Life at the Turn of the 20 th Century Chapter 8. Objectives: To analyze significant turn-of-the century trends in such areas as technology, education,

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...