Synopses & Reviews
American cities are constantly being built and rebuilt, resulting in ever-changing skylines and neighborhoods. While the dynamic urban landscapes of New York, Boston, and Chicago have been widely studied, there is much to be gleaned from west coast cities, especially in California, where the migration boom at the end of the nineteenth century permanently changed the urban fabric of these newly diverse, plural metropolises.
Inand#160;A City for Children, Marta Gutman focuses on the use and adaptive reuse of everyday buildings in Oakland, California, to make the city a better place for children. She introduces us to the women who were determined to mitigate the burdens placed on working-class families by an indifferent industrial capitalist economy. Often without the financial means to build from scratch, women did not tend to conceive of urban land as a blank slate to be wiped clean for development. Instead, Gutman shows how, over and over, women turned private houses in Oakland into orphanages, kindergartens, settlement houses, and day care centers, and in the process built the charitable landscapeand#151;a network of places that was critical for the betterment of children, families, and public life.and#160; The industrial landscape of Oakland, riddled with the effects of social inequalities and racial prejudices, is not a neutral backdrop in Gutmanand#8217;s story but an active player. Spanning one hundred years of history,and#160;A City for Childrenand#160;provides a compelling model for building urban institutions and demonstrates that children, women, charity, and incremental construction, renovations, alterations, additions, and repurposed structures are central to the understanding of modern cities.
Review
and#8220;The and#8216;charitable landscape,and#8217; is just one of the multiple layers of urban history that Marta Gutman has recovered and brought vividly to light. She has also exposed the complicated and intertwined relations of race and gender that were built into the urban fabric.and#160; By bookand#8217;s end, readers will be richly rewarded with a poignant recognition of the everyday human triumphs and losses that gave shape to the physical spaces of our cities.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;This beautifully crafted and original account describes the fraught creation of what became an everyday halcyon in Oakland, California: the building, beginning in the late 19th century, of a and#8216;charitable landscapeand#8217; to improve the lives of children.and#160; Marta Gutman brilliantly brings to life a remarkable, and fortifying, coincidence of womenand#8217;s will, civic spirit, and Progressive politics that and#8216;repurposedand#8217; space to benefitand#8212;and createand#8212;the cityand#8217;s smallest subjects.and#160; Depicting a remarkable cohort that sought to remake the city by, among other things, converting saloons to kindergartens, this book uncovers a nexus of design and social life, rich with nuance and implication.and#160; An exceptionally tender work.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;With remarkable detail, nuance and clarity Marta Gutman recovers the history of Oaklandand#8217;s charitable institutions for children in a way that offers transformative insights into the landscapes of age, gender, race, religion, philanthropy, and urban development. Gutman takes the and#8216;landscapesand#8217; of her title literallyand#8212;this is most powerfully a book about space, about the ideas, practices, and social and material conditions that enabled women to claim spaces for children.and#160; In many instances they did this by repurposing buildings initially constructed with other intentions. Marta Gutmanand#8217;s manner of writing history participates in this tradition of strategic repurposing garnering the materials of architectural history, womenand#8217;s history, childrenand#8217;s history, and the history of urban reform to forge something new. This is a wonderful book.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Remarkable. Based on extensive research,and#160;A City for Childrenand#160;is a sophisticated historical investigation into a wide range of charitable institutions built by women in Oakland, California, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries primarily to serve the needs of children. Gutman is particularly attentive to the racial politics that informed the development of these institutions, and like all of her work, this book promises to inform current public policy debates, not just about Oakland, but also about American cities in general.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;An outstanding book, based on creative research and innovative historical framing, A City for Children is the most comprehensive and nuanced study of the cultural landscape of charitable institutions.and#160; Gutmanand#8217;s expertise in the history of childhood, gender studies, and architecture make this an ambitious and path-breaking work.and#8221;
Review
andldquo;A monumental achievement.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;The book is an underground earthquake. So many of us forget that cities do not just happen, but rather are designed, mis-designed and misled, conceived on foundations that sometimes are, very simply, built upside down or on shaky grounds. I loved reading it.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Gutman puts forward an expansive view of the built environment that pays close attention to the ways that reforms in the urban environment and changes in attitudes toward childhood crossed with architecture, interiors, and material culture. . . . A City for Children offers . . . a point of view that asks us to penetrate facades and closely look at what happened in the streets to understand the social forces that shaped the landscape of society.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Since they were first established in the 1880s, children’s summer camps have touched the lives of millions of people. Although the camping experience has a special place in the popular imagination, few scholars have given serious thought to this peculiarly American phenomenon. Why were summer camps created? What concerns and ideals motivated their founders? Whom did they serve? How did they change over time? What factors influenced their design? To answer these and many other questions, Abigail A. Van Slyck trains an informed eye on the most visible and evocative aspect of camp life: its landscape and architecture. She argues that summer camps delivered much more than a simple encounter with the natural world. Instead, she suggests, camps provided a man-made version of wilderness, shaped by middle-class anxieties about gender roles, class tensions, race relations, and modernity and its impact on the lives of children. Following a fascinating history of summer camps and a wide-ranging overview of the factors that led to their creation, Van Slyck examines the intersections of the natural landscape with human-built forms and social activities. In particular, she addresses changing attitudes toward such subjects as children’s health, sanitation, play, relationships between the sexes, Native American culture, and evolving ideas about childhood. Generously illustrated with period photographs, maps, plans, and promotional images of camps throughout North America, A Manufactured Wilderness is the first book to offer a thorough consideration of the summer camp environment. (Architecture, Landscape, and American Culture Series.)
Synopsis
We like to say that our cities have been shaped by andldquo;creative destructionandrdquo;andmdash;the vast powers of capitalism to remake cities. But Marta Gutman shows that other forces played roles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as cities responded to industrialization and the onset of modernity. Gutman focuses on the use and adaptive reuse of everyday buildings, and most tellingly she reveals the determinative roles of women and charitable institutions. In Oakland, Gutman shows, private houses were often adapted for charity work and the betterment of children, in the process becoming critical sites for public life and for the development of sustainable social environments. Gutman makes a strong argument for the centrality of incremental construction and the power of women-run organizations to our understanding of modern cities.
About the Author
Marta Gutmanand#160;is professor of architectural and urban history at the Spitzer School of Architecture, City College of New York andand#160;a member of theand#160;doctoral faculty of art history at The Graduate Center, City College of New York.and#160;She is also a licensed architect.
Table of Contents
List of IllustrationsAcknowledgments
ONE / New Ideas from Old Things in Oakland
TWO / The Landscape of Charity in California: First Imprints in San Francisco
THREE / The Ladies Intervene: Repurposed and Purpose-Built in Temescal
FOUR / The West Oakland Home: The and#8220;Noble Work for a Life Savingand#8221; of Rebecca McWade
FIVE / The Saloon That Became a School: Free Kindergartens in Northern California
SIX / The Art and Craft of Settlement Work in Oakland Point
SEVEN / and#8220;The Ground Must Belong to the Cityand#8221;: Playgrounds and Recreation Centers in Oaklandand#8217;s Neighborhoods
EIGHT / Orphaned in Oakland: Institutional Life during the Progressive Era
NINE / Childhood on the Color Line in West Oakland: Day Nurseries during the Interwar Years
Epilogue
Oral Histories and Interviews
Abbreviations Used in the Notes
Notes
Index