Great Lakes Cities

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I never thought about it that way before, but I wonder if giant, cheap tracts of flat land with direct great lakes access played a role in why the big steel mills got built in NW Indiana in the early 20th century, setting the table for the region to eventually eclipse the Pittsburg area as America's steel-making epicenter.

It's the "Industrial Valley" dilemma. If landowners know where development is headed, they can play holdout, which drives up costs both with the slowness of the process and the higher actual costs.

It should be pretty clear in this link how industry (mostly postwar light industry) came to dominate the shallow valley that connects Cincinnati with the expanses of flat land north of the city:
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.3034.../data=!3m1!1e3

This area always had several railroads but it didn't have rapid transit and so was difficult for city residents without cars to access. The Rapid Transit Loop from the 1920s would have improved access to this area for many city residents, but it still wouldn't have been a one-seat ride.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Wikipedia doesn't have population figures for those independent south side municipalities, but here's the combined Pittsburgh/Allegheny population:

1840: 31,204
1850: 67,863
1860: 77,923
1870: 139,256
1880: 235,071

So, 1840 seems out of the question.

It could've crossed over 100K in 1850, but were 1/3 of "Pittsburghers" really living in those southside communities as early as 1850?

1860 seems more plausible to me.

Allegheny County's total population in 1850 was only 138,000, so there's no way that 100,000 people lived within modern Pittsburgh city limits.

Important to note though Cook County still had only 43,000 people at that time, and Cook County only looped past Allegheny by 1870.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Got some fresh Lake Erie perch fish and chips, tonight. They catch the fish on Lake Erie and process it right in Port Colborne, Ontario. One can also get fresh perch and pickerel fillets.
https://minorfisheries.net/

one of the small benefits of life in the Great Lakes region.

stock photo Minor's Fish and Chips

Excellent! I get this in Port Stanley (Lake Erie) a few times/year.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Excellent! I get this in Port Stanley (Lake Erie) a few times/year.

I have yet to make it to Port Stanley. I've heard they have an amazing beach. I've never really ventured West of Port Dover/Simcoe/Delhi along the lake
Are there any other lakefront villages/towns you recommend on the north shore of Lake Erie?

[edale]

Originally Posted by pj3000

In Pittsburgh the land along all the rivers was basically granted to the railroads... which then partnered with mills to locate on "their" land to build steel rails for them. They never really paid for the land. The birth of the American steel industry was really driven by the railroads. It's no coincidence that Andrew Carnegie's first jobs were with the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Additionally, flat land in Pittsburgh is more extensive than one might think. It's just all located along all the rivers. It's not very wide tracts of land, but it's long, winding all over the region. That's why there were so damn many gigantic mills and factories in western PA, eastern OH, and northern WV.

People know the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers, but there's also the Beaver, Kiskiminetas, Youghiogheny, and Chartiers valleys... all of which were/are heavily industrial.

Weren't those locations susceptible to flooding? Cincinnati similarly has flat land right along the Ohio River, but it regularly floods, so it isn't where huge job clusters were established. There is still industry located right on the river, but it's somewhat limited. The main industrial area and rail yards in Cincy are several miles north of the river, located along the Mill Creek, rather than right on the river.

It's not just the Ohio, either. The Little Miami floods all the time, which has led to a pretty undeveloped wedge of land on the east side of the city: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ci...16zL20vMDFzbm0

More or less the same situation on the western edge of Hamilton County where the Great Miami river hits the Ohio: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ci...16zL20vMDFzbm0

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Wigs

I have yet to make it to Port Stanley. I've heard they have an amazing beach. I've never really ventured West of Port Dover/Simcoe/Delhi along the lake
Are there any other lakefront villages/towns you recommend on the north shore of Lake Erie?

Port Stanley has two good beaches. One is huge. There is also Port Bruce. Long Point (Provincial Park) has a great beach. Turkey Point is good. Best of all is Point Pelee.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Wikipedia doesn't have population figures for those independent south side municipalities, but here's the combined Pittsburgh/Allegheny population:

1840: 31,204
1850: 67,863
1860: 77,923
1870: 139,256
1880: 235,071

So, 1840 seems out of the question.

