The Working Man’s Reward by Elaine Lewinnek

Description

Between the 1860s and 1920s, Chicago’s working-class immigrants helped shape the early American ideal of homeownership, imagining houses as both havens from industrial labor and productive spaces they could control. As suburban neighborhoods grew alongside the city’s expanding factories, developers promoted the idea that owning a home could offer stability and upward mobility — a promise that gradually hardened into what Lewinnek calls “the mortgages of whiteness,” the belief that property values depended on racial exclusion. Blending the era’s ideas about domestic respectability, early city planning, and the racial politics of real estate, The Working Man’s Reward shows how Chicago’s immigrant homeowners sought respectability and security while defending their investments, revealing that the roots of suburbanization and racialized property values reach back well before mid-century integration debates.

This is a first edition, hardcover copy of the book in like new condition. No notes!

Please contact us with any questions, or if you’d like to request additional photos of this book.