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Business, Democracy, and Progressive Reform in the Redevelopment of Baltimore after the Great Fire of 1904

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

Christine Meisner Rosen
Christine Meisner Rosen
Affiliation:
Christine Meisner Rosen is assistant professor of business administration at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.
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Abstract

The following article reexamines the role of business leaders in the structural reform of American city government during the Progressive Era. In presenting a careful analysis of the fate of redevelopment plans after Baltimore's great 1904 fire, this case study argues against an unsophisticated good guy/bad guy approach to urban and business history. Historians are urged, however, not to abandon attempts to make reasoned moral judgments concerning the consequences of structural reform, but rather to base those efforts on a recognition of the deepening complexity of twentieth-century urban society.

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Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 63 , Issue 2: Real Estate in Business History , Summer 1989 , pp. 283 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1989

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References

1 Williams, Harold A., Baltimore Afire (Baltimore, Md., 1954)Google Scholar, and the city newspapers for 8–11 Feb. 1904 provide detailed accounts of the fire and the destruction it caused. See also Fire Department, “Annual Report,” Reports of the City Officers and Departments to the City Council of Baltimore [hereafter BRCOD], 1904, 18–19.

2 Rosen, Christine Meisner, The Limits of Power: Great Fires and the Process of City Growth in America (New York, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 8. See also Crooks, James B., Politics and Progress: The Rise of Urban Progressivism in Baltimore, 1895 to 1911 (Baton Rouge, La., 1968).Google Scholar

3 Hays, Samuel P., “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 55 (Oct. 1964): 166–82Google Scholar; Weinstein, James, “Organized Business and the City Commissioner and Management Movements,” Journal of Southern History 28 (May 1962): 166–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weinstein, , The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900–1918 (Boston, 1968), xi–xv, 92–116.Google Scholar See also Hays, , “Conservation and the Structure of American Politics: The Progressive Era,” in The West of the American People, ed. Bogue, Allan G., Phillips, Thomas D., and Wright, James E. (Itasca, Ill., 1970).Google Scholar

4 Hays, “The Politics of Reform,” 160, 163.

5 Holli, Melvin G., Reform in Detroit: Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics (New York, 1969)Google Scholar, chap. 8.

6 Ebner, Michael H. and Tobin, Eugene M., eds., The Age of Urban Reform: New Perspectives on the Progressive Era (Port Washington, N.Y., 1977), 170.Google Scholar

7 For valuable guides to the historiographical literature on municipal Progressive reform inspired by Hays and Weinstein, see Ebner and Tobin, The Age of Urban Reform, 156–72. See also the historiographical review in Rice, Bradley Robert, Progressive Cities: The Commission Government Movement in America, 1901–1920 (Austin, Texas, 1977)Google Scholar, xi–xvii. For a classic summary of Holli's version of the structural reform theory see: Callow, Alexander, ed., American Urban History: An Interpretive Reader with Commentaries (New York, 1973), 217–18.Google Scholar For some notable examples of studies that use these conceptual categories as an analytical framework, see the essays in Ebner and Tobin, The Age of Reform, and Rice, Progressive Cities; Buenker, John D., Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

8 For examples and bibliographic background on the quantitative studies, see Bernard, Richard M. and Rice, Bradley R., “Political Environment and the Adoption of Progressive Municipal Reform,” Journal of Urban History 1 (Feb. 1975): 149–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rice, Progressive Cities. See also Scheiner, Seth, “Commission Government in the Progressive Era: The New Brunswick, New Jersey, Example,” Journal of Urban History 12 (Feb. 1986): 157–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For examples of the more impressionistic critiques see the essays in Ebner and Tobin, The Age of Urban Reform.

9 Schiesl, Martin, The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal Administration and Reform in America 1880–1920 (Berkeley, Calif., 1977)Google Scholar, Fox, Kenneth, Better City Government: Innovation in American Urban Politics (Philadelphia, Pa., 1977).Google Scholar See also Frisch, Michael H., “Urban Theorists, Urban Reform, and American Political Culture in the Progressive Period,” Political Science Quarterly 97 (Summer 1982): 295–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Teaford, Jon C., The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870–1900 (Baltimore, Md., 1984).Google Scholar Buenker, Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform, makes the case that machine politicians and their working-class immigrant constituents also supported reform, including some kinds of structural reform.

10 Schiesl, Politics of Efficiency, especially 8–24, 98–99, 126–28, 146–47, 189–98. Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph, chap. 7, is far less critical of business, but Teaford does not address the issue of business involvement in structural reform.