It could've crossed over 100K in 1850, but were 1/3 of "Pittsburghers" really living in those southside communities as early as 1850?

1860 seems more plausible to me.

Yeah, 1850 might be a bit overzealous. But I definitely think it's possible that it could have been 100k within the decade. Likely not 1/3 by 1850, but as a rather rudimentary 1855 map shows, it was a significant part of the city in a practical sense.



A good portion of the city of Pittsburgh's population jump from the 1870s to 1880s was the annexation of the south side boroughs of Birmingham, East Birmingham, West Pittsburgh, South Pittsburgh, Ormsby, Monongahela, and West End in the 1870s. Obviously not a definitive rendering below, but we can still get an idea that by this time (1871), Birmingham, et. al. had already been well established and densely populated.

Originally Posted by eschaton

Allegheny County's total population in 1850 was only 138,000, so there's no way that 100,000 people lived within modern Pittsburgh city limits.

Not sure why this would be so far-fetched. Where else in Allegheny County was there significant population in 1850?

Even if you added up all the people in Millvale, Etna, Sharpsburg, McKeesport, Chartiers, Sewickley, Bellevue, Braddock, Homestead, and Verona areas back then, I don't think you'd even get to 38,000. And those were really the only other centers of population. What am I missing here?

[ChiSoxRox]

Here's the 1850 Census returns for Allegheny County:

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Here's the 1850 Census returns for Allegheny County:

I come up with around 87,000 people counting all of the municipalities I know joined Pittsburgh wholesale, though that's a bit of an underestimate, because some of the still existing townships also shrunk over time.

Certainly it was above 100,000 by 1860 though.

[Wigs]

Can we all agree that Pittsburgh surpassed 100k by 1860?
since we don't know the exact date

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by eschaton

.
Important to note though Cook County still had only 43,000 people at that time, and Cook County only looped past Allegheny by 1870.

Yeah, Chicago kinda blitzkrieged the other interior cities in its sprint to become the alpha-dog.

It's probably the 19th century's ultimate example of an "instant city".

In 1830 it was a mostly irrelevant muddy little frontier swamp village of about 100 people, and 3 decades later it had 100K people! And then 3 decades after that, it had 1M people! becoming the second largest city in the nation in the process.

Marsh to Metropolis in only 60 years.


The river cities like Cincy, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh all had slower germinations relative to Chicago, though still quite fast in the grand scheme of things.

Chicago was just a freaking lightning bolt flashing outta nowhere.

Originally Posted by Wigs

Can we all agree that Pittsburgh surpassed 100k by 1860?
since we don't know the exact date

Yeah, I don't think anyone is gonna dispute that present day Pittsburgh's city borders contained more than 100K by 1860.

[Wigs]

Buffalo Remakes its Museum in its Own Image
With a renowned collection of modern and contemporary art, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum has taken local concerns to heart in a $230 million transformation.

The New York Times
By Hilarie M. Sheets
April 27, 2023

BUFFALO — After three and a half years and $230 million, a transformed museum here is about to open amid hopes that it will meet the expectations of a population far different from the one that greeted the original more than 160 years ago.

Founded in 1862 by artists and so-called “Buffalo boosters,” the institution known as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery has been renamed the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and expanded and renovated by Shohei Shigematsu of the architectural firm OMA. It plans to welcome the public beginning June 12.

Since receiving its first painting in 1863, a landscape by the Hudson River painter Albert Bierstadt donated by the artist, the institution has been early to acquire works by Henry Moore, Joan Miró, Mark Rothko, Frida Kahlo, Willem de Kooning, Marisol, Andy Warhol and Mark Bradford, among others, amassing a modern and contemporary collection of international renown.

While abutting the edge of Delaware Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, “the existing complex was so inward-looking,” said Mr. Shigematsu. He positioned his transparent contemporary building on the museum’s former parking area — now underground — and created a new lawn in front as a welcome gesture.

“Our scheme really reinstates the idea that this museum is in the park,” said Mr. Shigematsu, who has connected his new structure to one end of the original building with a serpentine glass bridge that floats amid oak trees and offers shifting views of the campus, park and city.

