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“ToReproduceaCity” New York Letters and the Urban Ameri­can Renaissance Scott Peeples Traditional formulations of the Ameri­ can Renaissance locate its occurrence almost exclusively in New En­ gland, most famously on Emerson’s “bare common” or Thoreau’s Walden Pond, but nearly always either “in nature” (on the masthead of the Pequod, for instance) or a small town (Concord, Salem, Andover) where the past speaks louder than the future. Whitman, of course, is the exception in F. O. Matthiessen’s pantheon, but for all his celebration of the urban and the modern, Whitman is just as easily regarded (and taught) as a voice “growing outdoors, / [enamour’d] Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods.”1 Another obvious exception—canonical despite his exclusion from Ameri­can Renaissance—is Poe, an author more associated with enclosed spaces than with open, natural environments that invite transcendence. Poe, like most popularwritersofhistime,wasacitydwellerthroughouthiscareer,asreflectedin a large portion of his writing, from the Dupin tales and “The Man of the Crowd” to the comic stories “The Spectacles” and “The Business-Man” to “The Literati of New York City” and the miscellanies in the Broadway Journal. Following David S. Reynolds’s Beneath the Ameri­ can Renaissance, scholarly interest in mid-nineteenth -century literature has expanded to include sensational and subversive literature associated with the city, as well as Poe’s representation of it.2 Still, more attention needs to be paid to Poe’s less canonical urban texts and the mid-century literature of urbanization generally, not just as a counterpoint to Transcendentalism but as a predominant concern of antebellum Ameri­ can culture and literature. Poe, specifically his series “Doings of Gotham,” illuminates one particular phenomenon within that literature, the popularity of informal journalistic sketches of New York City life in the early 1840s. “New York Correspondents”— including Poe as well as Nathaniel Parker Willis, Lydia Maria Child, and George G. Foster—­ responded to the constant and seemingly chaotic change that surrounded them by creating textual cities of the future in their own images. 101 102 | Scott Peeples New York’s rise as the nation’s economic and cultural capital is one of the most dramatic developments of the antebellum period. Having established itself as the national financial center in the wake of the Ameri­ can Revolution, the city saw unparalleled economic growth after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 made it the hub of commercial traffic.3 Meanwhile, largely as a result of German and Irish immigration, the city’s population soared from 123,706 in 1820 to 312,710 in 1840 to 813,669 in 1860.4 Consequently, lower Manhattan became increasingly crowded while the urban frontier moved rapidly northward. Less than 10 percent of the population resided above Fourteenth Street in the early 1830s, but by the end of the 1850s more than 50 percent did. Developers snatched up available land, building on what had previously been green space and creating no new parks (until Central Park was established in 1857) as the grid expanded.5 Fire and water—particularly the Great Fire of December 1835 and the construction of the Croton Waterworks, which began in 1837—changed the physical and social landscape as well: the fire and subsequent rebuilding frenzy “touched off a pell-mell flight of the wealthy” northward, according to historians Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace.6 The new mansions were outfitted for running water, provided by the system of aqueducts, tunnels, and pipes from the Croton River.7 The introduction of north-south rail transportation in 1831, combined with ever-increasing omnibus traffic, changed the pace of city life and made simply crossing the street a new adventure.8 Both foreign and domestic observers of antebellum New York expressed amazement at the chaotic energy and rapidity of change in the city. Fanny Kemble described the city in her journal (published in 1835) as “an irregular collection of temporary buildings, erected for some casual purpose, full of life, animation, and variety, but not meant to endure for any length of time.”9 As for the buildings that did endure, their use was likely to change with the city’s demographics. “He who erects his magnificent palace on Fifth Avenue to-day,” predicted Henry Philip Tappan, “has only fitted out a future boarding-house, and probably occupied the site of a future warehouse.”10 May 1, the annual “moving day” when leases turned over and tenants flooded the streets with all their belongings...

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