hills in syracuse, new york I

The Geographical Review Io: (I): IIo, January :oI:

Copyright :oI: by the American Geographical Society of New York
* I would like to thank Dennis Connors, James Darlington, and the editor and reviewers for their comments
and suggestions, as well as the Louisiana State University cartography sta for their assistance.
Dr. Meyer is a visiting lecturer in geography at Colgate University, Hamilton, New York I,,o;
[wmeyer@colgate.edu].
The Geographical Review
VOLUME 102 January :o:: NUMBER 1
HILLS AS RESOURCES AND RESISTANCES
IN SYRACUSE, NEW YORK*
WILLIAM B. MEYER
abstract. In an example of what William Freudenburg and his colleagues called the con-
joint construction of nature and society, hills may represent either assets or liabilities for
urban settlement, depending on the period and the activities involved. The relationships
between terrain and land use in Syracuse, New York, since the late eighteenth century fall into
three major eras. The initial phase, in which settlement largely shunned the lowlands, gave way
in the I8:os to one in which canals and railroads stimulated development of the lowlands and
in which most land uses, save those of the classic urban fringe, avoided the uplands. A new
pattern appeared in the late nineteenth century with the arrival of the electric trolley and the
automobile and with provision of a municipal water supply able to reach the citys high ground.
Development since then has been consistent with Ernest Burgesss I,:, model of the poor in
the valleys, the well-to-do on the hillslopes, and the rich on the hilltops. Keywords: conjoint
construction, nature-society relationships, Syracuse, New York, terrain, urban fringe.
Though emphatically rejecting environmental determinism, modern geogra-
phy has not ceased to be inuenced by it. The inuence has been negative rather
than positive, however, felt less in the topics geographers have studied than in
some they have shunned. The stigma of determinism has particularly discouraged
studies of those nature-society relationships that take forms other than the safely
nondeterministic one of human impact on the environment. Foremost among the
topics neglected is the one that determinists took for their province: the ways in
which such physical features as climate, terrain, soils, and natural resources can be
said to aect human life and activities.
William Freudenburg, Scott Frickel, and Robert Gramlings I,,, article en-
titled Beyond the Nature/Society Divide: Learning to Think about a Mountain
oers a useful starting point for a reexamination of these topics. The trio proposed
that many processes and phenomena that are often taken to be essentially either
natural or social are in fact conjoint constructions of the two realms. Of the term
natural resource, they observed that there may actually be no such thing[,] . . .
: the geographical review
only a complex mix of social, technological, and biophysical conditions through
which a given element of the natural environment, at a particular point in time,
comes to be socially dened as valuable (I,,,, ,8,). A resource is not a natural
fact that can be discerned by the methods of the natural sciences alone, but neither
is it simply a social one discernable without those methods. It is a conjoint con-
struction.
David Harvey, dening a natural resource in a similar way (I,,o, I,), con-
tinued a tradition that goes back at least to Erich Zimmermanns I,,I functional
theory of resources. Zimmermann applied the same reasoning to a second cat-
egory as well-features of the physical world that hinder rather than help human
activities-which he dubbed resistances. A resource is necessarily a resource for
something, and a resistance necessarily a resistance to something, in each case
human wishes, purposes, or projects. Each exists only as the product, or the con-
joint construction, of its physical qualities and of the human arrangements with
which those qualities interact. If environment means whatever exists in the
surroundings of some being that is relevant to the state of that being at a particular
place and time (Harvey I,,o, II,; italics in the original), resources and resistances
represent the two forms that it can take. These are those conditions that promote
or hinder, stimulate or inhibit, the characteristic activities of a living being (Dewey
I,Io, I,), features that as a result are valued or disvalued, and their conjoint
construction is the fundamental process of human-environment relationships.
Ignoring the necessary-though not sucient-role of the physical world in
their construction is the error of extreme social or cultural determinism. Environ-
mental determinism errs in the opposite way; it treats the environment as a sepa-
rate, simple cause or factor not mediated by culture: something external to culture
and inuencing it from the outside (Blaut I,,,, o,). It is the more common error
of the two. It errs not in supposing that landforms, for instance, can aect land
use but, rather, in thinking that they determine a societys choices independently
of its own distinctive goals and capabilities. Research meant to elucidate this point
by bringing clearly to light the role of the social element can conne the study to
a single location in an eort to hold as constant as possible the eects of the actual
physical setting itself, displaying changes in environmental relationships as soci-
ety changes over time (Freudenburg, Frickel, and Gramling I,,,, ,,I).
