Carl S. Smith

This project is a cultural history of cities and water in the United States in the nineteenth century, focusing on Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago. The history of cities and water in this period reveals in striking ways how Americans experienced city life as the United States became an urban nation. In a broader sense, this project offers an understanding of how Americans expressed their ideas about the process of urbanization as it was happening, and how thought and expression figured as forms of social action in the creation of modern urban culture.