ancient cities

156 City Club
of civic buildings and public spaces, of parks and
boulevards—has proven largely beneficial to entire
communities up to our day and is still universally
appreciated.
Alessandro Busà
See also Architecture; Chicago, Illinois; General Plan;
Haussmann, Baron Georges-Eugène; Historic Cities;
Ideal City; New Urbanism; Paris, France; Riis, Jacob;
Urban Planning; Utopia
Further Readings
Beveridge, Charles E. 1995. Frederick Law Olmsted:
Designing the American Landscape. New York: Rizzoli.
Boyer, Paul S. 1978. Urban Masses and Moral Order in
America, 1820–1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Burnham, Daniel H. and Edward H. Bennett. 1909. Plan
of Chicago. Edited by C. Moore. Chicago:
Commercial Club.
De Angelis, Pierre. 2008. “Beautiful Urbanism: How a
Short Lived, Feeble Movement Continues to Shape the
Contemporary American City.” Mudot—Magazine on
Urbanism 6:69–72.
Hines, Thomas S. 1979. Burnham of Chicago: Architect
and Planner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
———. 2004. “Architecture: The City Beautiful
Movement.” In The Electronic Encyclopedia of
Chicago, edited by J. L. Reiff, A. D. Keating, and
J. R. Grossman. Chicago: Newberry Library.
Retrieved May 10, 2009 (http://www.encyclopedia
.chicagohistory.org/pages/61.html).
Muschamp, Herbert. 1992. “The Nina, the Pinta and the
Fate of the White City.” New York Times
Architecture View, November 8.
Reps, John W. 1992. The Making of Urban America.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Riis, Jacob. 1890. How the Other Half Lives: Studies
among the Tenements of New York. New York:
Scribner.
Rose, Julie K. 1996. “The World’s Columbian
Exposition: Idea, Experience, Aftermath.” MA Thesis,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Retrieved May
10, 2009 (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma96/WCE/
title.html).
———. 1997. “City Beautiful. The 1901 Plan for
Washington D.C.” Department of American Studies,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Retrieved May
10, 2009 (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/
CITYBEAUTIFUL/dchome.html).
Smith, Carl. 2007. The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham
and the Remaking of the American City. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Wilson, William H. 1994. The City Beautiful Movement.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Ci t y Cl u b
Men seeking to reform city governments in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the
United States founded organizations they called
city clubs. These clubs were typical Progressive-era
reform organizations that were seeking to diminish
the influence of party politics in municipal governments.
City club members generally believed that
the personal corruption and fiscal irresponsibility
of many party politicians and their followers had
fostered serious economic, political, and social
problems. The stated purpose of these organizations
was to foster a sense of civic engagement that
would promote honest and efficient administration
of city affairs through nonpartisan political action.
City clubs originated in eastern and midwestern
cities, including Philadelphia, New York City,
Chicago, Boston, and Cleveland. Western cities
such as Portland and Denver followed this practice.
Many of these clubs, espousing the same goals, still
exist. Newer clubs, such as the one founded in
Seattle in 1981, have kept the tradition alive.
Early in their history, membership in city clubs
was all male, with women often not even allowed
to participate as guest speakers. Membership was
also largely comprised of middle-class, White businessmen
and professionals. Clubs enforced their
exclusivity through membership rules that carefully
controlled admission even though the clubs publicized
themselves as open to men from every walk of
life. The rigid gender segregation of city clubs was
relaxed over time, but by the second decade of the
century, women had responded to their exclusion
by organizing their own women’s city clubs. A key
difference between the male and female clubs was
in how they perceived their purposes. The women’s
city clubs generally stressed the fostering of a collective
social responsibility for solving municipal
issues, whereas clubs of men spoke about wanting
more civic engagement among men who were otherwise
disaffected from municipal affairs.