The Shantytowns of Central Park West: Fin de Siècle Squatting in American Cities

Chapter 5 of Neuwith’s book discuss the history of squatters in what are now the developed nations of Europe and North America, and chapter 6 discusses New York City and Brooklyn: Robert Neuwirth, Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World (New York, 2005), 177-237.

As an example, see Ruth McManus and Philip J. Ethington , "Suburbs in Transition: New Approaches to Suburban History," Urban History 34 (August 2007): 317-37.

There is an extensive literature on recent squatting movements in Europe, the United States, and Canada, although most of it is from the activist angle. A good overview of legal rights in different locations is available in Anders Corr, No Trespassing! Squatting, Rent Strikes, and Land Struggles Worldwide, 1st ed. (Cambridge, 1999). A historical view of squatting in England can be found in Colin Ward, Cotters and Squatters: Housing’s Hidden History (Nottingham, UK, 2002).

Although an eviction is always the result of a struggle over the right to occupy a property, squatting is only the subset of those cases wherein the occupancy occurs without acknowledging the ownership rights of another party.

Hernando de Soto offers a capsule history of the land tenure system in the United States that is generally accurate but with a decided slant toward proving that squatting was a relic of colonial and frontier conditions. In his view, the elimination of squatters’ rights by midcentury and the accelerating pace of industrialization soon after are linked phenomena. Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (New York, 2000), 105-48.

The intended meaning is a filed land claim at a U.S. land office, properly alienating the property from public to private ownership.

Anonymous, "Mrs. Chouteau’s Life Story: The First White Woman Who Lived in Kansas City Dead," New York Times, November 21, 1888, 3.

Anonymous , "Squatters Greatly Excited," New York Times, May 3, 1884, 1.

Anonymous , "Louisiana St. John’s Will," New York Times, September 17, 1879, 2.

Anonymous , "Squatters on Beacon Hill," New York Times, March 3, 1884 , 2.

Neuwirth, Shadow Cities, 200-201.

Ulf Beijbom , "Swedes in Chicago: A Demographic and Social Study of the 1846-1880 Immigration" (Läromedelsförlagen , 1971), 61-65.

Two instances from the western United States are particularly illustrative of this principle. In Denver, a man squatting on an odd-shaped lot in an upscale neighborhood created by the city as part of a flood control project along a creek ran into legal trouble not because he stole city property but because his home blocked an alley; Anonymous, "A Squatter’s Title," Rocky Mountain News, October 18, 1889. In Santa Clara, a man established a claim on desirable property along Alameda Boulevard because he fenced in a regular-sized lot from the frontage of three outsized lots without fencing or other bounding. The response of the neighbors was to enclose their properties; Anonymous, "Squatters in Santa Clara," Daily Evening Bulletin, March 4, 1870.

He received a writ from a higher court that contradicted the lower.

Anonymous , "New York Gossip-A Shanty Blocks a Tunnel Project," Boston Daily Advertiser, December 29, 1888.

The statutes concerning squatters’ rights (the legal term is adverse possession) vary between states and through time but agree on several principles of common law. The squatter must be in continual and obvious possession of the property for the period necessary, using it as his or her own property. If not successfully challenged before the expiration of a legally defined period, the title automatically reverts to the squatter. The length of that time also varies by state, but generally, statutory limits concerning real property are much longer than others, up to twenty years. Other complications are added by the use of Torrens title in some states, of which space forbids a description. It will suffice to mention that issuance of a Torrens title eliminates uncertainty over land ownership through extinguishing all previous titles without prejudice James A. Ballentine and William S. Anderson, Ballentine’s Law Dictionary, with Pronunciations, 3d ed. (Rochester, NY, 1969), entry "Torrens Title."

The most comprehensive accounts of the late-nineteenth-century campaigns to eliminate shantytowns and squatters are in the New York Times (accessed through Proquest) and the Brooklyn Eagle (available through the Brooklyn Public Library, at http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle ).

Anonymous , "Ten Thousand Squatters," New York Times, April 20, 1880 , 8.

Estimates of the severity of the 1870s depression indicate that unemployment in the United States intensified throughout the decade, peaking near 9 percent in 1878; J. R. Vernon, "Unemployment Rates in Postbellum America: 1869-1899," Journal of Macroeconomics 16 (1994): 701-14.. The widespread economic disruption of this decade is widely cited as the primary force behind the rise of hobo culture; Todd DePastino, Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America (Chicago, 2003).

