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.
The movement spread to the United States in the late 1880s, with the opening of the Neighborhood Guild in New York City's Lower East Side in 1886, and the most famous settlement house in the United States, Hull-House (1889), was founded soon after by Jane Addams and Ellen Starr in Chicago. By 1887, there were 74 settlement and neighborhood houses in the U.S.; the number grew to over 400 by 1890, and by 1905, New York City alone was home to 119 settlement houses. [1]
Settlement workers often lived in the settlement house, believing that only residents of the area could truly understand the needs of the people who lived there, but a clear class distinction was made between those who gave aid and those who received it. [2] Women played an important role in both the founding and maintenance of these settlement houses; in an era when women were still excluded from leadership roles in business and government, they held pioneering roles in determining the structure, ethics, and responsibilities in the social welfare movement. [3] Women also began to see a need for a more formal education regarding these social services and eventually this led to the development of the field of social work. [4]
Organizations such as the College Settlements Association, established in 1890, provided support and control of college settlement houses for women. [5] These houses, in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore were established by college women, controlled by college women, and had a majority of college women as residents. [6]
The need for trained professionals highlighted the shift towards formal, organized settlement houses, often with their own set of ethics, ideology, or religion; funding also became an issue with the need to pay the professional social workers. [7] Typically, financing for the settlement houses and their workers came from wealthy philanthropists who frequently served on the board of directors of the house or association, and government agencies at this point contributed very little to the community agencies. [8]
Although the work of settlement houses aimed at welcoming the immigrants to the new country while encouraging the maintenance of certain aspects of their lifestyles from their native lands, many settlement and community houses, the Downtown Community House included, simultaneously sought to acculturate and Americanize the immigrants they helped by teaching English and instilling them with asserted American values. At the Hull-House, for example, immigrants were educated with classes in history, art, and literature; many community houses had specific Americanization classes and programs. In the Bowling Green Neighborhood Association's annual report in 1926, they stated that they that “never prod[ded] them [the immigrants] into citizenship, but when they have reached the point where they want to become citizens, we give them all the help we can with their papers.” [9]
A succession of more or less informal national gatherings of settlement workers were held from time to time between 1892 and 1910. [5]
No continuous or really comprehensive organization was provided for until 1908. In May, 1908, a group of twenty settlement residents from New York, Chicago and Boston met to consult about fuller cooperation among settlements. A study of settlement work was decided upon. It was felt that such an inquiry would disclose a sound basis for broader and more concrete community of interest. During special discussions among the settlement delegates to the National Conference of Charities of that year, a strong feeling developed that such separate meetings should in the future be definitely provided for in connection with the Conference. [5]
The next year, settlement work filled the program of several regular sessions of the National Conference, but one largely attended special gathering of settlement workers was held. It was there decided to arrange for a series of settlement discussions at the following National Conference, which was to take place at St. Louis with Jane Addams as its president. To these meetings, every settlement house and neighborhood center in the country was invited to send representatives. Three sessions were held, and a national committee of ten was appointed to gather and collate the results of settlement experience as to the most needed and most promising directions of service, and to present a year later (1911) at a similar series of meetings in Boston a platform for united action among settlements throughout the country. [5]
In the 1920s, settlement house usage began to decline with the reduction of recently arrived immigrants under quotas of the Immigration Act of 1924. Many settlement workers demanded salaried wages and no longer desired to live in the settlement house, and consolidation of settlement houses into larger neighborhood or community centers often led to the selling of the old settlement buildings and moving into larger, newer structures. In 1979, the National Federation of Settlements changed its name to United Neighborhood Centers of America. [10]
Laura Jane Addams was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, philosopher, and author. She was a leader in the history of social work and Women's suffrage. In 1889, Addams co-founded Hull House, one of America's most famous settlement houses, in Chicago, Illinois, providing extensive social services to poor, largely immigrant families. Philosophically a "radical pragmatist", she was arguably the first woman public philosopher in the United States. In the Progressive Era, when even presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson identified themselves as reformers and might be seen as social activists, Addams was one of the most prominent reformers.
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.
Julia Clifford Lathrop was an American social reformer in the area of education, social policy, and children's welfare. As director of the United States Children's Bureau from 1912 to 1922, she was the first woman ever to head a United States federal bureau.
