suburbs grew quickly in the 1920s. A decade later, there's likely much more suburban representation.