Gilded Manure

While I eagerly await the season three of Gilded Age, I recently rewatched the first two seasons.  I like the show, but I have a few picky little reservations.

First, I should admit that I am a big fan of Christine Baranski and would probably watch a lengthy miniseries that consisted of nothing but her snarky reading of the phone book.  And, I enjoy period dramas, if only to watch for the historical inaccuracies. 

I’m also a big fan of Gilded Age literature.  Who doesn’t enjoy reading Henry James, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, Frank Norris or Henry Adams?  Even the name for the period comes from a novel cowritten by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, though neither would live long enough to learn that historians used the title of the book for the name of the period of significant economic growth, industrialization, and social disparity in the United States from the 1870s to about 1900, that was characterized by ostentatious wealth for some and stark poverty for many.

Perhaps the biggest mistake is the television show have as its central theme the conflict between the old Mayflower settlers of New England and the New Money people who derived their wealth from the new industries.  There are actually two mistakes there:  first the true “Old New Yorkers” were Dutch, not English.  The Rockefellers, Stuyvesants, Van Rensselaers, and Schuylers and other families of Dutch origin (who were collectively known as the Knickerbockers) were the real power in New York high society.  The other mistake is the belief that the Old New Yorkers tried desperately to exclude the New Money people.  The high society of the Gilded Age loved ostentation and extravagant consumption far more than they cared who was picking up the check.

There are a few historical inaccuracies scattered around the show.  For many, the chief attraction to the show are the extravagant ball gowns of the ladies, but we have to overlook the fact that those gowns would not have had zippers—a device still a generation away.  Instead, gowns used intricate closures, often secured with small buttons, hooks and eyes, or lacings, all in such an inaccessible location that every woman had to have a ladies’ maid just to get dressed.  And that is not even counting the 30-40 additional buttons found on ladies’ formal ankle-length boots.

Not once in the show is a single elevated train visible, though these were already in use by 1882-–the time period represented in the show.  Though the show features a few horse-drawn streetcars, and plenty of horse-drawn cabs and carriages, the streets are far from the busy hectic traffic already common in New York.   The photo at left shows a New York street from 1890. 

There are other inaccuracies.  The show downplays racial tensions in the North, depicts none of the desperate poverty and dense overcrowding of the city’s poorer neighborhoods, and ignores the appalling lack of even basic sanitation for the majority of the city’s inhabitants.  I can forgive all this, since, if the show were truly accurate, no one would watch it.  If you want to know what the city was really like at the time, get hold of a copy of Jacob Riis’s excellent 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives.  

There is one historical inaccuracy that every historian who watches the show immediately comments on:  Why is there no horse manure on the streets?

The show takes place primarily in two houses that are located on opposite sides of street at the corner of 61st Street and 5th Avenue, very close to Central Park.  (This was the actual site of the Elbridge T. Gerry Mansion, built during the Gilded Age, but demolished in 1920.)  Several times during each episode, major characters cross the street, easily dodging the few horses and wagons proceeding down the pristine, dirt-paved street.

The reality, however, is that while most of the better neighborhoods in New York had just been connected to a sewage system in the 1880’s, there no drains in the dirt streets in even the best neighborhoods.  What did exist on those streets were thousands and thousands of work horses.  On any given day, there were an estimated 175,000 horses pulling wagons, cabs, and carriages through the crowded (and all too frequently, too narrow) streets.  

Not to be too indelicate, but the horses were neither trained to use a litter box nor were they wearing diapers—and they produced approximately four million pounds of horse manure every single day of the week.  Add to this a daily dose of 40,000 gallons of horse urine and the occasional rain, the contributions of an estimated 100,000 dogs… those muddy streets rarely dried out. And what wasn’t collected on any given day received a fresh layer the next day. When the streets did occasionally dry out, the drying manure turned to a thick dust that choked pedestrians, coated buildings, and infiltrated every home and business.

