Physiology Of New York Boarding Houses (1857)

Thomas Butler Gunns classic 1857 account of urban habitation, The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses, explores the process by which boardinghouse life was translated into a lively urban vernacular. Physiology is at once an essential introduction to a lost world of boarding, even as it comprises an early, engaging, and sophisticated analysis of Americas urban turn during the decades leading up to the Civil War.