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 connection. 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 settlement movement also spawned educational/reform movements. Both in the United Kingdom and the United States, settlement workers worked to develop a unique activist form of sociology known as Settlement Sociology. This science of the social movement is neglected in the history of sociology in favor of a teaching-, theory- and research university–based model.
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. During her life she had relationships with Marion Talbot and Edith Abbott.
Frances Alice Kellor was an American social reformer and investigator, who specialized in the study of immigrants to the United States and women. She was secretary and treasurer of the New York State Immigration Commission in 1909 and chief investigator for the Bureau of Industries and Immigration of New York State in 1910–13. She also oversaw the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers.
Americanization is the process of an immigrant to the United States becoming a person who shares American culture, values, beliefs, and customs by assimilating into the American nation. This process typically involves learning the American English language and adjusting to American culture, values, and customs. It can be considered another form of, or an American subset of Anglicization.
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.
Union Settlement is one of the oldest settlement houses in New York City, providing community-based services and programs that support the immigrant and low-income residents of East Harlem since 1895. It is East Harlem's largest social service agency and serves 15,000 people annually through programs including early childhood education, youth services, senior services, adult education, mental health, small business development and community outreach.
The Downtown Community House at 105-107 Washington Street is a six-story, five-bay red brick building that is among the last vestiges of the Lower West Side of Manhattan's former life as an ethnic neighborhood known as “Little Syria.” From the time of its establishment, the Bowling Green Neighborhood Association, housed in the Downtown Community House beginning in 1926, was a pioneering organization that served the local immigrant population as a settlement house and continued to provide services for the area well after the community house became defunct. Built in 1925 with philanthropic funds from William H. Childs, the founder of the Bon Ami household cleaner company, the Downtown Community House was designed by John F. Jackson, architect of over 70 Y.M.C.A. buildings and community centers, and through its Colonial Revival style speaks to an underlying desire for the neighborhood's immigrant population to become Americanized and associate themselves with the country's foundations. In recent years, a collection of historic preservationists and Arab-American activists have lobbied the Landmarks Preservation Commission and its chairman Robert Tierney to designate the building as a city landmark.
Chicago Commons, known since 1954 as the Chicago Commons Association, is a social service organization and former settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. Originally located on the near Northwest Side and now headquartered in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood, it serves underresourced communities throughout the city.
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.
The Houchen Settlement House was founded in 1912 in El Segundo Barrio in El Paso, Texas.
Socialhousekeeping, also known as municipal or civil housekeeping, was a socio-political movement that occurred primarily through the 1880s to the early 1900s in the Progressive Era around the United States.
The College Settlements Association (CSA) was an American organization founded during the settlement movement era which provided support and control of college settlements for women. Organized February 1890, it was incorporated on January 5, 1894. The settlement houses were established by college women, were controlled by college women, and had a majority of college women as residents. The CSA was devised to unite college women in the trend of a modern movement, to touch them with a common sympathy, and to inspire them with a common ideal. It was believed that young students should be quickened in their years of vague aspiration and purely speculative energy by possessing a share in this broad practical work.
Rivington Street Settlement was an American settlement house which provided educational and social services on the Lower East Side of the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York. Under the auspices of the College Settlements Association (CSA), it focused on the mostly immigrant population of the neighborhood. Originally located at 95 Rivington Street (1889-), other locations later included 96 Rivington Street (1892-1901), 188 Ludlow Street (1902–), 84-86 First Street (1907-), and Summer Home, Mount Ivy, New York (1900-). The Rivington Street Settlement was established by college women, was controlled by college women, and had a majority of college women as residents. The Rivington Street Settlement was a kind of graduate school in economics and sociology, with practical lessons in a tenement–house district - a kind of sociological laboratory.
Alice P. Gannett was an American settlement house worker and social reformer. The Goodrich-Gannett Neighborhood Center in Cleveland, Ohio, is named in her honor.
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.
Elizabeth Sprague Williams was an American social worker notable for her involvement in the settlement house movement. She was a leader at the Rivington Street Settlement in New York City, where she developed programs aimed at helping immigrants assimilate through educational, recreational, and vocational club activities. Williams also participated in reconstruction work in Serbia, where she was recognized for her contributions. Her work in improving the lives of immigrants and developing club-based social work programs has had a lasting influence on the field.
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