In 1860 many newly independent nation states in the Americas had not yet found political

stability. Civil wars and boundary disputes consumed the nascent governments, prevent-

ing economic development and discouraging foreign investment. The Napoleonic wars

throughout Europe at the beginning of the century had created similar conditions in the

wider Atlantic world, pushing conflicts east into Russia and Asia, driving people in many

parts of the world to seek out better places to live. Wars provoked a worldwide arms race,

which played a significant part in the global industrial revolution. Industrialization-that

dark force of “progress”—rumbled forward, producing polluted, uninhabitable cities for

most but engineering marvels and palaces of astonishing luxury for some. This chapter

focuses on the early period of industrialization in the Americas with the goal of under-

standing how transportation infrastructure outlined future urbanization and how new

materials and methods of construction started to shape buildings and their designers.