Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850, by Elizabeth Blackmar. Cornell University Press. Ithaca, 1989.
Seminal Study of the rise of tenancy in New York City associated with changes brought
on by the Industrial Revolution, including the emergence of a large working class
Workers in the Metropolis, Class, Ethnicity, and Youth in Antebellum New York City, by Richard B. Stott. Cornell University Press. Ithaca, 1990.
Textured study of working-class life in mid-nineteenth century New York
with particular attention to the experience of immigrant working men.
City of Women, Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1800, by Christine Stansell. University of Illinois Press. Urbana, 1987.
An exploration of the lives of working-class women, their struggles
and triumphs in both the public and private domains.
City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920, by Timothy Gilfoyle. New York, 1992.
Study of the changing patterns of prostitution in the nineteenth-century city including descriptions and
maps of the neighborhoods as well as some discussion of specific prostitutes and their clientele.
New York by Gas-Light and Other Urban Sketches, by George G. Foster, edited and with an introduction by Stuart M. Blumin. Originally published in 1850, new edition published by the University of California Press. Berkeley, 1990.
This group of sketches reveals the prejudices of the period and at the same time provides a colorful
picture of life in the nineteenth-century city. Invaluable introductory analysis by Blumin.
U.S. General Services Administration