11 McDonald, Terrence J., The Parameters of Urban Fiscal Policy: Socioeconomic Change and Political Culture in San Francisco, 1860–1906 (Berkeley, Calif, 1986).Google Scholar For more on the emerging critique of the Haysian interpretation urban political machine see Brown, M. Craig and Halaby, Charles N., “Machine Politics in America 1870–1945,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17 (Winter 1987): 587–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Robin Einhorn, “The Civil War and Municipal Government in Chicago” (unpublished paper, Department of History, University of California at Berkeley, 1989).

12 Teaford, Jon C., “Finis for Tweed and Steffens: Rewriting the History of Urban Rule,” Reviews in American History 10 (Dec. 1982): 133–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frisch, Michael, “Oyez, Oyez, Oyez: The Recurring Case of Plunkett v. Steffens” Journal of Urban History 7 (Feb. 1981): 205–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thelen, David P., “Urban Politics: Bevond Bosses and Reformers,” Reviews in American History 7 (June 1979): 406–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hays, Samuel P., “The Changing Political Structure of the City in Industrial America,” Journal of Urban History 1 (Nov. 1974): 6–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dorsett, Lyle W., “The City Boss and the Reformer: A Reappraisal,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 63 (Oct. 1972): 150–54.Google Scholar

13 McDonald, Terrence, “Putting Politics Back into the History of the American City,” American Quarterly 34 (Summer 1982): 200–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McDonald, , “The Problem of the Political in Recent American Urban History: Liberal Pluralism and the Rise of Functionalism,” Social History 10 (Oct. 1985): 323–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hays's evolution into a structural functionalist is revealed in his collection of essays, American Political History as Social Analysis: Essays by Samuel P. Hays (Knoxville, Tenn., 1980).

14 Weiss, Marc A., The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry and Urban Land Planning (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; Keating, Ann Durkin, Building Chicago: Suburban Developers and the Creation of a Divided Metropolis (Columbus, Ohio, 1988)Google Scholar; Edel, Matthew, Sclar, Elliot D., and Luria, Daniel, Shah Palaces: Homeownership and Social Mobility in Boston's Suburbanization (New York, 1984)Google Scholar; Wade, Louise Carroll, Chicago Pride: The Stockyards, Packingtown, and Environs in the Nineteenth Century (Urbana, Ill., 1987)Google Scholar; Platt, Harold L., City Planning in the New South: The Growth of Public Services in Houston, Texas, 1830–1910 (Philadelphia, Pa., 1983)Google Scholar; Rosen, Limits of Power.

15 Blackford, Mansel, “Civic Groups, Political Action, and City Planning in Seattle, 1892–1915,” Pacific Historical Review 19 (Nov. 1980), 557–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blackford, , “The Lost Dream: Businessmen and City Planning in Portland, Oregon, 1903–1914,” Western Historical Quarterly 15 (Jan. 1984): 39–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blackford, The Lost Dream: Businessmen and Urban Planning in Pacific Coast Cities, 1890–1920 (unpublished ms., 1987); Kahn, Judd, Imperial San Francisco: Politics and Planning in an American City, 1897–1906 (Lincoln, Nebr. 1979)Google Scholar; Weiss, The Eise of the Community Builders; Boyer, Christine, Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning (Cambridge, Mass., 1983)Google Scholar; Fogelsong, Richard, Planning the Capitalist City: The Colonial Era to the 1920s (Princeton, N.J., 1986).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For more general Marxist perspectives on city building, see also Ciucci, Giorgio et al. , The American City: From-the Civil War to the New Deal, trans. Penta, Barbara Luigia La (Italian original, 1973Google Scholar; Cambridge, Mass., 1979); Tafuri, Manfredo, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, trans. La Penta, Barbara Luigia (Italian original, 1973Google Scholar; Cambridge, Mass., 1976). The standard history of city planning, which has virtually nothing to say about the role of business people, is Scott, Mel, American City Planning since 1890 (Berkeley, Calif., 1969).Google Scholar

