Made In America

by Bill Bryson

  If Chicago was the birthplace of the skyscraper, New York soon became its spiritual home. The city’s first skyscraper, the twenty-two-storey New York World Building, opened in 1890 and soon Manhattan was gleaming with tall towers – the Pulitzer Building of 1892 (309 feet), the Flatiron Building (1903; 285 feet), Times Tower (1904; 362 feet), Singer Building (1908; 600 feet), Metropolitan Life Tower (1909; 700 feet), and finally the Woolworth Building, built in 1913 and soaring to 792 feet.44

  With 58 floors and space for 14,000 workers, the Woolworth Building seemed unsurpassable – and for seventeen years it remained the world’s tallest building. Not until 1930 was the Woolworth Building displaced by the Chrysler Building, which with 77 storeys and a height of 1,048 feet was nearly half as big again. The Chrysler Building was only planned to be 925 feet tall, but at the same time a rival developer began work on a building at 40 Wall Street that was planned to be two feet higher. In order not to be beaten, the Chrysler Building’s architect, William Van Alen, hastily and secretly designed the 123-foot-high art deco spire that remains to this day the building’s glory. The spire was assembled inside the building and hoisted triumphantly into place just as 40 Wall Street was being completed.45 The Chrysler Building’s undisputed eminence was painfully short-lived. Before it was even completed work had begun on a more ambitious project on Fifth Avenue, on the site of the original Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. There the Empire State Building began to rise. When completed the following year it soared 1,250 feet and 102 storeys, a record that would stand for forty-three years until the erection of the 110-storey, 1,454-foot-high and heart-stoppingly ugly Sears Tower in Chicago in 1974.

  Steel-frame construction and curtain walling made tall buildings possible, but they didn’t make them necessarily usable. For that, countless secondary innovations were needed, among them the revolving door, without which draughts would be all but uncontrollable, heightening fire risks and making effective heating and cooling an impossibility, and, above all, swift, safe passenger lifts.

  The lift was not, as is commonly supposed and even sometimes stated, the invention of Elisha Graves Otis. Hoists and lifts had been around for years when Otis sprang to fame in the late 1850s. Otis never pretended to have invented the lift. His contribution was merely to come up with a simple, reliable device – a spring mechanism with gripper cogs – that made vertical passenger travel safe. A born showman, Otis travelled the world giving demonstrations of the safety of his lifts. Standing in a heavily weighted lift, he would have himself hoisted thirty feet or so above the ground, and would then call to an assistant to cut the rope. The audience would gasp, but instead of crashing to the floor, the lift would merely drop an inch or so and stay there. He sold the devices by the hundreds. (Even so, early lifts were by no means foolproof. In 1911 the New York Tribune reported that in the previous two years at least 2,600 people had been injured or killed in lift accidents.)

  Skyscrapers may have transformed the appearance of the American city, but they have done surprisingly little for it linguistically. According to several sources, the Flatiron Building in New York was responsible for the expression twenty-three skiddoo, the idea being that the curious angular geometry of the building created unusual draughts that lifted the skirts of women passing on Twenty-third Street, to such an extent that men began hanging out there in the hopes of catching a glimpse of stockinged leg. And the police, in response, took to moving them on with the growled entreaty ‘Hey, you – twenty-three skiddoo!’ Unfortunately, there is not a shred of evidence to support the story. Skiddoo, meaning ‘scram’ or ‘scat’, is known to have been the invention of the linguistically prolific cartoonist T. A. ‘Tad’ Dorgan in the early years of this century, but how or why twenty-three became immutably associated with it is, like so much else, anybody’s guess.

  7

  Names

  I

  Soon after the Milwaukee Railroad began laying track across Washington state in the 1870s, a vice-president of the company was given the task of naming thirty-two new communities that were to be built along the line. Evidently not a man with poetry in his soul, he appears to have selected the names by wandering through his house and choosing whatever objects his eye happened to light on. He named the towns after everything from poets (Whittier) and plays (Othello) to common household foods (Ralston and Purina). One town he named Laconia ’after what I thought was Laconia in Switzerland located high up among the Alps, but in looking over the Swiss map this morning I am unable to find a place of that name there’.1 Laconia was, in fact, a region of classical Greece, as well as a town in New Hampshire. Never mind. Wherever it was from, Laconia at least had a kind of ring to it, and was certainly better than being named for groceries.

