Page 49 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

the local Catholic Church, a “public” schoolhouse, and numerous beautification
crusades in the Northeast.

It owned the city’s water supply, developed nearly all of the property that was
emerging as the central downtown district, and dominated holdings in local property
and housing. The Roanoke Machine Works, the SVRR, and the N&W were by far the
municipality’s largest employers, and the Clark firm was also a silent partner in
several other local enterprises. Moreover, Clark & Company architecture – the Hotel
Roanoke, the SVRR Offices, the Union Depot, the massive shops, yards, and
roundhouses entirely dominated the local landscape.

None of this, however, made Roanoke a company town. Instead, the city most
closely resembled what one scholar has categorized as a “corporate town”; places
where multiple enterprises and an independent government exist in a municipality
originally planned and managed entirely by a single industry. Roanoke, by this
standard, had more in common with Manchester, New Hampshire, and Lowell,
Lawrence, and Holyoke, Massachusetts, than with other Virginia cities.

None of those northern metropolises, however, experienced anything close to the
sort of intensive demographic that occurred in Roanoke. Indeed, its population
increased at least 416 percent from 1880 to 1883, another 579 percent from 1883 to
1890, and an additional 143 percent from 1890 to 1892, for a combined 3,472
percent increase in twelve years. The rate of growth per year was around 290
percent, which far exceeds the contemporary 15 percent standard of increase used
to define “boom towns.”

As it has all turned out, from a few years later historical perspective, none of the ills
and growing pains experienced by Roanoke were not that unusual or unexpected.
Looked at from the future, the kinds of things that Roanoke was experiencing was in
the norm for cities going through what Roanoke was undergoing. Therefore, it only
took time, some compromises and coordination to correct the seemingly
insurmountable problems of the current situation.

According to urban scholars, cities with rates in excess of 15 percent often suffer
from “boom town syndrome,” a municipal malady characterized by the sort of “‘severe
institutional malfunctioning’” that was prevalent in early Roanoke: municipal income
shortfalls, strain on existing infrastructure, lack of adequate public services, sanitation
problems, housing shortages, unattractive cityscape, excessive barren spaces,
breakdown of informal social controls (caused by influx of “strangers”), and increased
incidences of alcoholism, rowdiness, crime, and vice.

And the crux of those soon to be resolved feelings among Roanoke’s longtime
residents also reacted to the “boom” along the three distinct phases described in
modern “boom town” analyses: they were initially enthusiastic about the expected
economic bonanza, they quickly became uncertain about the public services required
of a city, and they were bewildered by revenue shortfalls.

One of the main consequences of the syndrome in modern “boom towns” is the