Laura Jane Addams was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, philosopher, and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage in the United States. Addams co-founded Chicago's Hull House, one of America's most famous settlement houses, providing extensive social services to poor, largely immigrant families. In 1910, Addams was awarded an honorary master of arts degree from Yale University, becoming the first woman to receive an honorary degree from the school. In 1920, she was a co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located on the Near West Side of Chicago, Hull House, named after the original house's first owner Charles Jerald Hull, opened to serve recently arrived European immigrants. By 1911, Hull House had expanded to 13 buildings. In 1912, the Hull House complex was completed with the addition of a summer camp, the Bowen Country Club. With its innovative social, educational, and artistic programs, Hull House became the standard bearer for the movement; by 1920, it grew to approximately 500 settlement houses nationally.
Douglas, on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, is one of Chicago's 77 community areas. The neighborhood is named for Stephen A. Douglas, Illinois politician and Abraham Lincoln's political foe, whose estate included a tract of land given to the federal government. This tract later was developed for use as the Civil War Union training and prison camp, Camp Douglas, located in what is now the eastern portion of the Douglas neighborhood. Douglas gave that part of his estate at Cottage Grove and 35th to the Old University of Chicago. The Chicago 2016 Olympic bid planned for the Olympic Village to be constructed on a 37-acre (15 ha) truck parking lot, south of McCormick Place, that is mostly in the Douglas community area and partly in the Near South Side.
Little Italy, sometimes combined with University Village into one neighborhood, is on the Near West Side of Chicago, Illinois. The current boundaries of Little Italy are Ashland Avenue on the west and Interstate 90/94 on the east, the Eisenhower Expressway on the north and Roosevelt to the south. It lies between the east side of the University of Illinois at Chicago campus in the Illinois Medical District and the west side of the University of Illinois at Chicago campus. The community was once predominantly Italian immigrants but now is made up of diverse ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds as a result of immigration, urban renewal, gentrification and the growth of the resident student and faculty population of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Its Italian-American heritage is primarily evident in the Italian-American restaurants that once lined Taylor Street. The neighborhood is home to the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame as well as the historic Roman Catholic churches Our Lady of Pompeii, Notre Dame de Chicago, and Holy Family.
The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in the United Kingdom and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and social interconnectedness. Its main object was the establishment of "settlement houses" in poor urban areas, in which volunteer middle-class "settlement workers" would live, hoping to share knowledge and culture with, and alleviate the poverty of, their low-income neighbors. The settlement houses provided services such as daycare, English classes, and healthcare to improve the lives of the poor in these areas. The most famous settlement house of the time was Hull House, founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Starr.
Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge was an American activist, Progressive Era social reformer, social scientist and innovator in higher education. She was the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in political science and economics then the J.D. at the University of Chicago, and she was the first woman to pass the Kentucky bar. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sent her as a delegate to the 7th Pan-American Conference in Uruguay, making her the first woman to represent the U.S. government at an international conference. She led the process of creating the academic professional discipline and degree for social work.
The University Settlement Society of New York is an American organization which provides educational and social services to immigrants and low-income families, located at 184 Eldridge Street on the Lower East Side of the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York. It provides numerous services for the mostly immigrant population of the neighborhood and has since 1886, when it was established as the first settlement house in the United States.
The Northwestern University Settlement House is an Arts and Crafts style house located at 1400 West Augusta Boulevard in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The Settlement Association was founded in 1891 by Northwestern University to provide resources to the poor and new immigrants to the West Town neighborhood. The actual Settlement House structure was built in 1901 by Pond & Pond. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on December 1, 1993.
Lea Demarest Taylor was the head resident of the Chicago Commons, a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, from 1922 to 1954. Although often overshadowed by her famous father, Graham Taylor, she made significant contributions to the settlement house movement in her own right.
