Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Published Writings
  3. Periodicals
  4. Journalism
  5. per.01134

How To Build Up the City

About This Item

  • Title: How To Build Up the City
  • Date: 6 October 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.01134
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 6 October 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Samantha Gilmore Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "How To Build Up the City." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.01134.xml (TEI)
image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

HOW TO BUILD UP THE CITY.

A New Jersey paper, some time since, started an idea which does not appear to us altogether unreasonable—to lay the bulk of the city taxes on speculators and non-residents, and proportionately lighten the burthens resting upon residents and the working classes. This object it is proposed to accomplish by a discriminating rate of local taxation, bearing more heavily on vacant lots than on improved property.

In the 16th and other Wards of this city, there are acres of lots which have been held for years past by non-resident speculators, who care not a straw for the growth or prosperity of the city, except so far as it benefits their won pecuniary position. To lay a heavy tax on these lots while vacant (if a law could be obtained permitting the Common Council thus to act) would be to hasten the building of houses thereon, or else to transfer a great part of the burthen of taxation from the shoulders of our own hard-working citizens to those of non-resident speculators. In either event the city would be the gainer.

When we walk along the environs of the city, and see the miles of streets that have been graded and paved, fit for the use of a teeming population, while at the same time the lots on either side continue to be mere swamps, or hills, we cannot help thinking that something should be done to accelerate the rate at which building progresses. The laws relating to the taxation of real estate for municipal purposes, it strikes us, might be so altered that an owner of lots would find himself compelled either to build or sell out to some one else who would. A man that cannot afford to build ought not to be allowed to retard the growth of the city by keeping lots vacant and useless year after year for the sake of speculation.

Back to top