Streetcar suburb

A streetcar suburb is a community whose growth and development was mostly shaped by the use of streetcar lines as a primary means of transportation. The earliest suburbs were served by Horsecars, but by the late 1800s cable cars and electric streetcars, or trams, were used, allowing suburbs to be larger and built further away from the urban core of a city. Streetcar suburbs, usually called additions or extensions at the time, were the forerunner of today's suburbs.

Precursers

The streetcar suburb refers to a specific type of developement, mixed residential and commercial areas built on streetcar lines built on the edge of the city in land that had likely once been ranches, farmland or orchards. Although electric streetcars were not introduced until 1887, suburbs did exist earlier.

By the 1860s, many cities throughout America and Canada were connected to once distant outlying towns and communities, allowing wealthy and upper-middle class residents to work in the center city but live in what historian Robert Fishman called a "bourgeois utopia". Outside of Philadelphia, suburbs like Radnor, Swarthmore, Villanova developed along the Pennsylvania Main Line. As early as 1850, 83 commuter stations had been built within a 15-mile radius of Boston. Chicago saw similar developements, with 11 seperate lines serving over 100 communities by 1873. A famous community served was Riverside, arguably one of the first planned communities in the United States, designed in 1869 by Frederick Law Olmsted.

However, the suburbs closest to the city were based on horsecars and eventually cable cars. First introduced to America around 1830, the horse-drawn omnibus was revolutionary because it was the first mass transit system, offering regularly scheduled stops along a fixed route, allowing passengers to travel three miles sitting down in the time it would take them to walk two miles. Later more efficient horse-drawn streetcars allowed cities to expand to areas that previously had been even more distant. By 1860, they operated in most major American and Canadian cities, including New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Cincinnati, Montreal, and Boston.

Horsecar suburbs eminated from the city center towards the more distant railroad suburbs. For the first time, transportation began to create a divide between social and economic classes in cities, as the working and middle class began to live in areas closer to the city center, while the rich could afford to live further out.

Development of streetcar suburbs

The introduction of the electrical streetcar in Richmond, Virginia in 1887 by Frank J. Sprague marked the start of a new era of transportation-influenced suburbanization. They trolley allowed people to travel in 10 minutes what they could walk in 30, and was rapidly introduced in cities like Boston and Los Angeles, and eventually to all larger cities. There were 5,783 miles of streetcar track serving American cities in 1890; this grew to 22,000 by 1902 and 34,404 by 1907.

By 1890, electric streetcar lines were replacing horse-drawn ones in cities of all sizes, allowing the lines to be extended and fostering a tremendous ammount of suburban development. They were often extended out to formerly rural communities, which experienced an initial surge of developement, and then new residential corridors were created along the newly built lines.

Because streetcar operators offered low fairs and free transfers, commuting was finally affordable to nearly everyone. Combined with the relatively cheap cost of land further from the city, streetcar suburbs were able to attract a broad mix of people from all socioeconomic classes, although they were most popular by far with the middle class.

The houses in a streetcar suburb were generally narrow in width compared to later homes, and Arts and Crafts movement styles like the California Bungalow and American Foursquare were most popular. These house were typically purchased by catologue and many of the materials arrived by railcar, with some local touches added as the house was assembled. The earliest streetcar suburbs sometimes had more ornate styles, including late Victorian and Stick. The houses of streetcar suburbs, whatever the style, tended to have prominent front porches, and driveways and built-in garages were rare, reflecting the pedestrian-focused nature of the streets when the houses were initially built.

Shops such as groceries, bakeries and drug stores were usually built near the intersection of streetcar lines or along more heavilly travelled routes. These would often be multi-story buildings, with apartments on the upper floors. These provided convenient shopping for household supplies for the surrounding neighborhoods, that could potentially be visited on ones way to or from work. While there were stores nearby, they were not quite as close as in older parts of cities, representing the beginning of a true seperation between residential and commercial areas in cities.

Unlike railroad suburbs, which tended to form in pockets around stations along the interurban line, streetcar suburbs formed continuous corridors stretching outwards from city cores. The streetcar lines themselves were either built on roads that conformed to the grid, or on former turnpikes radiating in all directs from the city, sometimes giving such cities a roughly star-like appearance on maps. Along the lines, developers built rectangular "additions" with homes, usually on small lots, within a five to ten minute walk of the streetcar. These were essentially built on the grid plan of the older central cities, and typically spread out in between streetcar lines throughout a city.

Streetcar use continued to increase until 1923 when patronage reached 15.7 billion, but it declined in every year after that as automobile use increased amongst the middle and upper classes. By the 1930s, the once-profitable streetcar companies were diversifying by adding motorized buses and trackless trollies to their fleets. By the 1940s, streetcar ridership had dropped dramatically, and few subdivisions were being built with streetcars or mass transit in general in mind. By the 1950s, nearly all streetcar lines had stopped running, and were instead served by buses.

Modern streetcar suburbs

Now somewhat urban in appearance, former streetcar suburbs are readily recognizable by the neighborhood structure along and near the route. Every few blocks, or along the entire route in well-preserved neighborhoods, there are small commercial structures; these were small grocery stores operated by "mom and pop" operators who lived in quarters behind or above the establishment. In this way, a person could exit the transport near their home, do some light shopping for dinner items, and continue by walking to their residence. These also provided shopping for a non-employed spouse. Very few small groceries remain, though the space is often now used for non-foodstuff retail, capable of drawing clients from outside of the immediate neighborhood.

Features of Streetcar subrubs

In a greater sense, the streetcar suburbs of the early 1900s worked well for a variety of reasons.

While most cities grew in a piecemeal fashion, without any real plan for future development, streetcar suburbs were highly planned communities that were organized under single ownership and control. Indeed, they would often be the first such developments in their respective cities.

Most lots in streetcar suburbs were quite small by post-World War II suburban standards, allowing for a compact and walkable neighborhood, as well as convenient access to public transport (the streetcar line).

Most streetcar suburbs were layed out in a grid plan, although designers of these suburbs often modified the grid pattern to suit the site context with curvilinear streets. Additionally, most of these pre-automobile suburbs included alleys with a noticeable absence of front-yard driveways.

In terms of transportation, the streetcar provided the primary means for residents to get to work, shopping, and social activities. Yet, at either end of the streetcar trip, walking remained as the primary means of getting around. As a result, even in these early suburbs, the overall city remained very pedestrian friendly. This was not always the case for other vehicles. It should be noted that, at the turn of the century, the bicycle was also a popular form of mobility for many urban dwellers of the era. (However, when the streetcar rail tracks were encased in the asphalt of a street the resulting trench, for the flanges of the steel wheels, created a dangerous hazard for cyclists, being big enough to trap bicycle wheels but not large enough to get out easily.)

Because of the pedestrian-oriented nature of these communities, sidewalks were necessary in order to avoid an unacceptable and muddy walk to the streetcar on an unpaved street. Trees lining the streets were also seen as critical to a healthy and attractive neighborhood. While such developments often occurred on farmland or other cleared sites, the evidence of the street trees planted can be seen today in the large, overarching canopies found in these attractive post-turn-of-the-century communities.