An annual 15 percent assessment, compounded by 9 percent on the unpaid balance; Anonymous, "Rent Day Only a Tradition," Brooklyn Eagle, December 6, 1896, 4.

The representation of Darby’s Patch and other shantytowns as havens of the criminal class of "Shanty Irish" is consistent with the perception of urban poverty during the 1880s and a significant mitigating factor justifying their eviction; see Anonymous, "The Squatters: A Visit to the Shanties on Fourth Avenue Patch," Brooklyn Eagle, September 29, 1883, 1. Reports of squats not part of the colonies identify a more diverse population including a number of native New Yorkers, and the surnames of persons named in specific evictions also suggest a heterogeneous population.

Anonymous , "Darby’s Patch: Forcible Dethronement of the Squatter Sovereigns," Brooklyn Eagle, November 16, 1883, 4.

As examples, the grounds of Central Park and the first location of Mount Sinai Hospital (the current site of Hunter College) were cleared by action of the city’s Council of Hygiene. Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City: Dwelling Type and Social Change in the American Metropolis (New York, 1990), 54.

The beginning of the campaign is noted in Anonymous, "Ten Thousand Squatters." The gradual clearing of the area attracted constant notice from the New York Times and national news sources; see also Anonymous, "The West Side," Harpers Weekly, January 26, 1889; and Anonymous, "Street Openings and Squatters: The Subjects Discussed by the West Side Association," New York Times, December 7, 1879.

Not coincidently, the location typologies of squatter colonies resemble those of historic black settlements and should be understood to result from many of the same circumstances; John Kellogg , "Negro Urban Clusters in the Postbellum South," Geographical Review 67 (1977).

Anonymous , "Pets with Gaudy Wings," New York Times, September 16, 1888 .

The scope of the squatter colonies on the rocks are described in Anonymous, "The Colony of the Rocks," New York Times, February 24, 1875. The role of mining technology in clearing the midtown schist, and as a result the squatter colonies, is detailed in Frank Richards, "The Rock Drill and Its Share in the Development of New York City," Cassiers 32 (June 1907).

Anonymous, "The West Side."

Anonymous , "Red Hook Point: Thirty Years in the Slums," Brooklyn Eagle, December 2, 1872.

Like the role of squatters, the role of scavengers as a fundamental element of the structure and operation of the nineteenth-century American city is greatly underestimated. Also like squatting, scavenging is emblematic of the ungovernability of cities in the developing world; see D. S. Tevera, "Dump Scavenging in Gaborone, Botswana: Anachronism or Refuge Occupation of the Poor?" Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography 76 (1994). For a discussion of the economics of scavenging, see R. D. Moreno-Sanchez and J. H. Maldonado, "Surviving from Garbage: The Role of Informal Waste-pickers in a Dynamic Model of Solid-waste Management in Developing Countries," Environment and Development Economics 11 (2006).

Anonymous , "Queen Mary: Her Determined Fight for Squatter Sovereignty," Brooklyn Eagle , May 3, 1887.

Anonymous , "Suits against Squatters," Brooklyn Eagle, December 7, 1896 .

Anonymous , "Clearly against the Law; Jay Gould’s Road a Trespasser on Battery Park," New York Times, March 26, 1891.

The New York Times piece on Beacon Hill ended with the observation that "the priority right of settlement and occupation carried the day, and the fortunes of the descendents of some of the first families are based upon such an uncertain tenure, and yet it was a sort of Pandora’s box to those who claimed" (Anonymous, "Squatters on Beacon Hill," 2).

Anonymous , "Jackson’s Hollow: Ways and Customs of Its Past Fading," Brooklyn Eagle , July 23, 1873.

The identification of Jackson Hollow and the other locations in New York as squatter colonies has the characteristics of a moral panic and shares a common language and tenor with the coincident Tramp Panic.

As anecdotal evidence, I have personal experience of this tactic in the booming north suburbs of Chicago of the late 1990s. A contractor hurriedly erected a home on a vacant lot held as a speculation by my employer, and it was only through a chance conversation that a sale that was pending on his squatted property was prevented.

Richard Harris , "Self-building and the Social Geography of Toronto, 1901-1913: A Challenge for Urban Theory," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 15 ( 1990): 387-402; Richard Harris , Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto’s American Tragedy, 1900-1950 ( Baltimore, 1996).