From Wide Open Spaces to New American Lives

Week 32 – #52Ancestors: Wide Open Spaces

The story of American immigration is fundamentally a story about sky—trading the endless horizons of rural homelands for the narrow strips of heaven visible between tenement walls.

Between the 1840s and 1920s, families named Dowling, McAuliffe, Plunkett, Smith, Sten, Marcisak, Hurkala, Dubnianski, and Knysz made profound journeys from some of Europe’s most open landscapes to America’s most crowded neighborhoods, where Jacob Riis observed that “that strip of smoke-colored sky up there is the heaven of these people.”¹

The wide horizons of County Kerry

William Dowling and Ellen McAuliffe left Listowel in the 1850s, abandoning a landscape dominated by endless sky and rolling plains. Sitting “at the head of the North Kerry limestone plain,” Listowel offered its residents unobstructed views across gently undulating farmland that stretched to distant mountain ranges.² This was stone-wall country—a patchwork landscape where fieldstones created visual patterns across the countryside while never blocking the horizon, where neighbors lived substantial distances apart yet formed close communities bound by the 12-mile radius of daily activities.

For the Dowlings and McAuliffes, emigration meant leaving behind unlimited sky and unbroken horizons that had defined their daily visual experience. By 1885, William had established a successful dry goods business at 295-297 Grand Avenue in Brooklyn (see my post from Week 31)⁴—a progression from recent immigrants to business owners that exemplified American opportunity.⁵

Meath’s fertile plains and the Royal County vista

Peter Plunkett and Julia Smith departed County Meath during the catastrophic 1840s-1850s, leaving behind what contemporaries called “nearly all level” terrain that earned Meath its reputation as the “Royal County.” This fertile limestone plain stretched endlessly under Irish skies, where scattered farmsteads dotted a landscape dominated by open fields and weather could be observed approaching from great distances.

Peter Plunkett’s transformation from Famine refugee to Brooklyn paper manufacturing magnate illustrates immigrant success (see my post from Week 27)⁷, but also represents the complete abandonment of Meath’s agricultural landscape for urban industrial opportunity. When Peter died in 1903, his probate proceedings ran for months—yet no amount of American success could restore the unlimited horizons of the Royal County he had left behind.⁸

Swedish forests and the midnight sun

David Sten departed Jämshög, Blekinge County, Sweden in 1926, spending 600 Swedish Kronor for passage aboard the S.S. Gripsholm, leaving behind the dramatic seasonal sky changes that defined Scandinavian rural life (see my post from Week 12).⁹ Swedish countryside combined dense forests with open agricultural clearings, where the midnight sun of Swedish summers provided nearly 19 hours of daylight while brief winter days offered only 6 hours of sun, creating dramatic seasonal rhythms that shaped both agricultural practices and cultural traditions.

David’s journey took him first to Delaware near his brother Hugo, then to marriage with Julia Sten and a move to her family’s duplex house in Brooklyn—avoiding the tenement experience while still representing the fundamental trade of unlimited Scandinavian skies for American urban opportunity.¹¹

Slovak peaks and Carpathian cathedral skies

Vasilius Marcisak and Anna Hurkala departed Litmanova in 1901, leaving behind one of Europe’s most dramatic mountain landscapes at 2,200 feet elevation in the High Tatras (see my post from Week 28).¹² Their village sat in a natural amphitheater surrounded by peaks reaching over 8,000 feet, where Carpathian weather systems created spectacular sky displays—thunderstorms that built between peaks, morning clouds that filled valleys like rivers, and winter conditions where snow clouds hung so low they seemed touchable.

After arrival in America, the Marcisak family lived at a progression of Manhattan addresses: 12 Morris Street, then 46 Washington Street, finally purchasing property at 402 Westminster Road in Brooklyn around 1946—a residential progression that represented the complete abandonment of Carpathian mountain vistas for urban horizons.

Polish plains and industrial tragedy

Paul Dubnianski and Julianna Knysz left the village of Dubne in 1903-1906, abandoning the wide agricultural plains of rural Poland for the industrial opportunities of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Unlike other families who eventually reached Brooklyn, the Dubnianskis settled in coal and steel country, where industrial smoke replaced the clear skies of Polish farmland (see my post from Week 28).¹⁴

Paul’s tragic death by locomotive on June 29, 1912, at age 37, left Julianna widowed with young children, including my grandfather George, who was only two years old. When Julianna died in 1920 at age 49, George was orphaned at age 10, raised by his older sister Mary—carrying forward alone the memory of Polish skies (see my post from Week 4).¹⁶