  This is by way of making the point that no people in modern history have been confronted with a larger patch of emptiness to fill with names than those who settled America, or have gone about it in more strikingly diverse ways. According to George R. Stewart, the greatest of American toponymists (that is, one who studies place names), as of 1970 America had probably 3.5 million named places, plus another million or so named places that no longer existed (among them, Purina and Laconia, Washington). There is almost nothing, it would appear, that hasn’t inspired an American place name at some time or other. In addition to breakfast foods and Shakespearean plays, Americans have had towns named for radio programmes (Truth or Consequences, New Mexico), towns named for cowboy stars (Gene Autrey, Oklahoma), towns named for forgotten heroes (Hamtramck, Michigan, named for a Major John Hamtramck), towns that you may give thanks you don’t come from (Toad Suck, Arkansas, and Idiotville, Oregon, spring to mind), at least one town named for a person too modest to leave his name (Modesto, California) and thousands upon thousands of others with more prosaic or boring etymologies (not forgetting Boring, Maryland).

  The first colonists, as we noted earlier, were spared the immediate task of giving names to the land since much of the eastern seaboard was named already. But as they spread out and formed new settlements they had to arrive at some system for labelling unfamiliar landmarks and new communities. The most convenient device was to transfer names from England. Thus the older states abound in names that have counterparts across the sea: Boston, Dedham, Braintree, Greenwich, Ipswich, Sudbury, Cambridge and scores of others. An equally simple expedient was to honour members of the royal family, as with Charlestown, Jamestown, Maryland and Carolina. Many of these names, it is worth noting, were pronounced quite differently in the seventeenth century. Charlestown, Massachusetts, was ‘Charlton’. Jamestown was ‘Jimston’ or even ‘Jimson’ – a pronunciation preserved in jimson weed, a poisonous plant found growing there in alarming quantities.2 Greenwich was pronounced ‘grennitch’, but over time came to be pronounced as spelled. Only since about 1925, according to Krapp, has it reverted to the original.3

  But the colonists employed a third, rather less obvious, method for place-naming. They borrowed from the Indians. As we know, the native languages of the eastern seaboard were forbiddingly complex and nowhere more so than with their names, yet the colonists showed an extraordinary willingness not only to use Indian names but to record them with some fidelity. Even now the eastern states are scattered with Indian names of arresting density: Anasagunticook, Mattawamkeag, Nesowadnehunk, Nollidewanticook, Nukacongamoc, and Pongowayhaymock, Maine; Youghiogheny and Kishecoquillas, Pennsylvania; Quacumquasit and Cochichewick, Massachusetts; Wappaquasset, Connecticut; Nissequogue, New York.

  Once there were many more. Until 1916, New Hampshire had a stream called the Quohquinapassakessamanagnog, but then the cheerless bureaucrats at the Board on Geographic Names in Washington arbitrarily changed it to Beaver Creek. In like fashion the much loved Conamabsqunooncant River was transformed into the succinctly unmemorable Duck.4 The people of Webster, Massachusetts (especially those who sell postcards), continue to take pride in the local body of water named on a signboard as ‘Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg,’ which is said to be Ni
pmuck for ‘You fish on that side, I’ll fish on this side, and no one will fish in the middle.’ Such is the hypnotic formidableness of its many syllables that the sign painter added an extra one; the gaugg roughly midway along shouldn’t be there. In any case, the name is no longer official. Often, as you might expect, Indian names went through many mutations before settling into their modern forms. Connecticut was variously recorded as Quonectacut, Quonaughticut, Qunnihticut, Conecticot and many others before arriving at a permanent arrangement of letters. Cuyahoga was at first often spelled Cajahoga. John Smith recorded Susquehanna as Sasquesahanock and Potomac as Patowomek.5 Kentucky, from the Iroquoian kenta-ke, appeared in a variety of guises – Kaintuck, Caintuck, Kentuck and Kentucke – and was generally pronounced with just two syllables until the nineteenth century. More than 132 spellings have been recorded for Winnipesaukee, perhaps not surprisingly. Minnesota has been everything from Menesotor to Menisothé to Minnay Sotor.6 Oregon has appeared as Ouaricon, Ouragon, Ourgan and Ourigan. Even Kansas has had 140 spellings. Milwaukee, first recorded in 1679 as Melleoki, roamed freely through the alphabet as Meleke, Millioki, Milwarik, Milwacky, Muilwahkie and many others before settling into its permanent form as recently as 1844. Probably the liveliest diversity of spellings belongs to Chicago, which in its early days was rendered as Schuerkaigo, Psceschaggo, Shikkago, Tsckakko, Ztschaggo, Shecago, Shakakko, Stkachango and almost any other remotely similar combination you could think of.