Today high land in American cities is a valuable resource, much prized for
residence (Meyer :ooo; Ueland and Warf :ooo). Under conditions that prevailed
in other times, did it represent a resource in the same way? Syracuse, New York,
oers an excellent setting for a case study. Both Syracuse and Onondaga County, in
central New York, of which it is the seat and largest population center, are divided
into roughly equal areas of rugged southern upland and northern lowland plain
by the Allegheny Plateau Escarpment (Faigle I,,,). The valley of the northward-
owing Onondaga Creek bisects the citys southern highlands. The smaller valley
of Harbor Brook (entering from the uplands to the west), a large elevated area in
the northeast (divided by another narrow band of oodplain from the plateau
hills in syracuse, new york ,
proper to its south), and many drumlins and other small hills further diversify the
urban terrain. Elevations in Syracuse range from ,o, feet above sea level (Onondaga
Lake) to more than 8oo feet in the extreme southeast and southwest. About half of
the city lies on at or very gently sloping land between the lakeshore and the :o-
foot contour (Willie I,oI). With an abundance of at land available on one side of
the escarpments base and elevated land on the other, activities in Syracuse during
two centuries of urban occupance have long been free to occupy either as they
desire.
Uplands as Hill Towns, I,8:I8:,
The roles played by high and low ground in human settlement underwent changes
in the Syracuse area even before European colonization. Over the course of several
centuries the pre- and proto-Iroquoian occupants of the region moved their prin-
cipal villages, rst from the easy terrain of the northern lowlands to hilltops within
the lowlands and then to the uplands proper south of the escarpment (Tuck I,,I;
Bradley I,8,; Hasenstab I,,o). In their southward and upward migration they
appear to have been seeking both sites more easily defended in an era of growing
intertribal warfare and the agricultural advantages of the better-drained upland
soils. Coalescing as one tribal unit and the central member of the Iroquois Confed-
eracy, they took the name Onondaga, the people of the hills.
In the years following the American Revolution, the rst white occupants of
the region likewise preferred the uplands to the lowlands. The state set aside much
of central New York in I,8: as the New Military Tract, which it opened to settle-
ment in I,,I (Schein I,,I). Through the early nineteenth century, population con-
centrated in the southern and more elevated part of the tract and particularly on
the near south of the Onondaga Escarpment (Schein I,,I, ,8,,; see also Miller
I,,,). Settlers found the better-drained upland soils easier to cultivate and less
subject to malaria than the swampy lowlands. They were also much richer in the
small waterpower sites needed for grain milling and timber sawing, whereas the
rmer though steeper high ground facilitated travel and the hauling of goods to or
from markets outside the area. The rst major eastwest road through central
New York, the Seneca Turnpike (I8oo), ran south of the escarpment, dipping into
the lowlands only where it traversed the valleys of the northward-owing creeks.
The rst seat of Onondaga County, formed in I,,, was the village of Onondaga
Hill, on the turnpike at 8oo feet above sea level.
Even the most important settlement of the period north of the Allegheny Es-
carpment line, and the rst within what would become the city of Syracuse, did not
depart from the rule favoring elevated sites. Its livelihood from the time of its
establishment in the late I,8os rested on the extraction of salt from the brine springs
on the fringe of Onondaga Lake. The marsh from which the springs proceed, is
bounded, a contemporary observer wrote, by a steep bank of clayey gravel . . .
forming the up-land on which the village of Salina stands (DeWitt I,,8, :o). This
protruding slope, on the side of the detached northeast hill of present-day Syra-
the geographical review
cuse, was called Salt Point. It oered better ground for construction and a
healthier site for residence than did the marshes below. High ground also retained
its military advantages. When fears arose in the I,,os of renewed hostilities with
Great Britain and its Iroquois allies, the state built a blockhouse for Salinas de-
fense on a commanding site overlooking the salt elds and the lake (Smith I,o,
IoIo,).