All of this made the streets—more accurately shown at left—all but impassable for pedestrians without the services of street-crossing sweepers. These sweepers were impoverished beggars who used a broom to clear a path across the muddy, manure-covered, (and otherwise filthy) streets in exchange for a small tip, usually a penny or two.  I doubt the television show will ever include them, however).

The city employed over two thousand people just to keep the streets clean, but this was  clearly inadequate.  

Seven or eight garbage scows carried the accumulated debris to Dead Horse Bay on Barren Island every day.  (As the name indicates, mixed into the garbage and offal the island received was an average of 36 dead horses every day.)

The sanitation workers could not clear the streets fast enough, so the collected manure was scraped and shoveled onto any available vacant lot, sometimes reaching heights of 40 to 60 feet before the city could arrange to cart it all off to Barren Island.  It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Barren Island eventually turned into a peninsula where the strangest things still occasionally wash ashore.

I won’t even attempt to describe the stench exuding from all of this!  Nor can I say much about the incredible number of flying insects that would descend upon (and FROM) a sixty-foot-high mountain of fresh manure.  These fly infestations were directly responsible for the deadly outbreaks of typhoid and “infant diarrheal diseases” that occurred frequently in the city.

I enjoy the Gilded Age.  I like reading the literature from Age.  And I’m damn glad I don’t live in that age.

White Lead Paint

I want to talk about lead paint, but since I’m not an artist but a historian, I have to start the story at the beginning.  The very beginning.

About 400,000 years ago, man learned how to create fire.  Early man had been using fire for about a million years but was forced to use naturally occurring fire.  Whether the first method of creating fire was by striking flint against pyrite to produce a spark or by using a “fire plow” (think of Tom Hanks in Castaway, where one piece of wood is rubbed against another to create friction and heat) is uncertain, but man had begun the long process of mastering fire.

About 40,000 years ago, some human learned to cover the leftover coals of a fire with dirt, keeping them to use the next day to start a new fire.  While removing the dirt, he noticed that some of the coals had turned a dark black and when these coals were ignited, the fire they produced was noticeably hotter than a wood fire.  The discovery of charcoal—how to make it and the realization that it burned both hotter and more efficiently—opened the way to the discovery of metallurgy.  

Some metals—like gold, copper, and silver—occur in nature in their metallic forms.  Finding these would have been an early introduction to metals.  Early humans would have noticed changes in some stones when those had been heated in campfires or in kilns to produce pottery.  For instance, copper nuggets might have been accidentally smelted from ores when naturally occurring copper minerals were exposed to fire.  By 5000 years ago, copper ore was being smelted to produce native copper.  This was the start of the Chalcolithic or Copper Age, a period that is usually skipped over in history classes because within a few years, these neolithic scientists had discovered that adding tin to copper produced bronze—a metal that is harder and more useful than copper.  

By now, you can imagine that early man got busy testing every strange looking rock he could find—which is probably how lead was discovered in Mesopotamia about 3500 years ago.  Lead was an extremely useful metal, too.  Though it takes about 1000°C to smelt the lead out of the ore, once its out, lead itself melts at 327.5°C and is wonderfully malleable.  The Egyptians made an amazing array of dishes and tools from the metal.

About 400 BC, the Egyptians noticed that lead that was exposed to vinegar and horse manure developed a white powder on its surface.  This powder could be mixed with water.  The white powder could also be mixed with honey and egg white and then used in cosmetics and paints.

The Romans loved using lead.  Besides the usual tools and dishes, they created lead pipes to bring water into their cities.  (The Latin word for lead, "plumbum," is where we get the term "plumbing.").  Lead was used for coinage, utensils, statues, roofing—hell, the Romans even created standardized bullets, called glandes, for their slings.  The Romans also had lots of horses and, since vinegar was a byproduct of winemaking, they were able to produce even more of that useful white powder.  Suspended over a fire of burning horse manure, the Romans heated a vat of boiling vinegar with a bar of lead suspended over it.  The white corrosion that formed on the lead bar could be scraped off, ground into a powder, and used in everything from paints to medicines.

