Main Street to Mainframes

Harvey K. Flad is Professor Emeritus of Geography at Vassar College. His recent publications include essays on the preservation of historic and cultural landscapes and the history of artists and landscape designers in the Hudson Valley. He lives in Poughkeepsie, New York. Clyde Griffen (1929–2015) was Lucy Maynard Salmon Professor Emeritus of American History. His previous books include Natives and Newcomers: The Ordering of Opportunity in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Poughkeepsie (with Sally Griffen) and Meanings for Manhood: Construction of Masculinity in Victorian America (coedited with Mark C. Carnes). He resided in Bowie, Maryland.

FROM THE REVIEWS OF THE FIRST EDITION"With an intimate knowledge of the region, [the authors] have compiled a detailed account of their hometown and the surrounding mid-Hudson River valley hinterland. … Flad and Griffen chronicle some of the most important trends that have affected not only Poughkeepsie but other older cities in the northern United States." — Journal of American History"An ambitious examination of Poughkeepsie and the broader Mid-Hudson region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. … Flad and Griffen bring to their study a devotion to Poughkeepsie as community and shared landscape and present a compelling argument for why understanding history is essential to shaping a more inclusive society and economy in the decades to come." — Hudson River Valley Review

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgments Introduction Part I. Before 1900 1. The Valley Setting 2. Poughkeepsie Grows from Village to City 3. Improvements and Conflicts in the Late Nineteenth Century Part II. A Diversified Industrial Economy and Society 4. The Cityscape at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 5. A New Wave of Immigrants Changes the Citizenry 6. Municipal Reform and Urban Planning 7. Changes to the Space Economy Between the Wars 8. Business and Labor in the 1920s and 1930s 9. Depression in FDR’s Home County Part III. IBM Remakes the Region as Its Largest Employer 10. Technological Revolution Transforms the Region: IBM 11. IBM Triumphs with the 360 Mainframe Computer 12. The Quest for Inner-City Revitalization: Urban Renewal 13. Social Planning—The Model Cities Experiment 14. Issues and Causes of the 1960s 15. Change in Higher Education in the Valley 16. IBM Downsizes, but the Valley Recovers Part IV. Postindustrial Poughkeepsie and the Valley 17. The Nonprofit Service Sector Grows in Importance 18. Main Street Struggles to Return Amid Suburban Sprawl 19. Civic Identity and Social Change in the 1990s 20. City and Region at the End of the Twentieth Century 21. Main Street and the Twenty-first-Century Cultural Landscape Epilogue Main Street Revisited Notes Annotated Bibliography Index