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Heritage from Chicago’s Early Settlement Houses (1967)

Article by Louise C. Wade. “Close cooperation with neighborhood people, scientific studies of the causes of poverty and dependence, communication of the facts to the public, and persistent pressure for reforms that would “socialize democracy”—these were the objectives of the most vigorous American settlements. According to one worker, the three R’s of the movement were residence, research, and reform.”

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Chicago’s Early Settlement Houses Heritage

“The Heritage from Chicago’s Early Settlement Houses: 1967,” by Louis C. Wade. “The contrast between progress and poverty in American life was obvious in the 1880s and glaring by the 1890s. Violent confrontations like the Haymarket riot and the Homestead and Pullman strikes served to illuminate the dangerous chasm, which separated the very rich from the very poor.”

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Settlement Houses

Settlement Houses   In many ways, Settlement Houses were the “seedbed of social reform” in the first part of the 20th Century.  Residents and volunteers of early settlement houses helped create and foster new organizations and social welfare programs, some of which continue to the present time. Settlements were action oriented and new programs and…

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Christodora Settlement House

Written by Dr. June Hopkins, this article presents a well-documented history of an early settlement house serving immigrant families living in the crowded slums of the Lower East Side of New York City. It is an especially important part of American social we

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Christodora Settlement House, 1897-1939

Written by June Hopkins, Ph. D., History Department, Armstrong Atlantic State University. “Almost one hundred years ago, when Christina Isobel MacColl and her friend Sarah Carson founded Christodora Settlement House in the slums of New York City’s Lower East Side…these two indomitable women, inspired by such social activists as Jane Addams and Lillian Wald, intended to settle in the slums and form bonds of “love and loyalty” with their immigrant neighbors while helping them adjust to the mean streets and squalid tenements of urban America.”

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Settlement Houses: An Introduction

Written by John E. Hansan, Ph.D. ” The establishment and expansion of social settlements and neighborhood houses in the United States corresponded closely with the Progressive Era, the struggle for woman suffrage, the absorption of millions of new immigrants into American society and the development of professional social work.”

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Origins of the Settlement House Movement

Excerpt from “Legacy of Light: University Settlement’s First Century” by Jeffrey Scheuer. “The initial idea was simply to bring the working classes into contact with other classes…and thus to share the culture of university life with those who needed it most. An accompanying theme was that of nurturing the whole person…”

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