Note.  Yes, this was all very toxic and deadly.  And the Romans actually knew this, but the convenience of using the lead outweighed the health concerns.   If this sounds like our society and a host of things we use and consume despite the fact that we know they aren’t good for us, well… Hail Caesar!

Now, let’s move forward to the 14th century, in which the Dutch improved on the Roman method.  In a process called the Dutch Stack lead process, a series of vinegar pots—each with a lead bar suspended over it—was buried under a pile of horse manure.  (Curiously, no other form of manure works.). The fumes from the vinegar corrode the lead, creating a layer of lead acetate, which reacts with the fumes from the carbolic acid from the horse manure to form lead carbonate.  The lead carbonate forms in layers, which can be scraped off and collected.

An artist, who until paint was commercially available in tubes in the nineteenth century, had to be an amateur chemist, would put the “white lead” on a flat stone and grind it into a fine powder, that would then be mixed with either egg and water to form a tempera paint, or with linseed oil or walnut oil to make an oil paint.  The artist had to go through this process every few days since the paint would not keep.

This lead white (also known as white flake or cremnitz) was a very good white paint.  It was highly valued by artists for centuries due to its exceptional qualities:  high opacity, (allowing for effective coverage with fewer layers) and a slow drying time (which was beneficial for blending and wet-on-wet techniques), a smooth, buttery texture (that facilitates easy application and impasto), and its flexibility that reduced the risk of cracking).  Lead white also provided a brilliant, pure white color, that was lightfast, ensuring the longevity of artworks.  It was also versatile for mixing with other pigments without altering their hues significantly and was often used for underpainting. 

Leonardo da Vinci used white lead mixed with walnut oil as an undercoat for both the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.  The layers of thick paint on The Starry Night by Van Gogh include white lead.  Paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, Vermeer, Botticelli, and Jan Van Eyck all contain white lead paint.

In the nineteenth century, artificial dyes made from coal tar replaced a lot of the pigments that had been used for centuries.  Toxic paints quickly disappeared, one by one, as good artificial pigments were created in the laboratory.

Besides being used in art, leaded paints were widely available for house paints.  The thick opacity meant that fewer coats were needed and the lead content made the paints waterproof and durable.  Ships, houses, barns and commercial buildings were routinely painted with lead-based paints.  As realization grew of the dangers of the toxicity of lead, there was a movement to ban the paints, which happened in the 1970’s.

It surprises people to learn that lead paint for artists is still available, and is still widely used by artists, for the benefits it has that are listed above.  Artists’ lead-based oil paint is a little more expensive and it comes with a lot of warning labels about toxicity, but it is still the best white oil paint on the market.

Modest Suggestions for Los Angeles

As I write this, the fires are—once again—burning in Los Angeles.  So far, an estimated 20,000 homes and businesses have been lost, the fires are still burning, and the weather forecast predicts the high winds, that so rapidly spread the conflagration early on, will return this weekend.

I have a few suggestions for California.

First, before the fires, consider that several communities were already experiencing a severe housing shortage, which has been now made much worse as close to a hundred thousand people have just been made homeless in three days.  The fastest method to help these people is to stimulate the private sector of the economy by dropping rent control.  While there has never been a sound economic reason to impose rent control, right now there is an obvious reason to end it.

In cities where rent control has been dropped, large numbers of previously unavailable rental units quickly enter the market when the owners are no longer worried about government control of their property.  When Buenos Aires dropped rent control, available housing increased by more than 175% in the first six months afterward.  A more modest increase in housing occurred when Cambridge, Massachusetts eliminated rent control.  There is no reason to believe that Los Angeles would not have a similar outcome.