16 McDonald, “The Problem of the Political in Recent American Urban History,” 342.

17 Ibid., 343.

18 Hays's own recent work is a dramatic exemplification of this, as McDonald points out in ibid. Contrast his “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government in the Progressive Era” with “The Changing Political Structure of the City in Industrial America.” For a very recent example of a structural functionalist treatment of Progressive reform, see Monkkonen, Eric H., America Becomes Urban: The Development of Cities attd Towns 1780–1980 (Berkeley, Calif, 1988).Google Scholar Note that Monkkonen essentially avoids discussing Progressive reform as such, as well as the conflict between bosses and reformers. Instead he discusses abstract patterns of political activity and changes in municipal finance and the provision of public services between about 1880 and 1920. An exception to this pattern is Platt, City Building in the New South. Platt discusses city politics and reform in detail. In the process, he establishes the foundation for a critique of the structural reform theory, one that would relate directly to city building and city planning and that would, I think, potentially be consonant with the one offered here, if fully developed. However, he runs out of steam once his businessmen finally achieve structural reform, and he falls back on the conceptual categories developed earlier by Hays and Weinstein in assessing the significance of the commission form of city government in Houston. Another exception is Schiener, “Commission Government in the Progressive Era,” which, however, only indirectly concerns city planning. Also of interest is McCormick, Richard L., “The Discovery that Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of Progressivism,” American Historical Review 86 (April 1981): 247–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Flanagan, Maureen A., “Charter Reform in Chicago: Political Culture and Urban Progressive Reform,” Journal of Urban History 12 (Feb. 1986): 109–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Rosen, Limits of Power, 249–95, 315–21.

20 For additional detail on conditions in Baltimore readers should consult Rosen, Limits of Power, chap. 8.

21 For problems with the streets in 1904 see “Report of the Sub-Committee on Street Improvements,” in Burnt District Commission, “Semi-Annual Report for the Six Months Ending September 11, 1906,” BRCOD, 1906, 44–45 [hereafter all Burnt District Commission Reports will be referred to as BDC, “Report … (date)”]. See also Baltimore Sun, 5, 27 March 1904; Bakimon American, 13 April 1904. For history of the street system, see “Mayor's Address” and the City Commissioners, “Annual Report,” Reports of the City Officers and Departments to the City Council of Baltimore, 1867–1903.

22 For discussion of long-term conflict between the Water Board and the Fire Department, see Fire Department, “Annual Report,” BRCOD, 1872, 1875, 1880–1902, 1905, and Water Board, “Annual Report,” BRCOD, 1872, 1876, 1882, 1896, 1902, 1903, 1905.

23 For histoty of the problems with the overhead electric utility wires and poles, see “Mayor's Address,” BRCOD, 1885, 1886, 1889, 1891, 1894, 1897, and Fire Department, “Annual Report,” BRCOD, 1887, 1889, 1891, 1894, 1897, and Electric Subway Commission, “Annual Report,” BRCOD, 1894–1905.

24 For complaints about lack of parks and open space, see Baltimore Sun, 13, 17 Feb. 1904; Baltimore American, 11 Feb. 1904.

25 For detailed history of the development, repair, and ongoing problems with the city's sewerage and drainage, see City Commissioners, “Annual Report,” Board of Health, “Annual Report,” and “Mayor's Address,” all in BRCOD, 1867–1906. See also Sewerage Commis sioners “Annual Report,” BRCOD, 1898–1906; and Baltimore American, 19 Feb. 1904.

26 For history of problems with the Inner Harbor, see Board, Harbor, “Annual Report,” BRCOD, 1867–1904Google Scholar; also “Mayor's Address,” BRCOD, 1887, 78. The lack of space between the piers impeded dredging as early as 1873 (“Mayor's Address,” 1873, 36–37). For descriptions of conditions in 1904, see Baltimore Sun, 4–5 March, 5–15 May 1904.

27 For further discussion of the problems of conflict and government institutions, see Rosen, Limits of Power, chaps. 3 and 8, and Rosen, , “Infrastructural Improvement in Nineteenth Centurv Cities: A Conceptual Framework and Cases,” Journal of Urban History 12 (May 1986): 211–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Rosen, Limits of Power.

29 Baltimore Sun, 9 Feb. 1904; Baltimore World, 11 Feb. 1904; BDC, “Report … September 11, 1906,” 33; Crooks, Politics and Progress, 30, 141–43.

30 BDC, “Report … September 11, 1906,” 33; “Report of Sub-Committee on Street Improvements,” 44–45. See also Baltimore Sun, 20 Feb. 1904. For a fuller discussion of the activities undertaken by supporters of the plans to achieve their implementation, see Rosen, Limits of Power, chap. 8. The purpose of the summary provided here is to furnish the basis for discussion of issues that could not be discussed in the context of the book.