Inside the exhibition galleries, now double the space at 50,000 square feet, some 400 works from the collection are displayed chronologically, starting in the neoclassical building (with a new roof and warm red oak replacing cracked marble flooring) and wending through the three floors of the new building (named for the financier Jeffrey E. Gundlach, who contributed $65 million to the capital campaign).

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/a...transformation.

The original neoclassical Albright building was completed in 1905 by local Buffalo firm Green & Wicks, known for many buildings across Buffalo and other cities. It's been said that 20,000 tons of marble was used in its construction. The Knox addition by SOM's Gordon Bunshaft was completed in 1962 and now the Gundlach addition by Shohei Shigematsu of OMA in 2023.
The gallery has an impressive collection: Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Georgia O'Keeffe, Salvador Dalí, etc.

ArchDaily has a gallery of 15 photos showing renderings of the Buffalo AKG museum expansion
https://www.archdaily.com/993001/oma...may-2023-image

here's the Google streetview, across from recently renamed Buffalo State University and the Burchfield Penney Art Center
https://goo.gl/maps/3eFPubvqzzaBpDq79

I'm looking forward to visiting the museum in the summer

[Velvet_Highground]

Chicago’s rise to greatness really is something spectacular the city had just finished establishing itself as a major city at the right time and place to take off like a rocket. It’s location was able to harness the Great Lakes trade of ore from the highlands around Lake Superior coal and later oil from around Lake Erie while established as the major western GL port.

All this at the right time to use its location & increasing center of gravity to take advantage as the eastern terminus for raw materials flowing in from the plains & west while being the western distribution hub for finished goods from the north & east. The rapid need for the Union to industrialize during the civil war to meet the demands of the total war economy in a severed national economic state imo was one of the key factors Chicago becoming Chicago.

Due to all the factors involved above and it’s position as the major western port on the SW traveling “inner coast” of North America allowed the city to solidify its gains as boomtown and by natural forces & innovative ones become the financial hub for the center of the country along with competing with SF for the inter mountain region.

In a way I kind of look at the growth of Chicago as being a crossover hybrid between the traditional pre-civil war river/canal city being a transit point between the rivers & lake through the trade never materialized as it might have in an earlier area if given time. There was a quick seemles transition to a Great Lakes industrial boomtown of the civil war & reconstruction era. While at the same time becoming the great inner port/hub for immigration which positioned the city well to become a cradle, home & or base to many of the great trusts of the builder age.

Chicago is quite unique that it not only didn’t miss out on a boom but was one of the primary beneficiaries of them for over 100 years from the late antebellum period to the late post war period. It’s interesting and perhaps very telling to look at the challenges that the modern era presents Chicago and how its assets help or improve its position or stymie it. The city suffered the same deindustrialization that northern and eastern cities did in the late post war era and early modern though perhaps more so than some east coast cities like NY or Boston. The AC boom in the sunbelt & west also put negative pressure on the city. While in the early modern era 80-00 its position as a major financial center saw a significant growth in wealth from its elites much like NY helped cushion things.

Though much of the money in the system causing the stock market boom of the 80 & later venture capital boom into tech and .com start ups came from vulture capitalists using pension funds. These assets established by the post war industrial boom were used as collateral on loans to in some cases force hostile takeovers of the great old industrial enterprises. Unprofitable assets were stripped apart or sold off from these companies while every penny was squeezed out of production some in innovative ways such as automation others in ways that replicated conditions of the gilded age for workers overseas. The lamentations of the former paternalistic view of such companies towards their hometowns such as steel in Pittsburgh & Gary or autos in Detroit & Flint (part willingly and part forced concessions by unions) can be traced to this period of economic development.

Looking for the upshot besides the social, political instability & corruption due to the huge growth in equalities while the middle class stagnated I think is well represented in the case study between Chicago & Detroit two cities which were often spoken in the same breath for positive reasons and similarities post ww1 to mid-cold was. Chicago established solidified itself on the world stage by using international expositions such as the world’s fair to show itself off establishing a reputation. The city’s period of growth was longer and extending further back into the pre-auto age allowing for more time to develop solid infrastructure civic & mass transit, internationally renowned architectural monuments giving the city a face to the world that shined during tough times.

