David M. Henkin. City Reading: Written Words and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. xv + 242 pp. $27.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-231-10745-7; $83.50 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-10744-0.
Reviewed by Thorin R. Tritter (Department of History, Columbia University)
Published on H-Urban (January, 2000)
Understanding the Birth of Visual Cacophony
David Henkin has written an excellent book that draws attention to several important aspects of antebellum New York that are all too easy to overlook. He focuses on street signs, outdoor advertisements and other "urban texts" that appeared in force in the city between 1825 and 1865. While apparently trivial, Henkin convincingly argues that the appearance of these signs is significant because they reflected dramatic changes in the city and marked the rise of a new type of public discourse.
In the book's second chapter, Henkin lays out the rapid expansion of New York City in the second third of the 19th century. While retelling a familiar story and drawing on established works by Edward Spann, Ira Rosenwaike, and Elizabeth Blackmar [1], Henkin emphasizes that New York became "an increasingly heterogeneous and unwieldy urban community...[that] turned to urban texts to obtain, share and project new forms of social knowledge." (p. 38.) This city of strangers could not rely on face to face interaction or a shared culture, and so they turned to public signs to advertise goods, spread political ideas, and share information. This was the birth of "city reading."
With this explanation about why "city reading" emerged, Henkin moves to an analysis of four different types of urban texts: fixed outdoor signs, temporary signs, newspapers, and paper money. With a separate chapter devoted to each of these materials, this analysis becomes the heart of the book. In each of the chapters, Henkin describes the development of the particular category with fascinating details about its various types of signs. For example, in the section on permanent signage, he includes things like the surprisingly inconsistent placement of street signs in the 1830s, the much more regular placement of house numbers, and the emergence of commercial signs on the side of buildings during these years. Similarly, his chapter on temporary signs covers the rise of bill posters (and the related "Post No Bills" signs), political broadsides, and parade banners which migrate onto the facades of building. The chapter on newspapers, which he admits is just a recasting of a "well-documented history" (p. 15), offers fewer highlights, but is followed by the most engaging chapter in the book.
The last type of text he turns to is the one most easily overlooked, paper money. In a well-crafted section, Henkin gives a wonderful sense of the variety of money in circulation before the emergence of a national currency in 1863. Importantly, he also describes the all-too-frequent counterfeit bill that one came across (as much as 40% of circulating currency at some times), which made it necessary to closely read each bill handled.
Woven into these chapters, which appear to describe the most mundane objects, is a perceptive argument that is sometimes difficult to follow but is more clearly outlined in the conclusion. Henkin claims the commercially oriented outdoor advertisements and posters helped construct an authority associated with public signs. Once accepted for these private interests, signs began to proliferate for a range of other uses and became the basis for a shared mass culture. Not surprisingly, given that Henkin was a student of Gunther Barth, this argument expands from ideas found in City People.[2]
However, Henkin pushes the analysis further and explains that public signs, particularly newspapers and paper money, demonstrate the "paradox endemic to the proliferation of print." (p. 156.) The power of these signs came from their impersonal authority - people trusted newspapers because they appeared more reliable than gathering news from friends and they used paper money because it appeared more trustworthy than a personal note of credit. However, this lack of personal accountability also made it possible to print fraudulent newspapers and counterfeit money, undermining the authority of the impersonal signs. The spawning of a new mass culture was therefore not controlled by any one group, but was a truly democratic distribution of power.
Most important to Henkin is the idea that public signs helped to "facilitate anonymous circulation in the city...[and] obviated the need for personal acquaintance and identity." (p. 175.) Henkin points out that these early signs laid the groundwork for "modern ways of voting, shopping, moving, participating in popular culture, and forming public opinions." (p. 176.)
The strength of this book lies in its synthesis. While Henkin has done a great deal of primary research, particularly for the chapters on permanent and ephemeral signs, his book also draws together the works of a number of other scholars. In the section on newspapers, for example, he relies on material from Frank Luther Mott, Michael Schudson and Frank Presbrey. [3] Similarly the section on paper money draws information from Eric Newman, John Kenneth Galbraith, and William Dillistin.[4] Given the all too common occurrence of historians focusing on specialized topics that emphasize particular fragments of information, this book is an excellent demonstration of how to take a broader view and how to build on previous works. Henkin makes an important contribution to our understanding of both the past and present by showing the roots of our mass culture in the city.
Disappointingly, with a topic and approach that would interest many in the general public because of their familiarity with the subject matter, the book appears solely directed to readers in the academy. Its language and style make what could be an exciting narrative into a "slow read." This is particularly disheartening at a time when historians seem to want to expand into the general market.[5] As it is, this book follows the path of many others and leaves the door open to journalists and independent writers who can put the information in a form that may interest the public at large. Perhaps this style is not surprising in a book that brings attention to something to which many will already be accustomed. It appears that Henkin feels the need to emphasize the significance of the project and place it in a complex framework to compensate for the simplicity of some of his ideas. However, the simplicity and everyday nature of the book is what makes the book such a good one.
Aside from these stylistic problems, Henkin's work would benefit from greater attention to the urban context. Henkin's analysis does not address why his "urban texts" became accepted in non-urban areas. While he argues that it was in cities that there arose a need for these signs, they also began appearing in small towns and villages where there was far more homogeneity than New York. Henkin's inclusion of newspapers and paper money further weakens his argument, as these supposedly "urban texts" were in wide circulation all over the country not just in cities. Aside from focusing on New York buildings, events and people, Henkin needs to elaborate on what makes the growth of mass culture a particularly urban phenomenon and needs to disprove other possibilities. Even with these problems, however, Henkin's book is a valuable addition to historians studying print culture, urban development, and American society. He successfully brings together a wide range of sources and urges readers to reconsider the significance of things they take for granted.
Notes
[1]. Edward Spann, The New Metropolis: New York City, 1840-1857 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981); Ira Rosenwaike, Population History of New York City (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1972); Elizabeth Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
[2]. Gunther Barth, _City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
[3]. Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States Through 250 Years, 1690 to 1940 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1961); Michael Schudson, Discovering the News: A Social History of American Newspapers (New York: Basic Books, 1978); Frank Presbrey, The History and Development of Advertising (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1929).
[4]. Eric Newman, The Early Paper Money of America (Iola, Wisc.: Krause Publications, 1990); John Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975) ; William H. Dillistin, Bank Note Reporters and Counterfeit Detectors, 1826-1866 (New York: American Numismatic Society, 1949).
[5]. For a discussion about historians who are trying to reach a broader audience see Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
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Citation:
Thorin R. Tritter. Review of Henkin, David M., City Reading: Written Words and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York.
H-Urban, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2000.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3681
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