31 Bakimon Sun, 20, 23, 27, 28 Feb. 1904; 2 March 1904.

32 Babimon Sun, 19–21, 23, 26–27 Feb. 1904; Baltimore American, 16, 20 Feb. 1904.

33 Bakimon Sun, 5 March 1904.

34 Ibid., 28 Feb., 3 March 1904; Baltimon American, 28 Feb. 1904.

35 Baltimon Sun, 1–3 March 1904; Baltimon American, 1–2 March 1904.

36 Baltimore American, 4–5 March 1904.

37 Ibid.; also Baltimore Sun, 5 March 1904.

38 Baltimore American, 5 March 1904; Laws of Maryland, 1904, chaps. 87, 444.

39 Baltimore Sim, 23 Feb.-3 March 1904.

40 Laws of Maryland, 1904, chap. 87.

41 Ibid.; also, Bakimon American, 20, 26 Feb., 2 March 1904; Baltimore Sun, 28 Feb., 12, 24 March 1904.

42 Baltimore Sun, 12 March 1904.

43 BDC, “Report … September 11, 1906,” 34; Baltimore American, 13, 16, 18 March 1904.

44 Baltimore American, 18 March 1904.

45 Ibid., 20–25 March 1904.

46 Ibid., 27 March 1904.

47 Baltimore Sun, 25 March, 14 April 1904; Baltimore American, 24 March 1904.

48 Baltimore American, 28 April, 19 May 1904; Baltimmx Sun, 7, 20 May 1904.

49 Baltimore World, 26 March 1904; Baltimore American, 29 March 1904; Baltimore Sun, 29 March 1904; Baltimore Morning Herald, 30 March 1904.

50 Baltimore American, 29 March 1904.

51 Ibid., 30 March 1904; also Bakimon Sun, 30 March 1904; Baltimore World, 30 March 1904; Baltimore Morning Herald, 30 March 1904.

52 Baltimore American, 1 April 1904; also Baltimore Sun, 1 April 1904; Baltimore World, 1 April 1904; Baltimore Morning Herald, 1 April 1904.

53 Baltimore American, 1–3 April 1904; Baltimore Sun, 1 April 1904; 3 April 1904.

54 Baltimore American, 2 April 1904; 5–6 April 1904.

55 Ibid., 15 April, 5, 7, 11 May 1904.

56 Ibid., 5, 7 May 1904; Baltimore Sun, 7 May 1904.

57 Baltimore Sun, 12–13 May 1904; Baltimore American, 13 April 1904.

58 Baltimore American, 11–17 May 1904; Baltimore Sun, 10–16 May 1904.

59 Baltimore American, 14, 17 May 1904.

60 Ibid., 18 May 1904.

61 It is hard to be precise about this, but for evidence that Balitimoreans passed a bond issue that earmarked money for the widening of Fayette Street from Calven to Liberty, see “Mayor's Address,” BRCOD, 1888. For discussion of delays in implementing this widening, see “Mayor's Address,” BRCOD, 1892. For more discussion of'the need to widen streets in downtown and the immediately surrounding (mostly slum) area and the difficulty of doing so, see “Mayor's Address,” BRCOD, 1889, 1890. For information on the lack of street widening in the downtown area, see Commissioners for Opening Streets, “Annual Report,” BRCOD, 1867–98.

62 BDC, “Report … September 11, 1906,” 28–29.

63 Baltimore Sun, 10 Aug., 9 Nov. 1904; Baltimore American, 23 March, 13 May 1904.

64 Baltimore American, 31 May-3 June 1904; Baltimore Sun, 31 May-3 June 1904.

65 Baltimore Sun, 24–25, 27–29 Nov., 4, 6 Dec. 1904; 13 Jan., 16 Feb. 1905; Baltimore American, 30 Nov.–1 Dec, 6–7 Dec. 1904; 29 Jan. 1905.

66 Hall, Clayton Colman, ed., Baltimore: Its History and Its People (New York, 1912), 286–87Google Scholar; Crooks, Politics and Progress, 143, 195–236.

67 Crooks, Politics and Progress, 143, 195–236.

68 Schiesl, Politics of Efficiency; Fox, Better City Government.

69 Crooks, Politics and Progress, especially chap. 7 and 224–34.

70 For contemporary discussion of the city's long history of sewerage and drainage problems, see Cirv Commissioners, “Annual Report,” Board of Health, “Annual Report,” and Mayor's Address, “Annual Report,” all in Reports of the City Officers and Departments to the City Council of Baltimore (1867–1904). See also Sewerage Commissioners, “Annual Report,”” in ibid. (1898–1906).

71 BDC, “Report … September 11, 1906,” 41. The four were William Keyser, Samuel Keyser, John W. Garrett, and Robert Garrett. They donated pieces from a total of four lots. William Kevser was the founder and chairman of the Citizens' Emergency Committee. Interestingly, William Keyser, Samuel Keyser, and Robert Garrett are on Crooks's list of leaders of Baltimore's Progressive movement and were each active in a variety of reform activities. This willingness to give land to the city for free suggests the depth of their commitment to environmental improvement (Crooks, Politics and Progress, 227, 229).

