A place in time: The shaping of city space in Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1890-1919

This study argues that the struggles over class and labor power in Bridgeport, Connecticut took place within a contestation over urban space. It explores the impact of class, ethnicity, and gender in shaping the organization of city space. It also investigates how perceptions of class, ethnicity, and gender influenced restrictive urban spatial policies during the First World War and contributed to the emerging state apparatus framing the "welfare state.";"A Place in Time" begins with an overview of the social construction of city space that by 1890 led to the fragmentation and specialization of urban space. It argues that distinct spaces--downtown, factory districts, neighborhoods, the demi-monde--were products of intensified industrialization and concurrent patterns of land speculation. In each of these places, spatial configurations and architectural styles reflected social relations embedded within them.;New immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe arrived in the city in large numbers beginning in the 1890s and reshaped city space. They created a patchwork of ethnic communities within the working class neighborhoods of the city. Shaping "their own little worlds," immigrants from diverse backgrounds established distinct settlement patterns and developed networks of association that tied them together in the urban terrain and assisted them in their efforts to survive in Bridgeport.;This study then examines the reaction of emerging middle class professionals, established industrial elites, and reform minded municipal leaders who perceived these spatial uses in vastly different terms than the recent arrivals. Embracing a new language of efficiency, these groups perceived urban pathologies in the "congested" and "blighted" immigrant neighborhoods and set out to reform them.;The First World War transformed Bridgeport into a New World Arsenal. It provided new opportunities and optimism for urban reformers who sought to remake immigrant working class spatial patterns that only intensified with the war time boom. During the war, urban space became highly contested as various groups vied for hegemony in the struggle to control and shape city space.