Industrial Johnstown: Coal smoke replacing Polish skies

Johnstown, Pennsylvania in the early 1900s represented a different kind of environmental transformation than the tenement canyons of Brooklyn and Manhattan. This steel and coal town nestled in the Allegheny Mountains had once been surrounded by forested hills and clear mountain streams, but by the time Paul and Julianna Dubnianski arrived, industrial smoke from the Cambria Iron Company and Bethlehem Steel had turned the sky perpetually gray. The tragic Johnstown Flood of 1889 had already reshaped the landscape, and the rebuilt city was designed around heavy industry rather than human comfort. Where Polish farmland had offered seasonal rhythms and agricultural predictability, Johnstown’s economy revolved around the dangerous, round-the-clock demands of steel production and coal mining. The Dubnianskis traded the wide agricultural plains of Dubne for a valley where smokestacks replaced church spires as the tallest structures, and where industrial accidents like the locomotive strike that killed Paul were tragically common among immigrant families working in America’s most hazardous industries.

Brooklyn’s disappearing sky: urban density and confined horizons

The destination for most of these families was a Brooklyn undergoing explosive transformation from rural farmland to the world’s most densely populated city. By 1894, specific Brooklyn neighborhoods reached over 1,000 people per acre—exceeding any other city globally, with the densest block housing 2,223 residents in just 2 acres.¹⁸

The tenement system systematically eliminated sky visibility. Standard tenement lots measured 25 feet wide by 100 feet deep, with buildings covering 90% of the available space and rising 4-6 stories high. Air shafts between buildings narrowed to just 2-3 feet wide, providing minimal ventilation and virtually no sky views, while interior rooms remained perpetually dark “bedrooms” that never saw daylight.¹⁹

Irish families from Kerry and Meath settled primarily in Brooklyn’s waterfront neighborhoods, while Slovak families found themselves in the most crowded districts, sharing tenements where average apartments for families of 10 measured just 325 square feet.²² Contemporary accounts described families of nine living in “two rooms”—a living room “twelve feet by ten” plus “one or two dark closets used as bedrooms.”

The transformation complete: from horizons to airshafts

The visual metaphor was stark: where immigrants had once experienced unlimited skies, they now lived in narrow urban canyons. Where the Dowlings and McAuliffes had watched weather systems approach across Kerry’s open plains, where the Plunketts and Smiths had seen endless horizons across Meath’s fertile fields, where David Sten had experienced Sweden’s dramatic seasonal sky changes, where the Marcisaks and Hurkalas had lived under soaring mountain peaks, and where the Dubnianskis and Knyszes had known Polish rural tranquility—their descendants now knew sky only as narrow vertical strips between tenement walls or industrial smoke.

The environmental displacement was complete: trading unlimited sky for “that strip of smoke-colored sky,” trading seasonal rhythms for industrial time clocks, trading scattered rural communities for the most crowded urban neighborhoods in human history. Yet in their new cramped quarters, these families carried forward the memory of wider skies, passing down stories of Kerry’s rolling plains, Meath’s fertile horizons, Sweden’s midnight sun, Slovakia’s soaring peaks, and Poland’s peaceful farmlands—landscapes where the heavens stretched endless and unbroken, offering a freedom of vision that no tenement wall could entirely contain.

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Did your immigrant ancestors make a similar journey from wide open spaces to crowded urban neighborhoods?

What landscapes did they leave behind, and what stories did they pass down about the skies of their homeland?

I’d love to hear about your family’s environmental transformation in the comments below.

