The Living City | New York City >> 1880s >> 1885

1888 | The Great Blizzard

The Blizzard of 1888 brought the city to a standstill as electric lines came down under the weight of the snow. It stimulated the move to place electric lines underground-an innovation Lewis Mumford referred to as "the Invisible City." The blizzard underscored the problem of refuse that built up in city streets during the wintertime-the growing fashion of stoops on middle class families homes could be seen as an adaptation of wealthy urban dwellers to the problem of waste overtaking one's front door, especially during thaws and rainstorms. But by the 1880s stoops did little to ameliorate the problem of refuse in the streets. The blizzard, therefore, began to galvanize support for a regular, accountable sanitary force responsible for cleaning the city streets, which would lead to the reconceptualization of garbage as a public health threat in the next decade.