Capital's Utopia: Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, 1855-1916

by Anne E. Mosher

Overview

In the 1890s the Apollo Iron and Steel Company ended a bitterly contested labor dispute by hiring replacement workers from the surrounding countryside. To avoid future unrest, however, the company sought to gain tighter control over its workers not only at the factory but also in their homes. Drawing upon a philosophy of reform movements in Europe and the United States, the firm decided that providing workers with good housing and a good urban environment would make them more loyal and productive. In 1895, Apollo Iron and Steel built a new, integrated, non-unionized steelworks and hired the nation's preeminent landscape architectural firm (Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot) to design the model industrial town: Vandergrift.

In Capital's Utopia: Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, 1855-1916, Anne E. Mosher offers the first comprehensive geographical overview of the industrial restructuring of an American steelworks and its workforce in the late nineteenth–century. In addition, by offering a thorough analysis of the Olmsted plan, Mosher integrates historical geography and labor history with landscape architectural history and urban studies. As a result, this book is far more than a case study. It is a window into an important period of industrial development and its consequences on communities and environments in the world-famous steel country of southwestern Pennsylvania.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801873812
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	03/31/2004
Series:	Creating the North American Landscape
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.96(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Anne E. Mosher is an associate professor of geography and co-director of the Global Affairs Institute's Space and Place Initiative in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables
Preface
Introduction
Part I: Vandergrift's Antecedents
Chapter 1. Experimentation in the Kiskiminetas Valley Iron Industry
Chapter 2. Apollo's Uneasy Transition From Iron to Steel
Part II: Vision, Plan, and Place: The Creation of Vandergrift
Chapter 3. The McMurtry, Olmsted, and Eliot Plan for Vandergrift
Chapter 4. Settling the Vandergrift Peninsula
Part III: Gauging Vandergrift's Success
Chapter 5. The Steel Strike of 1901
Chapter 6. Growing Pains for the "Model Town"
Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Mosher blends her skills as a geographer, historian, and storyteller to create a deep history of a most unique locale. In Capital's Utopia, the story of Vandergrift becomes a crucial and unexplored intersection between industrial land use and community planning all wrapped in the issues of economic class and paternalism that defined the Gilded Age. Through iron, railroad, and finally steel, readers will follow Vandergrift's surprising relevance in the Olmsted tradition of community planning. Mosher makes superb use of primary historical sources, including tables utilizing demographic census and tax assessment data and a superb selection of maps, community diagrams, photos, and sketches from the original plans.
—Brian Black, The Pennsylvania State University

Brian Black

Mosher blends her skills as a geographer, historian, and storyteller to create a deep history of a most unique locale. In Capital's Utopia, the story of Vandergrift becomes a crucial and unexplored intersection between industrial land use and community planning all wrapped in the issues of economic class and paternalism that defined the Gilded Age. Through iron, railroad, and finally steel, readers will follow Vandergrift's surprising relevance in the Olmsted tradition of community planning. Mosher makes superb use of primary historical sources, including tables utilizing demographic census and tax assessment data and a superb selection of maps, community diagrams, photos, and sketches from the original plans.

— Brian Black, The Pennsylvania State University

Editorial Reviews

The incorporation of historical geography enhances this engaging micro-study of US industrialization.
—Choice

A richly written, vivid description of the complex relations between capital, individual agents, and place-making in a period of industrial restructuring.
—James Defilippis, Labor History

I highly recommend this book, thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and expect that many others will do the same.
—John Benhart, Jr., Pennsylvania Geographer

Mosher's fine book examines one of the most important ways that technological change shapes human society.
—Anne Kelly Knowles, Technology and Culture

This is a wonderful book that places an important model city in the larger context of the constantly evolving societal and geographical relations between capital and labor.
—Dean Sinclair, Journal of Cultural Geography

Mosher has written an excellent book. Her prose is clear and unencumbered by jargon and appropriately illustrated with photographs, maps, and data tables.
—Cultural Geographies

From the Publisher

This is a wonderful book that places an important model city in the larger context of the constantly evolving societal and geographical relations between capital and labor.

Journal of Cultural Geography - Dean Sinclair

A richly written, vivid description of the complex relations between capital, individual agents, and place-making in a period of industrial restructuring.

Labor History - James Defilippis

Mosher has written an excellent book. Her prose is clear and unencumbered by jargon and appropriately illustrated with photographs, maps, and data tables.

Cultural Geographies

I highly recommend this book, thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and expect that many others will do the same.

Pennsylvania Geographer - John Benhart

The incorporation of historical geography enhances this engaging micro-study of US industrialization.

Choice

Mosher's fine book examines one of the most important ways that technological change shapes human society.

Technology and Culture - Anne Kelly Knowles

This is a wonderful book that places an important model city in the larger context of the constantly evolving societal and geographical relations between capital and labor.

— Dean Sinclair

Journal of Cultural Geography

Mosher's fine book examines one of the most important ways that technological change shapes human society.

— Anne Kelly Knowles

Technology and Culture

I highly recommend this book, thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and expect that many others will do the same.

— John Benhart, Jr.

Pennsylvania Geographer

A richly written, vivid description of the complex relations between capital, individual agents, and place-making in a period of industrial restructuring.

— James Defilippis

Labor History