As a young man I had the opportunity to know my great grandfather who was born in 1870 in Iowa, he passed away in 1969, when I was 18. He told me a lot of stories about the old west, but he also became a bit of a world traveler by the age of 20 he was working in Columbia.
He traveled to San Francisco and NYC long before automobiles came along. According to him the good old days weren't that good. Large cities, like NYC and Philadelphia, Atlanta etc, in the summer were nearly intolerable due to the stench of animal waste that permeated the roads, mostly cobblestone in those day's. Every market, every shop, factory, restaurant, you name it, needed supplies to be delivered or shipped and the only way to do that was by horse drawn wagons.
In the summer the odor was truly sickening.
During a heat wave hundreds of people would die from heat related problems, as there was no air conditioning, yet people would seal their apartments windows and doors to get away from the stench and the keep flies out. The heat would over take them, with no running water, and outhouses which were usually located behind apartment buildings next to animal stalls, ( where shallow well's would be dug for drinking water prior to the 1890s) you can get an idea of what congested living quarters in a city would be like.
Another tidbit he provided was what it was like to eat at expensive restaurants in big cities, with no freezers available, most places used ice to preserve food, but that was no guarantee, so good eateries offered "choice cuts," the chef would come to your table and trim the green stuff off the meat in front of you, trim it to your approval before cooking it.