Into the I8:os Salina remained a far more important settlement than the vil-
lage of Syracuse, established in the lowlands to its south early in the new century
where the Genesee Turnpike (todays Route ,) crossed the northsouth road run-
ning through the Onondaga Creek valley (Galpin I,,; Connors :ooo, :o, ,:,,).
Syracuse, unlike Salina, was not in any sense a hill town, and it suered as a result.
The muddy ground made construction and transportation dicult. A dam on the
creek provided waterpower, but the shallow mill pond only worsened the health of
a notoriously fever-ridden area.
Hill towns thus predominated in the rst phase of urban development. Most of
the countys population dwelt in the southern uplands; the future citys chief settle-
ment was the village of Salina on a hillside. Advantages stemming from height
more than outweighed the increased diculties of up-and-down movement; el-
evation was more of a resource than a resistance for settlement.
Uplands as Urban Fringe, I8:,I888
Developments above all in transportation-the building of canals and then the
coming of the railroad-changed high ground in central New York for the most
part from a resource to a resistance. The surveyors of the Erie Canal (completed in
I8:,), seeking as level an eastwest course as possible, routed the cross-state water-
way through the village of Syracuse, which it entered by the narrow lowland cor-
ridor between the escarpment to the south and the isolated hill to the north. The
Oswego Canal (completed in I8:8), connecting Lake Ontario with the Erie Canal
at Syracuse, entered the city from the north between the lakeshore salt elds and
the foot of the Salina hillslope (Figure I). Railroads were likewise obliged, though
not as strictly, to seek level ground and eschew steep grades (Stern I,,,). The rst
to run through Onondaga County, completed in I8,,, took much the same route
through Syracuse as did the Erie Canal. Areas too far above the new lines of
travel-the height of a piece of land above the canal in downtown Syracuse, about
oo feet above sea level, became the standard way of measuring its elevation-found
themselves relegated to the margins.
Beginning in the I8:os, population and business shifted decisively from Onon-
daga Countys southern upland towns to northern ones along the canal (Miller
I,,,). The county transferred most of its buildings in I8:, from the now-faltering
settlement of Onondaga Hill to a site straddling the Syracuse-Salina line, about
miles north-northeast of their old location and nearly oo feet lower. Onondaga
Hill retained only the county poorhouse and farm, whose inmates would eventu-
ally outnumber its own residents. Hillside Salina too, lying above the main lines of
hills in syracuse, new york ,
travel, fell behind the younger lowland village to its south, which annexed it when
Syracuse acquired a city charter in I88. After the county courthouse burned in
I8,o, a new site was chosen farther from Salina (now the citys First Ward or North
Side) in the heart of the old village of Syracuse and of the new business district at
canal level.
Other changes helped ease the shift of life downhill. The military value of high
ground declined as the threat of war receded. Drainage banished malaria from the
lowlands and made rmer ground for roads. The stationary steam engine lessened
the value for manufacturing of the uplands waterpower sites and freed plants to
locate where other factors dictated. That of proximity to canals and railroads
proved paramount in Syracuse for industry and commerce alike.
For only few trades did some advantages of elevated sites outweigh their di-
culty of access. Breweries on hills could excavate deep cellars in which lager beer
could be made and stored without deteriorating in the heat of summer (ds I8,8, Io
May, ,; ss I888, :, August, ; oha I,,,, n.d.). Growing sewage pollution of their
original lowland sources, Onondaga Lake and the Erie Canal, forced ice compa-
nies late in the nineteenth century to shift their winter cutting to cleaner though
more remote upland lakes and reservoirs (Adams I,o:, I,,I:). The private com-
pany that supplied piped water within the city built the main reservoir of its grav-
ity-powered system in I8,o on rising land to the southwest. Local dealers in sand,
gravel, clay, and limestone could extract them more easily from sloping than from
level terrain, and their land-demanding operations were best carried on away
from the ats onto which most other activities crowded. Prospect Hill, several
blocks south of the Syracuse-Salina line, provided landll during the villages early
decades, including the material used to make solid ground of the old Syracuse
Fic. I-Major terrain features, settlement areas, and transportation routes in the Syracuse/Salina
area, ca. I8,o. Sources: Modied from Gordon I8,o; usgs I8,8. (Cartography by Mary Lee Eggart)
o the geographical review
millpond, declared a legal nuisance at mid-century. By the I8,os these assaults had
lowered the summit of Prospect by some o feet (Cheney [I8,,] I,I, Ioo), al-
though it still rose to a locally commanding height of nearly 8o feet above the
canal. Postbellum mining within the city was concentrated on the valley slope and
uplands in the southeast (Luther I8,,), close to the main railroad from Syracuse
south, which ran through a rock cut nearby. The areas sand pits, brickyards, stone
quarries, and lime kilns-particularly the water lime industry, exploiting a thin
but wide-ranging layer of stone (Bowden I,,)-disturbed extensive tracts of the
southeastern upland.
