Growth of Suburbs.

During the first part of the nineteenth century Americans thought of a suburban home as an isolated country house to which a wealthy family retired. As railroads began to extend farther from cities, as the cable car was put into use in the 1870s, and as the electric streetcar was developed in the 1880s, however, more and more city dwellers were able to move outside the city limits to more rural areas. Such changes permanently refashioned the image of suburbia in the United States as more and more suburbs grew up along rail lines. These "streetcar" or "railroad suburbs" placed suburban living within the reach of middle-class Americans. Suburbs fulfilled the desire of many late-nineteenth-century Americans for the beauty and serenity of the country without the isolation of truly rural areas. Convenient and affordable, suburbs offered many a compelling reason...