Note.  While Los Angeles needs more housing right now, regardless of cost, it is worth noting that the increase in the number of housing units in Buenos Aires created competition and lowered the cost of housing.  Price controls, whether on goods or housing, always, always, always creates shortages at higher prices.

California will rebuild.  Though there are places where homes have repeatedly burnt down in the last half century, it’s a given that, human nature being what it is, reconstruction of those homes will probably start within weeks.  Perhaps the county might consider mandating the new homes be more fire-resistant.  I would suggest the following:

• Fire-Resistant Roofing: Using Class A, fire-rated materials like metal, concrete, or slate for roofing can dramatically decrease the likelihood of fires spreading.  Compared to the common composite shingles widely used, Class A roofing costs twice as much but the roofs last at least twice as long.  Much of the cost difference will be recouped through lower utility bills since Class A roofing keeps the house cooler in summer, thus requiring less air conditioning.  

• Landscaping and Design: Creating defensible spaces, using non-combustible materials like rock mulch, and ensuring proper ventilation can also prevent fire spread.  In neighborhoods with extensive loss, perhaps every other lot should remain vacant.  The replanting of pine or palm trees should be prohibited.  

• Exterior Materials: Materials like brick and fiber cement siding are inherently fire-resistant.  Brick walls, for instance, can withstand fire for one to four hours, depending on construction.  Insulated concrete form construction is already used in commercial buildings; the county should encourage its use in residences, too.  While roughly 5% more costly than stucco, the improved insulation will lower utility bills and quickly recoup the investment.

• Government should get out of the insurance business.  While government should continue the existing coverage for current homeowners, no new policies should be issued.  If private companies won’t offer insurance for a high-risk construction project, perhaps the building should not be built. 

• And keep the damn brush in the canyons cut.  Perhaps you could employ some of the homeless to do this.  If the land is privately owned, create stiff fines for the failure to keep the brush down.

One last comment:  We all saw the television coverage about fire hydrants not having enough water pressure to fight fires, and I’m sure that there will be long and heated discussions about how to correct this in the future.  But everyone should be aware of how little protection those neighborhood fire hydrants actually offer.  

That typical red fire hydrant in your neighborhood can deliver—at most—500 gallons per minute.  That may sound like a lot of water, but it is barely enough to fight a single-house fire.  Suppose we have a two-story home that’s fully ablaze. The amount of water required to extinguish a fully involved fire in a 2,000-square-foot, two-story house depends on several factors, such as the fire's intensity, the structural materials, and the fire department's strategies.  However, we can estimate water needs by using standard firefighting guidelines.

A common formula used in firefighting is the National Fire Academy (NFA) Fire Flow Formula:  The necessary water flow (in gallons per minute or GPM) = Square footage of the home divided by 3.  As a general guide, for a fully involved fire, add an additional 25%. So, for our arbitrary 2,000 square foot home, we need 667 gallons per minute, which is more than the typical neighborhood fire hydrant is capable of delivering.  If it is a fully-involved fire that we want to suppress before it spreads to neighboring structures, we would need 834 gallons per minute.

If several houses are burning at once, the typical neighborhood fire hydrant provides only a drop in the bucket (no pun intended).  Such a hydrant is better than nothing at all, but it is inadequate to handle the kind of disaster that is occurring in California.

Fire hydrants have a color code.  A red bonnet or cap on a fire hydrant means it delivers up to 500 gallons per minute.  An orange bonnet means it delivers twice that—up to 999 gallons per minute.  A green hydrant can deliver up to 1499 gallons per minute, while a blue hydrant can deliver between 1500 and 2000 gallons per minute.  

In those California canyons, where the dangers from Santa Ana winds are an annual occurrence, perhaps the city should think about either putting in higher capacity water lines and hydrants or limiting the number of homes that can be built there, as well as rewriting construction codes to bring them in line with current fire resistance technology.

The Tube of Paint

What do Stephen Perry, George McGill, Johan Vaaler, George de Mestral, Walter Hunt, and John Goffe Rand have in common?