Once mining came to an end, the scanty land uses that gave Prospect Hill and
a twin ridge to its northeast, Liberty Hill (also called Second Prospect Hill or
Powder House Hill), their distinctive character were those of the spatial and
social fringe. As late as the I8oos the summit of Liberty Hill was a common eld
used for pasturing cows (cu I8o, o June, I). Both hills hosted breweries, saloons,
beer gardens, and gambling and dance halls (oha n.d.). At the most notorious of
these establishments, the Casino on Prospect Hill, brawls and similar incidents
were so frequent that it gained the reputation of being the worst resort in Syra-
cuse (sdj I,o,, ,o March, ). A hilltop location oered several attractions apart
from the easy excavation of brewery cellars. The breezy height and view were
pleasant for customers on summer evenings. The land was inexpensive, and com-
plaining neighbors were few because few other occupants found it suited to their
needs.
Fic. :-Typical hilltop location in Syracuse for a charitable institution: New York State Asylum for
Idiots. (Reproduced courtesy of the Onondaga Historical Association)
hills in syracuse, new york ,
A few did, however, and in I8o, the summit of Prospect Hill also became the
home of St. Josephs Hospital. Taking over two buildings previously occupied by
a dwelling and lager beer saloon and a large and disreputable Saturday-night
dance-house (sdj I8o,, , October, ), it was Syracuses rst residential care facil-
ity. The second, the House of the Good Shepherd, opened in I8, on the high land
southeast of downtown, Ioo feet above the canal. The city established its quaran-
tine building for contagious disease patients on high and open ground on the
northeast hill near the city line. Several other institutions showed the same anity
for elevated sites. New York State built its Asylum for Idiots in Syracuse in the I8,os
on the crest of an empty plateau, oo8o feet above the canal, overlooking the city
from the west (Figure :). A new county prison arose at mid-century on a small but
sharp rise of land just north of Prospect Hill. Although the poorhouse remained
on Onondaga Hill, the County Orphan Asylum, established in the I8os, occupied
a steep knoll on the citys eastern fringe. Syracuses three large specimens of the
Romantic rural cemetery movement-Oakwood, opened in I8,,; Saint Agnes, in
I8,; and Woodlawn, in I88I-spread over high and rugged terrain on the eastern
and western slopes, respectively, of the Onondaga Creek valley and on the far side
of the northeast hill.
The citys rst large public park, Burnet Park, acquired by donation in I88o,
consisted of high and hilly ground, as did most of the later additions to the system.
Although some observers found such terrain ideal for its purpose-oering beau-
tiful scenery-others described it just as accurately as representing otherwise worth-
less land, for the most part scattered hilltops that were unavailable for building
and so practically inaccessible that very few of the citizens can ever have visited
them (Robinson I,o,). Dicult to reach and to traverse in the pre-automobile
city, unsuitable for active games, hills had their drawbacks as public recreational
grounds. But lands rich in views happened to be the ones that American philan-
thropists and cities of the period were the most ready to spare from development
and the tax rolls, as unwanted for the most remunerative uses.
