“Every Man His Own Landlord”

Abstract

In the decade before the Civil War, Philadelphians incorporated at least twenty land associations for developing tracts on the metropolitan periphery. The companies purchased real estate, laid out streets and improvements, then conveyed one lot of ground for each share subscribed. While many stockholders came from the ranks of the city’s middle and upper classes, journeymen were almost certainly the largest single group of investors. The associations promised to democratize the workings of a speculative real estate market for these men, allowing them to compete with the large landholders who owned much of the property in the vicinity of the city. But the promotional material of the associations also drew on the ideas of labor radicals, land reformers, and the new Republican Party in arguing that expansion on the metropolitan frontier could function like outmigration to the West itself and ensure the perpetuation of a republican polity.