settlement house

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The settlement movement was part of a broad attempt to preserve human values in an urban and industrial age. Samuel A. Barnett, an Anglican clergyman, founded Toynbee Hall, the first settlement in the slums of East London in 1884. The settlement idea, as formulated by Barnett, was to have university men "settle" in a working-class neighborhood where they would not only help relieve poverty and despair but also learn something about the real world from the people of the slums.

Several Americans were independently influenced by the English experiment including Stanton Coit who founded Neighborhood Guild, the first American settlement, on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1886. In 1889 Jane Addams and her Rockford College classmate, Ellen Starr, founded Hull-House (soon to be the most famous settlement) in a run-down mansion on the West Side of Chicago. Just a week earlier, with no knowledge of the Chicago project, a group of young college women, many of them graduates of Smith, had opened the College Settlement in New York.

The settlement idea spread rapidly in the United States. There were seventy-four settlements in 1897, over a hundred in 1900, and more than four hundred in 1910. Most of these were in large cities (40 percent in Boston, Chicago, and New York), but most small cities and many rural communities boasted at least one settlement. In the early years the settlements were financed entirely by donations, and the residents themselves paid for their room and board. Some settlements were associated with religious groups. Many were little more than missions, but Hull-House in Chicago, Henry Street Settlement in New York, and several others had an important impact on the reform movements of the Progressive Era.

The American settlement movement diverged from the English model in several ways. More women became leaders in the American movement, and there was a greater interest in social research and reform. But probably the biggest difference was the presence around the American settlements of a diverse ethnic population. Working with recent immigrants, trying to ease their adjustment to the new country, and acting as their advocate in the neighborhood and the nation became a primary function of the American workers. They did not escape the prejudice nor completely overcome the ethnic stereotypes common to their generation, however, and they tried consciously to teach middle-class values, often betraying a paternalistic attitude toward the poor. Yet they also organized immigrant protective associations, sponsored festivals and pageants, and tried to preserve each group's heritage. On the other hand, and this was typical of progressivism, most settlements were segregated. Although Hull-House and other settlements helped establish separate institutions for black neighborhoods, pioneered in studying black urban communities, and helped organize the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, blacks were not welcome at the major settlements.

To serve their neighborhoods, most settlement workers started with clubs, classes, lectures, and art exhibitions. They usually had better luck attracting women and children. Some men would come to play basketball, but no settlement ever replaced the local saloon as a male social center. The settlements added programs as they discovered a need. They pioneered in the kindergarten movement, taught English, and established theaters, courses in industrial education, and music schools (Benny Goodman learned to play the clarinet at Hull-House).

The settlement program often led the residents outside their neighborhoods. They became housing reformers, campaigned for anti-child labor laws, and established parks and playgrounds. They also wrote reports, prepared statistical studies, and described their personal experiences in memoirs (Hull-House Maps and Papers, Robert Woods's City Wilderness, Jane Addams's Twenty Years at Hull-House, and Lillian Wald's House on Henry Street all became classics).

Settlements had an impact on only a small percentage of the immigrant community, though an immigrant like Francis Hackett said simply, "Life began for me in a social settlement." A Catholic church a few blocks from Hull-House and a Jewish club down the street from Henry Street Settlement probably had a greater influence on their communities. But the settlements and their residents had a larger impact on the nation. The settlements not only led a variety of reform movements but also influenced the lives and attitudes of the young men and women who spent a year or two in residence. In the beginning those at the settlements were not trained social workers; many were recent college graduates and they often held other jobs while living at the settlement. Especially for unmarried women the settlement provided an acceptable alternative to living alone or with family. The maid service and the public kitchen freed them from the task of keeping house. But more important, the living arrangements often provided stimulating companionship and close personal relationships and encouraged cooperative reform efforts.

The settlements became training grounds for new careers in government, industry, and the universities. Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, Robert Woods, and a few others spent their working lives in the settlements, but others moved on to careers that were largely invented there. Florence Kelley left to become director of the National Consumers' League. Julia Lathrop became the first head of the Children's Bureau. Grace Abbott was the director of the Immigrants' Protective League before replacing Lathrop at the Children's Bureau. Alice Hamilton left Hull-House to become the first woman professor at the Harvard Medical School and an expert on industrial medicine. Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott were leaders in the new professional field of social work. In addition many settlement graduates played important roles in the New Deal. Frances Perkins and Harry Hopkins were the most prominent, and Eleanor Roosevelt, a settlement volunteer in her early years, was strongly influenced by the movement.

Settlements began to change in the 1920s as social work became more professional and concerned with psychiatric adjustment rather than with changing society. Because of financial problems, many settlements became dependent on the United Fund and thus lost some of their independence. Shifting populations and urban renewal in the period after World War II forced many to move. In 1980 there were at least eight hundred settlements in the country, but most called themselves neighborhood centers, and all had given up the requirement that workers should live in the settlement. Still, many provided needed services for senior citizens, disadvantaged youths, and battered women and children. The settlement movement was no longer in the vanguard of a national reform movement, but in many cities it still represented a measure of hope in a time of despair.

Bibliography:

Mary Lynn McCree Bryan and Allen F. Davis, eds., One Hundred Years at Hull-House (1990); Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890-1914, 2nd ed. (1984); Judith Ann Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change: From the Settlement House Movement to Neighborhood Centers, 1886 to the Present (1987).

Author:

Allen F. Davis

See also Addams, Jane; Hamilton, Alice; Kelley, Florence; Perkins, Frances; Progressivism; Roosevelt, Eleanor.

Social and cultural centers established by reformers in slum areas of American cities during the 1890s and the early 1900s. Jane Addams founded the most famous settlement house, in Chicago. (See Progressive movement.)