The Railroad Unbound and the City Contained
The Railroad Unbound and the City Contained
This chapter looks at how, in the 1860s and 1870s, the B&O positioned itself as a private corporation operating at a national scale. The company’s work on behalf of the Union cause during the Civil War helped cement this shift, as did its ongoing struggle with other rail lines for traffic. Meanwhile, the City of Baltimore found that its legal and political powers largely stopped at the city limits. These interrelated shifts played out in the built environment, as both railroad executives and elite urbanites characterized the city as a place of transit, marked by a new infrastructure of tunnels, streetcars, and ferries. By 1877, the railroad corporation had established itself as a major player in a capitalist system that characterized cities as sites for investment and circulation.
Keywords: Civil War, John F. Dillon, John W. Garrett, streetcars, infrastructure, railroads, tunnels, circulation, municipal government, corporations
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