The spatial complexity of segregation: multiculturalism, nineteenth-century style

While Chinatown was being mapped in California, a more benign mapping of an immigrant quarter was taking place in Chicago. We saw in the previous chapter how the residents of the Hull-House settlement assisted in compiling the wage maps from data gathered, under the guidance of Florence Kelley, for a report commissioned by the United States Department of Labour, by order of the US Congress. The 1895 nationalities maps compiled at the same time constitute some of the most important maps of immigration in the United States (see Figure 5.6, showing maps 1–4). Through their level of detail, capturing the spatial patterning of nationality at the street-lot scale, they provided both for their time and for scholars of segregation today an astonishing picture of the way in which spatial clustering is formed locally within a district that might be otherwise simply considered as an ‘immigrant quarter’, or even a ‘ghetto’.²¹ They also reflect a sophistication in sociological method that preceded the scholarship for which Chicago became famous a decade or so later.

It should be noted that in her introduction to the 2007 edition of the papers, Rima Lunin Schultz criticises the almost uniformly bleak picture portrayed in the papers and maps, stating that if the boundary had been drawn so as to include the western side of Halsted, and some of the block beyond, it would have encompassed a more prosperous district containing a large French population.²² This is undoubtedly true, and an important lesson can be learned from this on how the way in which areas are sampled can distort how they are evaluated. Nevertheless, putting aside the fact that the streets beyond were probably excluded due to the omission of those areas from the underlying maps, there is still much to be learned from these maps, which provide an unprecedented level of detail on the area at the time.

The maps’ data were gathered at the same time as the wages information, between April and July 1893. The nationality of adults was recorded according to place of birth, while children under 10 took the nationalityof their parents. The map records 18 nationalities, using a colour code that ranges from black for ‘coloured’ to white for English-speaking. They show the percentage (not the sum) of each nationality residing on an individual city lot. The Irish are so distinct and important, state the map notes, that they are accorded their own colour: in line with the use of graphic stereotypes, it is green. Interestingly we have a distinction between ‘Arabian’ and ‘Syrian’, the latter which would include contemporary Lebanon. The notes inform the reader that the Russians and Poles are in fact ‘uniformly Jewish’.

The resulting tapestry of colours shows the tendencies for nationalities to cluster, despite the overarching impression (at least in maps 1 and 2; see Figure 5.7) of a general intermingling of the nations into a single immigrant quarter. Further investigation finds the Italians (dark blue) solidly packed on Ewing and Polk Streets (in fact they are the most numerous in the district), while the Russian and Polish Jewish cluster is situated around Polk and Twelfth Streets. In fact, there was a much larger Jewish settlement that extended south from Twelfth Street, off the map. The maps notes inform us that a significant reason for the general pattern of localised clustering is the manner of sub-letting to boarders or lodgers to the rear of tenements, which frequently set in tow the ‘prompt departure of all tenants of other nationalities who can manage to get quarters elsewhere’.²³

This disposition for members of the same nationality to cluster together is a common feature of immigrant quarters that is frequently at the heart of what is negatively labelled as ‘ghettoisation’. The same has been found in a study of Manchester and Leeds in the late nineteenth century, which found that between 60 and 80 per cent (respectively) of boarders and lodgers were living with families from the same country of origin; more still if only counting the Jewish quarter, rather than the city overall.²⁴ Cultural differences between immigrant groups would also cause them to choose to live in households of a common country of origin.

The same applies as well in patterns of settlement in contemporary cities. Pablo Mateos, for example, has found that in the neighbourhood of Kreuzberg in Berlin neighbours from different ethnic backgrounds mix successfully within the public realm as well as at school, yet at the scale of the apartment block, analysis of names on doorbells reveals a clear demarcation between blocks with a dominant Turkish (or other ethnic background) and those with a German-origin name.²⁵ This strong cultural reinforcement of place of origin can play a part in strengthening communal ties and shows something important about how the scale of analysis can affect the way we read segregation on the ground. Taking Chicago as a whole, the area covered by the Hull-House maps would be seen as an immigrant quarter (with the tighter cluster of Jewish settlement that was known, as mentioned above, as the ‘ghetto’), but within the area there is spatial segregation at building level. In effect, the map illustrates how geographical scales are socially constructed. They are the product of social relations, actions, and institutions. Separation at the apartment-block scale may be a completely benign outcome of patterns of ownership and housing economics.

The maps taken as a pair – wages and nationalities – allow the reader to cross-reference between levels of income and ethnicity. Even without detailed analysis, it is clear that poverty and nationality are intertwined, with a greater proportion of Bohemian and Polish immigrants located in the rear sections of lots and in alleys, while the eastern edge of the district had a disproportionate amount of black, poorer blocks (as discussed in the previous chapter).

The decade following the publication of the Hull-House maps yielded many other maps of nationality, whether directly influenced by its methods or as separate creations in their own right. In Boston a map ‘Illustrating the Distribution of the Predominant Race Factors in the West End, Boston’ showed the results of a study conducted by the Boston settlement headed by Robert Wood. Wood’s study of 1903 resulted in two maps of the industrial character of the population and its racial composition. The map, which colours up street segments according to ‘Americans; Irish [in green]; Jews; British & Provincials; Negroes [sic, in black]; Italians and Mixed’ are said to be ‘accurate as to the prevailing condition in each block’.²⁶ While no nationality is in a majority in the city, it is clear that there were localised clusters, though these were less obvious than in Chicago, both because of the use of the street as the unit of analysis and because the area studied was much smaller.

A decade or so later a much less precise approach to mapping nationalities was used for A Map of Newark with Areas Where Different Nationalities Predominate, illustrating the principal location of nationalities in Newark (Figure 5.8). The map, which was the frontispiece of a directory issued by the Bureau of Associated Charities, is mentioned only in passing in the directory. It does however feature alongside a detailed record of how cities such as Newark, with a population of 350,000 at the time, had formed a programme of private and public philanthropy to create a system of social services or agencies following rapid growth in the preceding years.²⁷

With the Newark map, the mapping of race and nationalities in the United States arrived at a hiatus, as the focus shifted towards crime – although arguably crime mapping too was bound up in issues of race and nationalities, as we will see in the next chapter.²⁸ In this regard, the story of the racialised assessment of mortgage risk, what is known as redlining, will be considered later in this chapter, but meanwhile we need to return to London to consider one of the most important legacies of Charles Booth’s project, a map of Jewish East London from the turn of the twentieth century.