The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses

Thomas Butler Gunn’s classic 1857 account of urban habitation,
The Physiology of New York Boarding-Houses , explores the process by which boardinghouse life was translated into a lively urban vernacular.
Physiology
is at once an essential introduction to a ‘lost’ world of boarding, even as it comprises an early, engaging, and sophisticated analysis of America’s ‘urban turn’ during the decades leading up to the Civil War.