While for naysayers Chicago does have some of the same problems of the industrial MW & coastal elites due to overvalued housing pushed up by foreign investors looking for safe havens for their hard earned money in difficult systems or to launder corruption into clean greenbacks. The city has very solid fundamentals civic, infrastructure, educational & institutional fundamentals as a world class city that along with one of the key locations along the Great Lakes “inner north american coast”. Solid set up for the future as long as we keep our republic, whose institutions have been quite resilient.

Gone a little off topic but the interplay between the river boomtowns of old and the transitions from one phase to another and what factors are tailwinds for success and which can be successful in one period and seen as a headwind in the next are fascinating and important to understand for our future.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Wigs

Got some fresh Lake Erie perch fish and chips, tonight. They catch the fish on Lake Erie and process it right in Port Colborne, Ontario. One can also get fresh perch and pickerel fillets.
https://minorfisheries.net/

one of the small benefits of life in the Great Lakes region.

stock photo Minor's Fish and Chips

Where's the processing plant in Port Colborne?

Is this the type of fish they use for all those fish fries on Fridays?

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

Is this the type of fish they use for all those fish fries on Fridays?

i can't speak for lake erie, but over here on the western shores of lake michigan, friday night fish fries are traditionally lake perch or walleye.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

Where's the processing plant in Port Colborne?

Is this the type of fish they use for all those fish fries on Fridays?

Atlantic haddock is by far the most popular. Cod and halibut to a lesser extent.

But in Port Colborne and some other restaurants throughout Niagara, thanks in part to Minor fisheries it's easier to find Lake Erie perch and pickerel/walleye on the menu.

I'm not sure why Buffalo/Western NY doesn't eat the fish caught mere miles from downtown Buffalo. Maybe they don't have a local supplier

The processing plant is on Elm Street, on the north end of the city where a lot of light/med industry is located.
https://minorfisheries.net/mobile/processing.html

https://maps.app.goo.gl/VG6GKjoZSV7iKo3U9

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Velvet_Highground

Looking for the upshot besides the social, political instability & corruption due to the huge growth in equalities while the middle class stagnated I think is well represented in the case study between Chicago & Detroit two cities which were often spoken in the same breath for positive reasons and similarities post ww1 to mid-cold was. Chicago established solidified itself on the world stage by using international expositions such as the world’s fair to show itself off establishing a reputation. The city’s period of growth was longer and extending further back into the pre-auto age allowing for more time to develop solid infrastructure civic & mass transit, internationally renowned architectural monuments giving the city a face to the world that shined during tough times.

yes, chicago got a lot bigger a lot faster than detroit did in the 19th century.

detroit's "explosion period" was really more of an early 20th century thing, coinciding with the boom in the automobile that the city birthed into being.

check out their growth curves up until 1930:





chicago was already over 2M people before the model T was even a thing.

[Crawford]

Right, Detroit was (for Midwest standards of the era) relatively middling growth until the auto boom. It was smaller and less important than Cleveland, Cincy, Buffalo, St. Louis. Once it boomed, however, it was arguably the preeminent U.S. boomtown for a short stretch, then replaced by LA.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It was smaller and less important than Cleveland, Cincy, Buffalo, St. Louis.

and Pittsburgh.


detroit was almost exactly the same size as Milwaukee in the 19th century, all the way up until 1900, when henry ford drove the city into the stratosphere.


1840:
Detroit: 9,102
Milwaukee: 1,700



1850:
Detroit: 21,019
Milwaukee: 20,061



1860:
Detroit: 45,619
Milwaukee: 45,246



1870:
Detroit: 79,577
Milwaukee: 71,440



1880:
Detroit: 116,340
Milwaukee: 115,587



1890:
Detroit: 205,876
Milwaukee: 204,468



1900:
Detroit: 285,704
Milwaukee: 285,315



then, the great divergence began


1910:
Detroit: 465,766
Milwaukee: 373,857



1920:
Detroit: 993,678
Milwaukee: 457,147



1930:
Detroit: 1,568,662
Milwaukee: 578,249

[Wigs]

Chicago's boom town growth is hard to comprehend. Over 2M before the automobile became a viable product.

Poor Detroit must be one of the quickest rises and falls of any city in history of the last few centuries. It's still hard for me to comprehend with Billions in downtown redevelopment it's still losing population.