Likewise, medical, charitable, and correctional institutions did not migrate to
high ground simply to enjoy fresher and purer air or a pleasant and perhaps
therapeutic view. Few land uses had less freedom to choose their sites than did
Syracuses nancially strapped early hospitals (Benedict I,,:,; Adams I,o:). It
was their good fortune to enjoy some benets of high ground that came along with
its low cost and with some serious disadvantages. The steep, unpaved roads that
linked them to the city were muddy in spring and fall and prone to gullying during
heavy rains (ds I8,,, I, July, ; I8 July, ; eh I88:, , April, I). Nor, although the
lowest land was considered the least healthy, was the highest land seen as the most.
The principles of the time discouraged not only damp lowland sites for hospitals
but exposed summits as well. In northern latitudes they stipulated a site under
the lee of a hill oering protection from the stronger and colder winds and by
no means in a cold or exposed situation (Conner I88o, :,8; cm I8,I, IoI). Syracuses
hospitals, standing open to the north and west, failed the test. The scanty supply of
8 the geographical review
water on the hills, moreover, put such institutions at serious risk from re (sdj
I8o, :, February, ; sms I8,8, Io August, ). Rapid urban growth in an era of
dicult transportation crowded activities onto prime, accessible sites near the
center and on the lowlands, pressing land-demanding and poorly funded facilities
outward and upward to less-favored ground.
Assembling in I8,o, the trustees of the new Syracuse University gave serious
consideration to three possible sites for the campus in and around the city (subot
I8,oI,o,, o8; ds, I8,o, I, August, ,). All three were on hills, and the one nally
chosen was the highest of the three, a ,o-acre tract-subsequently much enlarged-
atop the escarpment southeast of the city center and I,o feet above the canal. The
university rented classroom space downtown for two years (I8,II8,,) until the
completion of its rst building on the hill. The disadvantages of high ground for a
campus were evident from the start. The students-most of whom boarded in the
city and had to climb the hill to their classes-had much to say about the inconve-
nience of the site and the hazards of snow, ice, and high winds on the exposed hill in
winter (for example, uh I8,, :: ,,; I88:, II: II; I88, I: oI; Syracusan I88; un
I888). They judged the campus ideal only for those who like to pursue knowledge
under diculties (uh I8,8, ,: I). Added to these chronic annoyances was an
acute hazard to which the elevation exposed the schools physical plant. The reser-
voirs of the company that supplied the city with water through a gravity-powered
system were unable to serve so lofty a site. Fears of a disastrous conagration
nearly came true on the night of I: April I88o. A group of freshmen set re to a
dilapidated shed that served as a much-disliked substitute for a university gymna-
sium. If wind had spread the ames to the nearby Hall of Languages, the burning
of the Gym would not have been the laughing matter the students made it out to
be, for the re would likely have destroyed the universitys only substantial build-
ing (Galpin I,,:, IooIo,). The advantages of an elevated campus-except for the
cheapness of land, itself an index to the lands undesirability-were quite ethereal
compared with its drawbacks.
The university obtained its campus site from George F. Comstock, a trustee
and a prominent Syracuse lawyer, entrepreneur, and onetime judge of the State
Court of Appeals. A large landowner on University Hill, he had lobbied to have
the school located there and engaged in other activities to develop the area. He
donated the lot near the campus on which the House of the Good Shepherd was
built. He was one of the leading gures in the Genesee and Water Street Railroad
(Carson I,,,, :,:o), which ran a branch line partway up the hill to within a block
of the hospital and the campus. Its horsecar service was slow and laborious, how-
ever, and few students could aord to use it regularly. In I8,: Comstock divided
the rest of his holdings on University Hill into house lots and oered them for sale
as the Syracuse Highlands. A promotional pamphlet alternated between em-
phasizing and downplaying the developments vertical distance from the center of
the city. It lavishly praised the height, the view, and the pure air of the hill. At the
same time, it minimized the elevation of the lots on sale by stating that it reached
hills in syracuse, new york ,
Ioo feet above the canal downtown; the highest stood more than :oo feet above
the canal. It combined the claim that the streetcars run within a single block of
the lots-true only of the best-situated ones-with a dissertation on the health
benets of active open air exercise that would add months, even years to the
lives of our people. It called repeated attention to the very low price of lots in
the Syracuse Highlands, attributing it to Judge Comstocks desire to see the city
beautied and enlarged as rapidly as possible rather to any locational drawbacks
that had depressed the lands value (Nottingham . . . I8,:).
