"To Every Mans Door": Railroads and Use of the Streets in Jacksonian Philadelphia
DURING THE "TRANSPORTATION REVOLUTION" OF THE 1830S, the ideological roadblocks to railroad development were often more serious than the technical. Sectional rivalries over routes, debates about public versus private ownership, and even the question of what historian John Lauritz Larson has called the "establishment of operating monopolies" consumed Jacksonians fearful of corporate power and the authority inherent in trunk-line systems.1 These controversies were magnified in cities, where citizens often resented railroads as corporate usurpers of what they regarded as common public space.2 The contention was especially revealing in Philadelphia, where the alleged engrosser was municipal-owned and linked with Pennsylvania's state system of internal improvements. While many Philadelphians recognized the efficiencies of centralized rail operations, others expected railways to enhance the streets as a public good and provide a business path "to every mans door." Before urban railroads could forge their "metropolitan corridors," their routes of exclusive control, they had to break free from antimodern, even counter