Each of the men listed invented an everyday common item, that while modest as far as technology goes, had a profound impact on how we live.  The effect was so profound that they were all immeditately forgottein and chances are that you’ve never heard of any of them.  Sic transit gloria mundi.

Perry invented the rubber band, McGill gave us the stapler, Vaaler developed the paper clip, de Mestral invented Velcro, and Hunt invented the safety pin.  It is kind of hard to imagine life without any of those, and all have a fascinating story, but I want to focus on the seemingly modest contribution of John Rand.

Painters from the medieval period to the early Renaissance used tempera paints— made by mixing pigments with water adding an egg yolk or whole egg as a binder, sometimes with other additives like vinegar or wine to extend the drying time or alter the consistency.  Tempera paint dried quickly to a dull matte finish, so artists had to work on relatively small areas of the canvas and could not build up layers of paint.

Oil painting, which became popular in the 15th century, particularly through artists like Jan van Eyck, mixed pigments with linseed oil and offered advantages like slower drying time which allowed for blending and more nuanced color gradations, and was more forgiving on a variety of surfaces.   Gone was the dull matte finish, replaced by a finish that could vary from satin to glossy, with a a depth and luminosity due to the paint’s ability to be layered and blended while wet. This can create a sense of three-dimensionality and light within the painting that matte tempera does not naturally achieve

There was no doubt that oil paints in the hands of a skilled artist created a more satisfying painting, but the paints still had to be produced by the artists.  Artists prepared their own paints by grinding pigments (from minerals, plants, or other sources) and mixing them with a binder like linseed oil.  These mixtures were typically stored in animal bladders or glass jars.  However, these methods were inconvenient, messy, and poorly suited for travel or long-term storage, meaning that the artist was generally confined to working in his studio with a limited range of colors.  

This changed in 1841 when John Goffe Rand was issued U.S. Patent #2522 for an “Improvement in the Construction of Vessels or Apparatus for Preserving Paint.”  His apparatus was an airtight metal tube made of malleable tin for holding paint.  Originally Rand sold empty tubes to artists who could fill the tubes then crimp the open end using the brass cap to access their paints.  Within a year, art companies such as Winsor and Newton were selling paint tubes with preloaded paint.  (And they still sell both preloaded and empty tubes from their site here.)

This had several profound effects for artists.  No longer did an artist have to be a part time naturalist gathering pigments, then had to turn into a chemist trying to come up with the same shade of blue as the previous week to finish a painting.  And since the tubes would stay fresh for months or even years at a time, the artist could keep a variety of shades and tints and several colors.  The sale of such tubes even provided an incentive for art stores to begin experimenting with new synthetic colors such as cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, and emerald green.

For the first time, artists could leave their studios, packing up their brushes and art supplies and could paint outdoors.  This innovation was instrumental to movements like Impressionism, where artists such as Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir embraced painting outdoors, or as they called it, en plein air.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's son, Jean Renoir, quoted his father as saying:

"Without colors in tubes, there would have been no Cézanne, no Monet, no Sisley or Pissarro, nothing of what the journalists were to call Impressionism."

There was one more far-reaching change brought about by Rand’s little tin tubes.  In 1850, Lucius Sheffield was studying art in Paris.  When he returned home, his father, Dr. Washington Sheffield had just perfected a dental cream that he thought far superior to the existing tooth powders sold on the market.  His problem was how to package his new product.  When Lucius demonstrated the ease of applying paint from a tube, Dr. Sheffield knew he had found a solution to his problem.

It might surprise you that Dr. Sheffield’s original toothpaste in a tube is still on the market.  Amazon will sell you a tube in seven flavors, including chocolate.  (Yuck!). 

Dr. Sheffield’s company freely admits the idea for toothpaste in a tube came from the paint tubes for sale in in Paris, but John Rand is given no credit.   Not surprisingly, Rand was unable to protect his patent and received only small licensing fees for his invention.