The Syracuse Highlands represented the one major test of the hills appeal for
large-scale, high-class development in this period. But what made university life
dicult for the students also discouraged residential growth nearby. Developers
reorganized and relaunched the Syracuse Highlands several times, but without no-
tably greater success. Twenty years after being opened to buyers, the upper part of
the tract was still mostly empty (Vose I8,:). The speculation had been premature.
One very small class of well-to-do residents did favor the highlands, though
not the Highlands, of Syracuse: the owners of mansions surrounded by extensive
grounds, who desired the amenities of an elevated and retired situation. The best-
known of these houses included the Yates Castle, Burt, and Thornden estates on
University Hill; the Fairmount home of the Geddes family west of the city; the
Reverend Samuel Calthrops Primrose Hill to the south; and the residence of the
brewer John Greenway and the extensive farm of the prominent attorney and
politician Charles B. Sedgwick, both on the northeastern hill beyond the top of
James Street. The upper part of James Street, which peaked at I,o feet above the
canal, boasted a string of rst-class dwellings.
Those who chose to live on this upland fringe were able, like the university
trustees, to obtain abundant acreage with little competition from other possible
users. They had, on the other hand, no city water, no police, no re protection,
and poor roads added to the diculties of travel to town (sunu I88,, :, Septem-
ber, o). When re broke out, not only were reghters delayed by the steep climb,
but, with water mains unavailable on the high ground, a serious conagration
anywhere on high land left them powerless to avert the progress of the ames
(dc I88o, :I December, ; sdj I88,, :, May, ). Twice during the I8,os the barns
and outbuildings on the Sedgwick farm burned to the ground (ds I8,:, : Decem-
ber, ; sdj I8,,, :, October, ). So, in the same decade, did one of the few large
houses erected in the Syracuse Highlands; so, ten years later, did one of the leading
James Street mansions, each time in the presence of helpless re crews (dc I8,,, 8
February, ; sdj I88,, : January, I). In I8,o re broke out in the uppermost man-
sion on James Street, located at the summit of the hill, and, with no water to be
had, there was no stopping the destruction of the magnicent residence (sdj
I8,o, :I August, ). When the city began to debate the construction of a new
municipal water system in the I88os, landowners in the elevated wards demanded
one with sucient head to meet all demands on the highlands within the city
limits (ss I88o, May, :; sdj I88,, :, May, ).
Io the geographical review
The highest neighborhoods of substantial size that had appeared by the end of
the I88os-those extending above the ,oo-foot contour-represented quite a mixed
assemblage, each with its own reasons for occupying a zone dicult of access and
poor in services (Figure ,). The upper part of the old village of Salina reected
patterns inherited from an earlier era. What a newspaper called the colony of
University folks on University Hill, drawn thither by the proximity of work,
remained largely separate from the life of the city below (ss I888, ,o September, :).
Upper James Street housed some of the citys elite, but the Graves tract on some
side streets on the same upland presented a strong contrast. It held about Ioo very
modest dwellings built by working-class residents ambitious to own their own
homes and willing to accept in return the lack of lighting, paving, water and gas
service, and police and re protection and the diculties of the journey to work
(ss I88,, :, July, ; sunh I88,, o January, I). Parts of the plateau south and east of
the university campus had a name for turbulence and crime, especially near the
Syracuse Driving Park race track, which had been built in the I8,os (ss I88,, 8 Oc-
tober, ). The plateau south of the university was home to a small working-class
population made up chiey of laborers, teamsters, and market gardeners (Boyd
I888). The district known as Sand Hill rose from the Onondaga Creek valley to
the far southeastern uplands of Syracuse. Nestled among its hills and rocky blus
was a oating population of foreigners and some natives, most of whom were
employed in the nearby sand and gravel pits, brickworks, quarries, or lime kilns.
