For the millions of residents of New York City, Sanitation can seem an invisible part of daily life.  We throw our trash into street cans while walking about, or drop it into bins in our apartment buildings or homes.  The very fact that many of us don’t notice what happens to those 12,000 tons of trash we dispose every day is a testament to the hard work of the Department of Sanitation.  New York was once a booming and dirty metropolis plagued by garbage piled high in the streets, causing disease and ruining our cityscapes. 

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the sweeping wave of progressivism brought about the formation of sanitary commissions that ultimately created the Department of Street Cleaning in 1871.  Under the leadership of pioneering Commissioner George E. Warring, hundreds of New York Streets were transformed through hard work and organized sanitation initiatives into cleaner, healthier environments.  Sanitation represents a key component of the progressive agenda of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

By improving our waste management as well as implementing housing and labor reforms, New York City became not just a center of trade and industry, but a healthier and more beautiful home for its millions of residents.

The notion that clean, healthy homes and streets should be available to all residents of New York City seems a given now, but these ideas represent an important part of the progressives’ mission to improve the lives of all people. The next time you toss something into a trash can on the street or in your home just imagine what our city would look and feel like if it weren’t for the many technological innovations and hard work of the thousands of employees of the Department of Sanitation over more than a century.