Untimely Ruins: An Archaeology of American Urban Modernity, 1819-1919 Book

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments xi

Abbreviations xv

Introduction: Of Light Bulbs and Bathtubs: Excavating the Modern City 1

1 Crumbling Columns and Day-Old Ruins: Specters of Antiquity on the American Grand Tour, 1819-1837 19

2 "Even Eden, you know, ain't all built": Paper Cities, British Investors, and the Ruins of Cairo, Illinois, 1837-1844 63

3 The Petrified City: Antiquity and Modernity in Melville's New York, 1835-1865 107

4 Relapsing into Barbarism: Labor, Ethnicity, and Ruin in Prospective Histories of Urban America, 1865-1906 147

5 "Plagued By Their Own Inventions": Reframing the Technological Ruins of San Francisco, 1906-1909 191

6 The Metropolitan Life in Ruins: Architectural and Fictional Speculations in New York, 1893-1919 243

Epilogue: Toward the Posthuman Ruin 289

Notes 295

Index 363