The newspapers and the police spoke of the notorious Sand Hill settlement as
one of the most lawless regions of the city and long a terror to neighboring
communities. Carousals of the most detestable and obnoxious character are
nightly occurrences there, and daring and degraded criminals have there found a
safe haven of refuge, taking advantage of the rocks and glens, which aord hiding
places for the outlaws (eh I888, I December, I, , December, I; sunh I888, : Decem-
ber, I; sdj I888, , December, I).
If the highest lands were anything but uniformly an area of wealth and status,
neither did all or even most of the wealthy live there. Of the leading elite residential
areas of Syracuse in the latter half of the nineteenth century-James, West Genesee,
and West Onondaga streets (Powell I,,8; Bigelow I,,8)-the last two were on the
canal-level lowlands. So were the smaller neighborhoods of similar distinction,
such as Fayette Park, just east of downtown, and South Salina Street, running
through the valley of Onondaga Creek. George Comstock himself lived on West
Genesee Street from the I8os until his death in I8,:. Even while proclaiming the
unequaled delights of his Syracuse Highlands development for residence, he never
cared to taste them himself. The city overall grew outward through the valley
lowlands rather than up the sides of the nearer hills (sunh I88,, I, March, ,).
During this period elevation represented more of a resistance than a resource for
most activities. As a result, the predominant land uses of the highlands were those of
what I have called the vertical urban fringe (Meyer :oo,, :oo,). Industry, com-
merce, and residences in all but a few specialized forms avoided the hills. The diculty
of access and the resulting low land cost attracted the same set of occupants to the
hills in syracuse, new york II
Fic. ,-Major elevation-related land uses in Syracuse, I888. Sources: Modied from Boyd I888; usgs
I8,8. (Cartography by Mary Lee Eggart)
vertical urban periphery as to the horizontal one. They included the estates of the
rich enjoying space and privacy and the dwellings of the poor seeking inexpensive
land, shady and nuisance businesses, large institutional buildings, parks, and cem-
eteries. It is not surprising that these land uses in the Syracuse area often sought both
margins at once, in the form of high ground near the citys edge.
Uplands as Amenity Neighborhoods: I888 to the Present
Two events in the late nineteenth century did more than anything else to alter
again the relationships between terrain and settlement in the Syracuse area by
I: the geographical review
overcoming the chief resistances posed by high ground. In I88, the municipal
government settled on Skaneateles Lake, :o miles distant and about 8oo feet above
sea level, as the source for a new gravity-fed public water system. Completed in
I8,, the system could supply even the most elevated lands in Syracuse. The switch
from horsepower to electric power on the citys streetcar lines, which began in I888,
was completed by the turn of the century (Carson I,,,). There are several steep
grades on the road, a reporter noted on the electric trolleys inaugural trip through
the university area, and yet the heavily loaded car climbed the hill with celerity
(sdj I8,I, : July, ). The trolley greatly reduced the diculty of access to the uplands
and began to transform their use as dramatically as the canal and railroad had done
earlier. The automobile accelerated the change. It could climb the steepish hills
more readily even than the trolleys and certainly much more than a man afoot, and
with its appearance, Syracuse began, at last, to forsake the ats where it had huddled
all these years and to take to the hills (Hungerford I,,,, I:,).
That a new era had begun was soon evident on University Hill. After Judge
Comstocks death in I8,:, Maurice R. Graves took over the Syracuse Highlands
development, which he renamed University Heights. Unlike Comstock, he made
the area his home, building himself a handsome mansion on the highest lot in the
tract (Beauchamp I,o8, 8I8:). He did not equivocate, as Comstock had done,
Fic. -One sequence of occupance in the southeastern uplands of Syracuse, circa I,,o: nineteenth-
century lime kiln in the foreground, partly hidden by twentieth-century landll; background, Brighton
Towers public housing project. (Reproduced courtesy of the Onondaga Historical Association)
hills in syracuse, new york I,
about the altitude of University Heightss upper reaches, which he proclaimed to
be over two hundred feet above the city level. He was soon able to point to
frequent and rapid electric streetcar service and to a reliable water supply (sc I8,o,
I8 April, I,). And he enjoyed much greater success than his predecessor had, at-
tracting a majority of the business and professional men of the city (syrh I,I,,
o June, ,), even though he had many competitors in a market-the selling of
altitude and the amenities that went with it-that Comstock had had largely to
himself. The Syracuse Highlands had stood alone; the names of many post-I8,o
developments proclaimed their elevated position.
