Fear, Commercialism, Reform, and Antebellum Tourism to New York City

Abstract

Tourism to New York grew after the 1820s, during a period of incredible growth in the size of the city and its attendant problems. As the contrast between the glittering commercialism of Broadway and the rapidly worsening Five Points neighborhood increased, tourists became both witnesses to and subjects of the city’s best and worst aspects. A key role was played by Charles Dickens, whose 1842 visit to the city helped create a national sense of both the best and worst it had, and as the 1850s turned, the popular literature began presenting tourists as the inevitable victims of the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhood. Tourism now became an engine fueling both the forces wanting to reform Five Points and as some of its best customers, and by the end of the decade, the nation’s image of New York had been set in the mind of Americans, creating preconceptions that continue to this day.

The Racist Anti‐Racism of American Anthropology

“…The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) had carefully selected Bella and Madeline to be “placed out.” Charles Loring Brace, the founder of the society, began placing out orphaned, abandoned, surrendered, and removed children with new families in 1854. He was an idealistic theologian who responded to the estimated 30,000 homeless children who experienced punishing poverty, wretched housing, infectious disease, and paralyzing immobility in midcentury New York (Gassan 2015, 1080) 2…”

“…Charles Loring Brace, the founder of the society, began placing out orphaned, abandoned, surrendered, and removed children with new families in 1854. He was an idealistic theologian who responded to the estimated 30,000 homeless children who experienced punishing poverty, wretched housing, infectious disease, and paralyzing immobility in midcentury New York (Gassan 2015(Gassan , 1080. 2 Brace outlined the organization's goals and mission in its "first circular," which began with a lament that "something must be done to meet the increasing crime and poverty among the destitute children of New York" (Brace 1894, 489).…”