Word: coketown
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Coketown. Lewis Mumford's indictment of the "paleotechnic" (coal & iron industrial) age concentrates the eloquence of generations of reformers, the enlightenment of generations of thinkers, besides his own exceptional talents for raking up the coals. For the social chaos and loss of architectural form which overcame the city during the 18th and 19th Centuries the only excuse was the speed of industrial expansion and the colossal rise in the population of Europe. "It was a period of vast urban improvisation: makeshift piled upon makeshift. . . . Until 1838 neither Manchester nor Birmingham even functioned politically as incorporated boroughs: they were...
...which they could be segregated. "Workers' houses . . . would be built smack up against a steel works, a dye plant, a gas works or a railroad cutting." Hanley, England (see cut) is an example. In workers' housing the one-family room became standard from Dublin to Bombay. Coketown (Mumford's name for the industrial city taken from Dickens' Hard Times), was so shrouded with smoke that "the black stove pipe hat was almost a functional design...
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