The vertical segregation of income groups acquired a distinctness in the twen-
tieth century that it had lacked in the nineteenth. Zoning, introduced in the inter-
war decades, helped solidify the new patterns. By the I,,os a block-level mapping
of land use across the city showed that all of the superior residential areas lay in the
highlands, above the ,oo-foot contour (Faigle I,,8) (see Figure ,). West Genesee
Street, West Onondaga Street, and the other elite lowland neighborhoods had lost
their former prestige. Steep slopes had become an attraction rather than a deter-
rent to the well-o (Throop I,,). The poorer areas were located on the lowlands
of the city. In no instance do they extend very far beyond the foot of the plateau or
valley sides (Faigle I,,,, ,:). The data of the I,,o Census showed a strong positive
correlation between elevation and an index of social class (Willie I,oI). If the model
of the urban fringe best captures the uses of the highlands during most of the
nineteenth century, Ernest Burgesss altitudinal-zone model (I,:,), predicting a
strong positive relationship between elevation and auence in American cities
(Meyer :ooo), best describes their subsequent occupance. Although such a pat-
tern was not apparent in Syracuse for most of the nineteenth century, it became
quite marked in the twentieth.
But the present-day pattern is not entirely the result of present-day locational
considerations; it incorporates some discordant legacies from the past. Several
large institutions sited on high land in the nineteenth century have remained and
expanded in place. St. Josephs Hospital now occupies the whole summit of Pros-
pect Hill. Growing outward from the nucleus of the House of the Good Shepherd,
a complex of medical buildings covers the northwest slope of University Hill, and
Syracuse University has spread across its extensive holdings on the summit. The
construction of fraternity houses and dormitories that began the late nineteenth
century brought most of the students into residence on the uplands. A marked rise
in enrollments and a relaxation of on-campus residence requirements in the I,oos
led to a large inux of students into the principal adjacent housing area, the Uni-
versity Heights neighborhood to the east along Euclid Avenue (Seeley I,8,; Mulder
I,,,).
The Sand Hill upland in the citys southeast, scarred by gravel and rock quar-
rying, was also used for municipal garbage disposal for many years (R. G. Case
I,,o; D. Case I,,,). Planners decided after World War II that the results of these
uses, the extent of bare bedrock, landll, and severe cut-and-ll disturbance, had
I the geographical review
left the area riddled with land too soft to support even single family units on any
large scale, thus preventing the extensive high-class residential development for
which it had been zoned and to which its altitude seemed to entitle it. Conse-
quently, the city took measures to promote a dierent form of settlement, to ar-
range large high-rise construction on the more substantial land and leave the soft
land for parking lots and green areas (Brown I,,I; ocpa I,o,). The results were
the Brighton Towers public housing project and another large apartment com-
plex to its south (Figure ). Their low- and mixed-income occupants now repre-
sent most of the districts population. These two areas of high elevation but low
income-the university area and the southeastern uplands-form striking anoma-
lies, traceable to earlier developments, in an otherwise regular modern associa-
tion between elevation and auence.
Uplands through Time
In the earliest phase of European settlement in central New York, elevation repre-
sented a resource for most activities; during most of the nineteenth century, a
resistance; and in the twentieth, on balance, a resource again, but for dierent
reasons. Nothing is more visibly characteristic of modern residential development
in the area than the construction of hundreds of new houses peppering the once-
unscarred hillsides (Gilbert :ooo). Yet the highland residents, unlike their prede-
cessors of two centuries ago, are not escaping malaria or muddy roads, nor are
they seeking safety from attack or good waterpower sites for mills.
The geomorphology of Syracuse has not survived more than two centuries of
European occupation unaltered. The lowering of Prospect Hill in the nineteenth
century is only one case in point. But the broad patterns of high and low ground
have remained much as they were. What has diered profoundly from era to era is
their value for settlement. Hills have been revalued to far greater eect than they
have been reshaped. Their roles in human life have been conjoint constructions,
ones in which changes have occurred chiey through social changes.
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