In Union There Is Strength: Philadelphia in the Age of Urban Consolidation by Andrew Heath

Abstract

Reviewed by: In Union There Is Strength: Philadelphia in the Age of Urban Consolidation by Andrew Heath Catherine McNeur In Union There Is Strength: Philadelphia in the Age of Urban Consolidation. By Andrew Heath. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. 287 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $49.95.) When we consider the expansion of city boundaries from a bird's-eye view, it can seem like a natural, even inevitable, response to population growth. If the city limits were a belt, it needed to be loosened to encompass the larger urban belly. Depending on the city and the scenario, we might even smirk at the idea of officials strategically embracing rural districts and calling them urban in hopes of seeming demographically larger than rival cities. In his book In Union There Is Strength, Andrew Heath does a fantastic job of showing how Philadelphia's Consolidation Act of 1854 was anything but inevitable. Over a period of a few weeks in the summer of 1844, Philadelphia was shaken by riots that pitted nativist Protestants against Catholic immigrants, with the city and a local militia struggling to gain control. These [End Page 98] uprisings inspired many of Philadelphia's leaders and bourgeois residents to look hard at the shaky social foundation of the city. It was past time, they felt, to confront issues of policing and governance. While the riots were notable, every election involved violent shows of partisanship in the streets. Even groups of volunteer police and firefighters acted like gangs, battling for control of territories. While some Philadelphians enjoyed engaging in this rowdy chaos, others saw in it a desperate need for change. Heath's book centers around the visions that White, powerful men had for Philadelphia's future and how they sculpted it in their image, seeing consolidation of the larger region into the city proper as a way to centralize control, refine the culture of politics, and make Philadelphia more cosmopolitan. While men from bourgeois and radical backgrounds saw different origins for the problems plaguing Philadelphia, their solution was ultimately the same: consolidation. Heath rarely touches on issues of race and gender, so readers will perhaps feel the absence of the perspectives of Black and female Philadelphians, let alone what they stood to gain or lose from the new boundaries. While the consolidators saw themselves as modernizers, Heath is careful to note that this is not a linear story of modernization. Like the United States more broadly during the mid-nineteenth century, Philadelphia was politically and socially fragmented, which impacted the ways people considered the pros and cons of expanding the city limits. Heath works assiduously to make sense of the messy politics of the city at this moment, weaving in urban design and the central role that real estate played in visions for a unified Philadelphia. Where Heath really soars, though, is in placing Philadelphia within its larger national context. While Philadelphia's leaders considered the city's expansion and what that would mean for its prosperity and politics, national leaders debated the impact of expanding the nation while struggling to keep it united. Throughout the book, Heath does a fantastic job of tracing the cultural climate that embraced growth politics as a solution for all sorts of problems, local and national. Ultimately, the 1870s would show the limits of growth politics, as consolidation failed to alleviate the social upheaval that came with the 1873 economic depression. Still, the Consolidation Act of 1854 and Heath's account of it reveal the hopes of Philadelphia's leaders at a moment of dramatic change that continues to echo in the city we know today. [End Page 99] Catherine McNeur Portland State University Copyright © 2022 Historical Society of Pennsylvania