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That's an interesting take on economic history, and likely it does play a role, but I think there are other factors at play. How do you explain a corporate powerhouse like Chicago with no ocean port, for example? What, too, about the major agricultural roles of Hudson Valley (near NYC) and Napa Valley (near SF)?
LA, not Napa, was SF's original wine supplier. Napa began to supply SF more heavily after the Civil War.
NY was very much like Philly before the Rev. War, selling farm-to-market ag surpluses. NY only got going after the war as a seaport.
Great Lakes cities like Chicago were far more internationally oriented than river cities. By 1900, Chicago and Cleveland has larger shares of their populations that were foreign born than St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Louisville.
Chicago and the Great Lakes also had a link to the ocean via the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Erie Canal. That said, Chicago never got too expensive like the land-constrained seaports did for manufacturing, and retained a lot of its industry within city limits. Chicago, like LA, is important due to its sheer size. Chicago's metro GDP is also lower than the Bay Area's, and SFO handles about 50% more pax on foreign carriers than ORD. SFO is the number 3 airport in the country for foreign air carriers after JFK and LAX.
I greatly prefer Philadelphia over all the other cities, but I think this ultimately goes to Boston because of its massive stake in research and education.
I'm not sure the comparison to Portland/Seattle works that well. There is plenty of fertile farmland around Seattle too (its not that significantly different from Oregon). I think both cities were constrained by small population and shipping limitations in terms of being agricultural/breadbasket economies. At least initially both were heavily focused on resource extraction instead i.e. timber. Then it was just the Alaskan gold rush that kickstarted the Seattle growth because it was the largest port to start off from. Which is somewhat similar to SF's early history as well.
The Gold Rush inspired Nordstrom and Eddie Bauer, and Seattle didn't require fortune seekers to go up and down the Columbia like Portland did.
Pre-Gold Rush Portland was also bigger than Seattle, just as pre-Revolutionary Philly was bigger than NY and Boston. Portland was a much better ag region than Seattle. 19th century Puget Sound could not keep up with the ag output of the Willamette Valley, especially for wheat. Modern Portland is the largest wheat export port in the country, and like Philly's had to do with the Delaware, the Port of Portland keeps dredging the Columbia so it can handle larger ships.
All week on the news they have been showing streetscapes of major cities.
Of course they showed NY, LA and DC repeatedly, but interestingly they showed
Boston and SF over and over again. I'm sure they included Chicago but I didn't catch it.
At some points they also showed Bourbon in Nola, but it's interesting that the News agrees with the poll and chose Boston and SF as major US cities along with NY, LA and DC.
I think this really underscores that while Philly did certainly have a good amount of agricultural activity in its hinterlands (outer Chester, Bucks and Montgomery Counties and Southern New Jersey), it clearly was one of the massive early manufacturing hubs of the US and the real basis of its growth. In 1870, the clear immigrant "leaders" of the US were New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago--all major manufacturing centers at that time.
Philadelphia had a second nickname from the late 19th to mid-20th centuries:
"The Workshop of the World."
No single industry dominated in the city the way steel did in Pittsburgh or autos in Detroit, but the city had factories that produced a dazzling variety of products large and small, many of which became iconic brands in their own right: Baldwin locomotives, Brill streetcars, Disston saws, Stetson hats (yes, the hat that every cowboy wore was made in Philadelphia), Botany '500' suits, Ford automobiles (the city was home to one of the company's earliest branch plants), Smith, Kline & French pharmaceuticals, Scott paper products, Sunoco gasoline, Middishade men's clothing, the list goes on. The Delaware River was known as "the American Clyde" because of all the shipbuilding yards located along it in Philadelphia, Camden and Chester.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheseGoTo11
Chicago and the Great Lakes also had a link to the ocean via the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Erie Canal.
The St. Lawrence Seaway didn't open until 1957. The Erie Canal was probably more of an outlet for Great Lakes maritime commerce before that.
One of the things that propelled Chicago to pre-eminence among Midwestern cities was railroads. All of the railroads that served the city, from the mighty Pennsylvania (based in Philly) to the New York Central (its New York-based rival) to the (Atchison, Topeka and) Santa Fe to the "granger roads" (Burlington, Rock Island, Chicago Great Western...) and so on, ended there rather than passed through it. That meant that just about anything headed from Eastern ports and factories to anywhere west of it, as well as the corn from Iowa and the cattle from Texas feedlots headed for East Coast tables, had to change hands at Chicago. It became not only "hog butcher to the world" but the great middleman of interior trade in the U.S.
The Gold Rush inspired Nordstrom and Eddie Bauer, and Seattle didn't require fortune seekers to go up and down the Columbia like Portland did.
Pre-Gold Rush Portland was also bigger than Seattle, just as pre-Revolutionary Philly was bigger than NY and Boston. Portland was a much better ag region than Seattle. 19th century Puget Sound could not keep up with the ag output of the Willamette Valley, especially for wheat. Modern Portland is the largest wheat export port in the country, and like Philly's had to do with the Delaware, the Port of Portland keeps dredging the Columbia so it can handle larger ships.
Philadelphia has been larger than Boston economically and in population.
Portland (and Seattle) wheat exports are about the dry sides of the states, not the wet sides.
In Washington yes, but not Oregon. In some years, half of the state's wheat crop comes from the Willamette Valley.
The Seattle area west of the Cascades doesn't have a fertile river valley. Saltwater shorelines generally suck for farming. Closest thing it had that was comparable to the Willamette was the Skagit Valley to its north, but that was far less productive.
Portland, like Philly, was south of the glaciers in the last ice age. NY and Seattle were not. One of the factors attributed to the Willamette Valley's fertile soil was being flooded many times, but not covered by glaciers, during the last ice age. Not terribly different from the Delaware Valley.
Miami O&D stats are higher than this because this is only MIA and excluding FLL. Houston also edges Atlanta by 100k when you add HOU numbers with IAH numbers. Dallas has 2 airports but DFW is the only intl one since DAL is all domestic. Boston has a few airports but Logan is the only intl port there.
For all this big talk about Sea-Tac it’s O&D stats are disappointing...
MIA, ATL, IAH, DFW and PHL are HUGE connecting cities. Lets see O/D. SEA is not disappointing. SEA and BOS probably have more O/D than all of those cities bar MIA.
MIA, ATL, IAH, DFW and PHL are HUGE connecting cities. Lets see O/D. SEA is not disappointing. SEA and BOS probably have more O/D than all of those cities bar MIA.
Those are O&D...
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