Chapter 1 Summary

Brewster Place is a series of tenement apartments, built from the political bargaining table of the city councilmen and mayor of a city with segregated multi-racial populations - Irish, Mediterraneans, and soon to be others. It is built in a poor, worthless section of the city and left unpaved for years. The community, unaware of the political background of the project, turns out for the "baptism" of the new buildings - a smiling alderman smashing a champagne bottle on the side of one of the buildings. Initial hopes for the community lay with the new atmosphere of prosperous growth that the city was beginning to experience.

Just north of the street is a growing new business district on a boulevard. In order to control traffic the boulevard is walled off from the streets leading to Brewster Place, isolating the poorer neighborhood of Brewster...