  Indian names frequently evolved into forms that disguised their native origins. Kepaneddik became Cape Neddick. Norwauk transmuted into Norwalk. The arresting Waycake Creek, New Jersey, grew out of Waakaack, while Long Island’s Rockaways had their origins in Rackawackes. Moskitu-auke became, almost inevitably, Mosquito Hawk. Oxopaugsgaug became the jauntily accessible Oxyboxy. No Man’s Land island in Massachusetts commemorates not some forgotten incident, but is taken from an Indian chief named Tequenoman. The list goes on and on. Ticklenaked, Smackover, Pohamoonshine, Poo Run, Zilly Boy and countless other resonant place names are the result of the confusion or comic adaptability of early colonial settlers.

  Non-Indian names likewise sometimes underwent a kind of folk evolution. Burlington, Delaware, was originally called Bridlington, after the town in Yorkshire.7 Newark is a shortening of New Ark of the Covenant. Teaneck was a folk adaptation of the Dutch family name Teneyck. Newport News has nothing to do with news; it was originally New Port Newce and named for the Newce family that settled there.8

  Although Indian names occasionally were lost in this process – as when Cappawack became Martha’s Vineyard or Mattapan was turned into Dorchester – for the most part Native American names have proved remarkably durable. You have only to cast an eye over a map of the United States to see how extraordinarily rich its heritage of Indian names is. In his classic study Names on the Land, George R. Stewart notes that ‘26 states [now 27; Alaska has been added since he wrote], 18 of the greatest cities, and most of the larger lakes and longer rivers’ all owe their names to the Indians.9 The sentiment is true enough, but the specifics demand some qualifying. For one thing, many ‘Indian’ names were never uttered by any Indian – Indiana being the most obvious example. Oklahoma was a word coined in Congress. It employed Choctaw elements but not in any way ever used by the Choctaws themselves. Wyoming was taken from a sentimental poem of the early 1800s called ‘Gertrude of Wyoming’, commemorating a massacre. The poem was so popular that communities all over the country were given the name before it was applied in 1868 to a Western territory in which it had no linguistic relevance. Idaho, even more absurdly, had no meaning whatever. It simply sounded to nineteenth-century Congressmen like a good Indian word.

  Indian town names, too, often arose not out of any historical connection, but under the impulse of the romanticism that swept the country in the nineteenth century. All the many Hiawathas owe their existence not to the Mohawk chief but to the poem by Longfellow. The great Seminole chief Osceola never went anywhere near Iowa, but there is a town there named for him. Even when an Indian place name has some historical veracity, it was often applied relatively late. Agawam, Massachusetts, for instance, took its place on the map two hundred years after the nearby town of Ipswich did.

  As America moved west, the need for names grew apace. For a time, the fashion was to give classical names to new communities hence the proliferation, particularly among those states that received the first westward migrations, of classical names: Cincinnati, Troy, Utica, Athens, Corinth, Memphis, Sparta, Cicero, Carthage, Cairo, Hannibal, even Romeo and Juliet. The residents of one town in New York evidently grew so wearied by the various spellings that attached themselves to their town – Sinneken, Sinnegar, Sennicky – that they seized the opportunity to give the place both consistency and classical credibility by making it Seneca.

  Another approach, and one that grew increasingly common as Americans plunged still further west, was to name places and landmarks after people, usually their founders but often someone deemed to have admirable qualities. In the Midwest especially, every state is dotted with communities bearing the name of some forgotten pioneer or hero of the nineteenth century. In Iowa you can find Webster City, Mason City, Ames, Audubon, Charles City, Grinnell (named by and not for the man who took Horace Greeley’s advice to ‘go west, young man’) and perhaps two hundred others in a similar vein. A notable (if seldom noted) feature of American place names is how many of the larger cities honour people hardly anyone has ever heard of. There are no great cities named Franklin or Jefferson, but there is a Dallas. It was named for George Mifflin Dallas, who rose to the certain obscurity of the Vice-Presidency under James K. Polk and then sank from history like a stone dropped in deep water. Cleveland (originally spelled Cleaveland) is named for a forgotten Connecticut lawyer, Moses Cleaveland, who owned the land on which it stood but never bothered to visit the community that bears his name. Denver commemorates a governor of the Kansas Territory. It is not that these people were deemed especially worthy of having great cities named after them, but that the communities grew to greatness later.