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1. Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1890), 40. ↩︎
2. Wikipedia, “Listowel,” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Listowel : accessed 16 August 2025). ↩︎
3. Panorama across the Listowel plain from Glanballyma townland photograph, Kilflynn, Kerry, Ireland, 13 August 2022, Dm4244 (photographer); digital image, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Panorama_across_the_Listowel_plain,_Kerry,_Ireland.jpg : accessed 17 August 2025), CC BY-SA 4.0. ↩︎
4. Kirsten M. Max-Douglas, “William Dowling: A Young Listowel Lad in New York,” Our Growing Family Tree (https://ourgrowingfamilytree.com/william-dowling-listowel/ : accessed 17 August 2025). ↩︎
5. The New York City Directory, 1884–85 (New York, N.Y.: The Trow City Directory Company, 1884), p. 452, entry for William Dowling, dry goods, 295 Grand h 451 Bergen, Brooklyn; database with images, “U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995,” Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2469/records/71397123 : accessed 8 August 2025), image 464 of 2,136. ↩︎
6. Nobber Bridge photograph, Meath, Ireland, 26 September 2023, AubMar (photographer); digital image, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meath_-_Nobber_Bridge_-_20230926130816.jpg : accessed 17 August 2025), CC BY-SA 4.0. ↩︎
7. Kirsten M. Max-Douglas, “From Scraps to Success: Peter Plunkett’s Paper Business,” Our Growing Family Tree (https://ourgrowingfamilytree.com/scraps-to-success/ : accessed 17 August 2025). ↩︎
8. “Probate Notice,” Times Union (Brooklyn, New York), 15 July 1903 (notice ran through 31 January 1904), p. 11; digital images, Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com/article/times-union-probate-notice-15-jul-1903/176086368/?xid=637 : accessed 6 July 2025). ↩︎
9. Kirsten M. Max-Douglas, “Historical Events: My Grandfather’s American Journey,” Our Growing Family Tree (https://ourgrowingfamilytree.com/historical-events-my-grandfathers-american-journey/ : accessed 17 August 2025). ↩︎
10. Länsväg 116 vid Östad photograph, between Näsum and Jämshög, Sweden, 7 August 2015, Stigfinnare (photographer); digital image, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oestad.jpg : accessed 17 August 2025), CC BY-SA 4.0. ↩︎
11. Ibid. ↩︎
12. Kirsten M. Max-Douglas, “Ships, Dreams, and New Worlds: Three Generations of Family Immigration,” Our Growing Family Tree (https://ourgrowingfamilytree.com/ships-dreams/ : accessed 17 August 2025). ↩︎
13. View from Jarabina-Litmanova road photograph, Fakłówka, [date unknown], Jerzy Opioła (photographer); digital image, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fakl%C3%B3wka_GL1.jpg : accessed 17 August 2025), CC BY-SA 4.0. ↩︎
14. Ibid. ↩︎
15. Village of Dubne photograph, 9 October 2008, Henryk Bielamowicz (photographer); digital image, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dubne,_widok_na_wie%C5%9B_(HB1).jpg : accessed 17 August 2025), CC BY-SA 4.0. ↩︎
16. Kirsten M. Max-Douglas, “The Mystery of Julia Dubinsky: Why Was She Overlooked?” Our Growing Family Tree (https://ourgrowingfamilytree.com/the-mystery-of-julia-dubinsky-why-was-she-overlooked/ : accessed 17 August 2025). ↩︎
17. Johnstown, Pennsylvania, from Westmont Hillside photograph, ca. 1905, James Alexander Klahre (photographer); Pennsylvania Highlands Community College – Klahre Collection; digital image, Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Johnstown_from_Westmont_Hillside_1905.png : accessed 17 August 2025), originally from Digital Archives Power Library (https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/papd/islandora/object/papd%3A163107). ↩︎
18. The Skyscraper Museum, “Housing Density From Tenements to Towers,” Immigration and Overcrowding, (https://skyscraper.org/housing-density/crowding/ : accessed 16 August 2025). ↩︎
19. Frederick Victor, “Terrible Living Conditions inside the Squalid New York City’s Tenements in the Late 19th Century,” See Old NYC (https://seeoldnyc.com/new-york-city-tenements-life-late-19th-century/ : accessed 16 August 2025). ↩︎
20. “Looking southeast from Hudson River at West Street” photograph, showing Morris Street at right of warehouse, tenement, 4 February 1929, Manhattan Borough President’s Office (creator); REC0069 Manhattan Borough President photograph collection, Series 3: Prints, item REC0069_03_12_0403-b; NYC Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS), New York; digital image, NYC Records Digital Collections (https://nycrecords.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO_d782a674-3535-4cfc-b093-0172fab8f994/ : accessed 17 August 2025). ↩︎
21. 40-46 Washington Street photograph, Manhattan, Block 17 Lot 56, 1939-1941, New York City Department of Finance (creator); 1940s Tax Department photographs collection, item nynyma_rec0040_1_00017_0056; New York City Municipal Archives, New York; digital image, NYC Records Digital Collections (https://nycrecords.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO_1c19c130-6978-4a7b-b9c1-30960957daf2/ : accessed 17 August 2025). ↩︎
22. Ibid. ↩︎
23. 418 Van Brunt Street photograph, Brooklyn, Block 597 Lot 27, 1939-1941, New York City Department of Finance (creator); 1940s Tax Department photographs collection, item nynyma_rec0040_3_00597_0027; New York City Municipal Archives, New York; digital image, NYC Records Digital Collections (https://nycrecords.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO_9462b5dd-9728-4c51-96f6-123a3c852d11/ : accessed 17 August 2025). ↩︎
24. 236 Flatbush Avenue photograph, Brooklyn, Block 933 Lot 40, 1983-1988, New York City Department of Finance (creator); 1980s Tax Department photos collection, item REC0041_3_00933_0040; New York City Municipal Archives, New York; digital image, NYC Records Digital Collections (https://nycrecords.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO_9d84ca78-b32c-4f43-ada0-6530689d7abc/ : accessed 17 August 2025). ↩︎