72 BDC, “Report … June 28, 1905,” 43; “Report … September 11, 1906,” 39. Also Baltinum Sun, 11 Feb., 9, 15 April, 4–5 Aug. 1904. See also Baltimore World, 24 April 1906. Many offices and stores were converted dwellings that were assessed for tax purposes at their value as old dwellings.

73 BDC, “Report … October 23, 1907,” 3. Burnt district property owners paid approximately $1 million in benefit assessments. The Burnt District Commission spent a total of $7,425,318.32 on its street, harbor, and market improvements, so betterment assessment covered a good proportion of the total cost of the burnt district redevelopment.

74 Baltimore American, 7 May 1904; Baltimore Sun, 5 May 1904.

75 Baltimore Sun, 5, 17 Aug., 23, 30 Oct. 1904.

76 BDC, “Report … September 11, 1906,” 28–29, 32–33; BDC, “Report … October 23, 1907,” 3–4.

77 Sanborn Map Company, Insurance Map of Baltimore, c. 1902 and c. 1914. BDC, “Report … June 28, 1905,” 30; Baltimore Sun, 27 March, 15 June 1904; Baltimore American, 27 March 1904.

78 As Sanborn, Insurance Maps of Baltimore (c. 1914), indicates, property owners in the lower part of the burnt district were very slow to rebuild their buildings. This suggests the weakness of the real estate in that area. For further evidence of economic decline in the area, see Baltimore Harbor Board, “Plan of Development,” 1921, typescript in Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, Md., and Deupress, Robert G., The Wholesale Marketing of Fruit and Vegetables in Baltimore (Baltimore, Md., 1939), 39.Google Scholar

79 Baltimore Sun, 2 Aprii 1904; italics added. Hypocritical actions by the publisher of the Daily Advertiser illustrate the profundity of the problem the Sun was describing. The Advertiser was one of the most outspoken advocates of the Emergency Committee's improvement plans. A supporter of structural reform, the paper called on the plans' foes to refrain voluntarily from expressing their opposition, arguing that it was necessary to transcend private interest in order to achieve the public interest. None of the Emergency Committee's original plans involved the taking of any of the paper's own property, so it was not costly at all for the paper to make such statements. The paper reacted with fury, however, when supporters of the defeated plan to widen Baltimore Street put forth a new proposal that called for the taking of five feet of land from both sides of the street, including the side on which the paper's own publishing house was located. Its publisher's denunciations of the new plan extended beyond editorial comment to a major role as a leader of the successful, highly organized grass roots campaign to mobilize popular opinion to defeat the widening.

80 Baltimore Sun, 14 April 1904.

81 Baltimore World, 1 March 1904. For further discussion of the need to circumvent the problems of democratic decision making to achieve the public good of environmental improvement in the burnt district, see Baltimore World, 22, 24 March 1904; Baltimore American, 11, 13, 30 March 1904; Baltimore Morning Herald, 4, 10–11, 25 March 1904; The Merchants' and Manufacturers' Journal, 3 March 1905, 127; ibid., 10 March 1904, 55.

82 Hays, “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government.”

83 Hammack, David C., Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Hammack, , “Problems in the Historical Study of Power in the Cities and Towns of the United States, 1800–1960,” American Historical Review 83 (April 1978): 695–704.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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85 Baltimore Sun, 22–28 April 1904; Baltimore American, 20–28 April 1904; Baltimore World, 21–28 April 1904; Baltimore Morning Hemld, 22–28 April 1904. Fora more detailed description of the conflict see Rosen, Limits of Power, 280–87.

86 Baltimore American, 15 April, 5, 7, 13–14, 17–18 May 1904; Batamore Sun, 7, 10, 12–13 May, 23 Nov. 1904; Baltimore World, 2 April, 9 May 1904.

87 Thurow, Lester, The Zero Sum Society: Distribution and the Possibilities of Economic Change (New York, 1980).Google Scholar

88 Schiesl, Politics of Efficiency, 140–41, 157–65, 179–87.

89 Ibid., 134–35, 174, 179–80.

90 Kahn, Imperial San Francisco.

91 Galambos, Louis, “The Emerging Organizational Synthesis in Modern American History,” Business History Review 44 (Autumn 1970): 279–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Galambos, , “Technology, Political Economy, and Protessionalization: Central Themes of the Organizational Synthesis,” Business History Review 57 (Winter 1983): 471–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also: Hays, Samuel P., “The New Organizational Society,” in Building the Organizational Society: Essays on Associational Activities in Modern America, ed. Israel, Jerry (New York, 1972).Google Scholar