Erie Neighborhood House is a social service agency that works primarily with low-income, immigrant families in Chicago, Illinois. Operations began in 1870 as a ministry of Holland Presbyterian Church, a Protestant congregation located northwest of Chicago's Loop, and the organization quickly became part of the settlement house movement that emerged in the late 19th century. It currently offers programs and services from four locations—two in Chicago's West Town community area, a third in Little Village, and fourth at Jose De Diego Elementary School in East Humboldt Park—to a population characterized as predominantly Latino.
The West Side is one of the three major sections of the city of Chicago, Illinois, U.S. The other two sections within Chicago that associate with the West Side are the North Side and the South Side. The West Side consists of communities that are of historical, cultural, and ideological importance to the history and development of Chicago. On the flag of Chicago, the West Side is represented by the central white stripe.
Edith Bremer (1885–1964) was born in Hamilton N.Y. and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1907. She pioneered immigrant social service work and had a major influence on the institute movement. She founded and led the International Institute movement, which was focused on improving the lives of female immigrants. The International Institute was a movement for cultural pluralism with efforts towards protection of immigrant girls in 1910. She was a resident at the University Chicago settlement as well as a researcher for the Chicago Women's Trade Union League. She then became a special agent for the United States Immigration Commission and also worked as a field investigator for the Chicago Juvenile Court. These field works inspired her to focus on the problems of female immigrants. She believed that other immigrant social welfare agencies, both public and private, poorly served women.
Mary Eliza McDowell was an American social reformer and prominent figure in the Chicago Settlement movement.
Onward Neighborhood House is a non-profit organization located in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Originally founded as a settlement house in Chicago's West Town neighborhood during the 1890s, Onward House now provides direct services to working class and immigrant families on Chicago's Northwest side. Onward's mission is to open doors, improve lives, and uplift communities through educational, economic, and support services. The organization offers a variety of programs and services, serving both children and adults.
Settlement and community houses in the United States were a vital part of the settlement movement, a progressive social movement that began in the mid-19th century in London with the intention of improving the quality of life in poor urban areas through education initiatives, food and shelter provisions, and assimilation and naturalization assistance.
Goodrich Social Settlement was the second settlement house in Cleveland, Ohio, after Hiram House. It organized on December 9, 1896, incorporated May 15, 1897, and opened May 20, 1897 at Bond St. and St. Clair Ave. It was established by Flora Stone Mather as an outgrowth of a boys' club and women's guild conducted by the First Presbyterian Church. Its aims were “to provide a center for such activities as are commonly associated with Christian social settlement work". It was maintained by an endowment. The Goodrich House Farm, in Euclid Point, Ohio, was part of the settlement.
Neighborhood House was an American settlement house in Chicago, Illinois. It was opened in October 1896, by Samuel S. and Harriet M. Van Der Vaart, under the auspices of the Young People's Society of the Universalist Church, of Englewood, Chicago, and with the assistance of teachers of the Perkins, Bass, and D. S. Wentworth public schools. It was officially established in the Fall of 1897 by Harriet Van Der Vaart as the outgrowth of the kindergarten opened the year before "to bring together for mutual benefit people of different classes and conditions."
Neighborhood House is an American community center located in Louisville, Kentucky. Founded in 1896, as North Broadway Social Settlement it was renamed Neighborhood House in 1902, when it incorporated.
South Park Settlement was an American settlement movement-era settlement established in the South Park neighborhood of San Francisco, California on January 2, 1895, by the San Francisco Settlement Association. It was founded in one of the crowded districts of San Francisco. The pretty little oval park on which the Settlement House faces was formerly the fashionable residence district of the city. But within a few blocks on either side of South Park were many little streets, whose crowded tenements furnished homes for less prosperous working people. Its goals were to establish and maintain a settlement in San Francisco as a residence for persons interested in the social and moral condition of its neighborhood; to bring into friendly and helpful relations with one another the people of the neighborhood in which the settlement was situated; to cooperate with church, educational, charitable and labor organizations, and with other agencies acting for the improvement of social conditions; to serve as a medium among the different social elements of the city for bringing about a more intelligent and systematic understanding of their mutual obligations; as well as to do social and educational work in the neighborhood; co-operate in the civic work of the city; and investigate social and economic conditions.