  Timing was all in these matters. Lewis Cass’s nearest brush with immortality was to be defeated by Zachary Taylor in the 1848 presidential election, but counties in nine states are named for him none the less. Taylor had to be content with just seven county names – though that is perhaps seven more than a longer view of history would grant him. Henry Clay, the Kentucky senator and twice failed presidential candidate, did better than both put together. He is honoured with county names in no fewer than eighteen states. You can search the West for notable commemorations of Lewis and Clark and find almost nothing, but Zebulon Pike is grandly honoured with a mountain peak he never climbed or even got very close to (he merely sighted it from afar). Even Warren G. Harding, a President whose greatest contribution to American history was to die in office, has a county named in his honour in New Mexico. Only George Washington got anything approaching his just reward, receiving the approbation of a state, the nation’s capital, 31 counties and at least 120 communities.10 Once there were even more. Cincinnati, for example, began life as Fort Washington.

  Often Americans arrived in a place to find it already named. The process began with the names the Dutch left behind when they gave up their hold on Nieuw Amsterdam. The British hastily changed that to New York – in honour of the Duke of York, and not the historic English city – but others required a little linguistic surgery. Haarlem was shorn of a vowel, Vlissingen was transformed into Flushing, and Breukelyn became Brooklyn (and at one point looked like evolving further into Brookland).11 Deutel Bogt begat Turtle Bay, Vlachte Bosch became Flatbush, Thynevly became Tenafly, Bompties Hoek became Bombay Hook, and Antonies Neus became Anthony’s Nose. As with the English and French, the Dutch often took Indian names and rendered them into something more palatable to their tongues. Thus Hopoakan, a village across the river from Manhattan, became Hoboken.

  Further west, the French left many hundreds of names. In a single summer
in 1673, the explorers Marquette and Jolliet set down eleven important names that live on yet in the names of rivers or cities (often both): Chicago, Des Moines, Wisconsin, Peoria, Missouri, Osage, Omaha, Kansas, Iowa, Wabash and Arkansas, though those weren’t quite the spellings they used. To Marquette and Jolliet, the river was the Mesconsing. For reasons unknown, this was gradually altered to Ouisconsing before eventually settling into English as Wisconsin. Similarly Wabash evolved from Ouabasche and Peoria from Peouarea. Iowa began life as the somewhat formidable Ouaouiatonon. The French quickly shortened this to the still challenging Ouaouia before English-speaking settlers finished the job for them.

  In Marquette and Jolliet’s wake came French trappers, traders and explorers. For a century and a half much of America west of the Appalachians was under French control and the names on the landscape record the fact: Michigan, Illinois, Louisiana, Detroit, Baton Rouge, St Louis, Chicago and countless others. Many of these names are of uncertain significance. Chicago appears to be from an Indian word meaning ‘place that stinks of onions’, and Baton Rouge was evidently so called because in 1700 a party of explorers came upon a red stake – a baton rouge – marking the boundary between two Indian hunting-grounds and built a trading post there, but Coeur d’Alene, the city in Idaho, is utterly baffling. It translates as ‘heart of awl’, and quite what the founders had in mind by that is anybody’s guess.12

  No less of a mark was made by the Spanish. Though we tend to associate the Spanish with the south-west, Spain’s American dominions stretched at one time across most of the continent, from the Florida Keys as far north as Alaska. Memphis was once known as San Fernando and Vicksburg as Nogales.13 But, preoccupied with their holdings in Central and South America and convinced that North America was mostly worthless desert, the Spanish never made much of the lands to the north. By 1821, when Spain withdrew from North America, its estate north of the border consisted of only a few scattered garrisons and just three towns worthy of the name – Santa Fe, San Antonio and St Augustine, though even they couldn’t muster 10,000 citizens between them. (Mexico City by contrast had a population comfortably above 150,000.) Even so, as I need hardly tell you, the Spanish left hundreds of names on the American landscape, including the oldest non-Amerindian place name in the United States – Florida, or ‘place of flowers’, so dubbed by Juan Ponce de León when he became the first known European to set foot on what would eventually become US soil, on 2 April 1513. Missions and other small settlements soon followed, among them Tortugas (the second oldest European place name in North America), St Augustine and Apalchen. This last named was never anything more than a hamlet, but the name somehow came to be applied to the vaguely defined mountainous interior. Eventually it attached itself to the mountain themselves – hence, Appalachians.