Settlement House Movement
Immigration to the US Resources | Other Resources
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| Illustration from Epworth League House (University settlement), Hull Street, Boston, 1894. |
The settlement house movement began in Britain in 1884 when middle-class London reformers established Toynbee Hall, the first settlement house, in East London to provide social services and education to the poor workers who lived there. Inspired by the British movement, American social reformers began founding settlement houses in the late 1880s to respond to growing industrial poverty. In 1886, Stanton Coit founded Neighborhood Guild, the first US settlement house, in New York City. In 1889, Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Starr founded Hull-House in Chicago, which would eventually become the most famous settlement house in the US. By 1897, there were 74 settlements in the United States, and the number had ballooned to over 400 by 1890. Forty percent of settlement houses were in Boston, Chicago, and New York—the leading industrial centers—but most small cities had at least one settlement.
The major purpose of settlement houses was to help to assimilate and ease the transition of immigrants into the labor force by teaching them middle-class American values. In Chicago, for instance, Hull-House helped to educate immigrants by providing classes in history, art, and literature. Hull-House also provided social services to reduce the effects of poverty, including a daycare center, homeless shelter, public kitchen, and public baths. Settlement houses like Hull-House were a nexus for political activism, with reformers like Jane Addams becoming involved in advocating social legislation to combat poverty in local, state, and national politics.
Although the mainstream settlement house movement was nondenominational and abstained from proselytizing, many religious organizations were responsible for establishing settlements, including the Roman Catholic Church, the YWCA, and the Women's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church South. In response to black migrations from the South to the northern industrial centers, African-American churches founded settlement houses to provide social services to newly arrived black migrants. In Chicago, for example, Reverend Reverdy Ransom founded the African Methodist Episcopal Institutional Church to provide employment, education, and welfare services to black migrants.
By joining the movement, African-American churches were also responding to the racism that affected many settlement houses. While European immigrants were judged to be capable of being assimilated into middle-class American society, many white settlement reformers viewed African-Americans as incapable of entering mainstream American society, which ultimately led to segregation of black settlement houses from white settlement houses for European immigrants.
One of the revolutionary characteristics of the settlement house movement was that many of the most important leadership roles were filled by women, in an era when women were still excluded from leadership roles in business and government. Approximately half of the major US settlement houses were led and staffed predominantly by women. Among the most influential leaders were Jane Addams, Mary Simkhovitch, Helena Dudley, Lillian Wald, Mary McDowell, Florence Kelley, Alice Hamilton, and Edith Abbott.
Works CitedCarson, Mina. "Settlement House Movement," in The Reader's Companion to US Women's History.
Davis, Allen. "Settlement Houses," in The Reader's Companion to American History.
Lasch-Quinn, Elisabeth. "Religious Settlements," in The Encyclopedia of Chicago.
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Immigration to the US Resources
Listed below are digital resources from the Immigration to the US collection about, or related to, the settlement house movement. These resources represent only a selection of what exists on these topics. More physical materials on these topics may be available at the owning repositories, some of which are open to the public.
Addams, Jane. The Subjective Value of a Social Settlement. [United States: s.n., between 1892 and 1894].
Americans in Process: A Settlement Study / By Residents and Associates of the South End House. Ed. Robert A. Woods. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1902.
College Settlements Association. [New York?: College Settlements Association, 1914].
Denison House. Directory of Clubs and Classes. (Boston, Mass.: s.n.] (Boston, Mass.: Allied Print Trades Council, 1901, 1903).
Epworth League House (University settlement), er Hull Street, Boston: A Religious Social Study Revealing the Religious Destitution and Consequent Christian Opportunity and Obligation in a Section of Boston Slums. Boston: Epworth League House Commission, 1894.
Horton, Isabelle. The Burden of the City, 4th ed. New York: F.H. Revell Co., c1904.
The Literature of Philanthropy. Ed. Frances Goodale. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893.
New York Training School for Deaconesses. The Year Book of the New York Training School for Deaconesses. New York: Grace House [1894/1895 and 1896/1897 only].
Social Work of the Church. Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1907.
University Settlement Society of New York. Report of the Year's Work. [New York]: University Settlement Society,-[1896?] ([New York City]: Concord Print. Co.).
University Settlement Society of New York. Report for the Year. [New York]: University Settlement Society of New York, [1897?] (New York City: Concord Co-operative Print. Co.).
University Settlement Society of New York. Annual Report of the University Settlement Society of New York (Incorporated). [New York]: University Settlement Society of New York. Volumes 24th-25th (1910-1911).
Wald, Lillian. The House on Henry Street. New York: H. Holt and Co., 1915.
Woods, Robert. The Settlement Horizon: A National Estimate. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1922.
^ TOPOther Resources
Listed below are web sites about, or related to, the settlement house movement. These resources are listed to point users to further information outside the context of the Immigration to the US collection. The Open Collections Program and Harvard University bear no responsibility for the contents of these web sites. This list is not intended to be comprehensive.
Jane Addams: Hull-House Museum.
Jane Addams Hull-House Association.
Mina Carson. "Settlement House Movement," in The Reader's Companion to American History.
Allen F. Davis. "Settlement Houses," in The Reader's Companion to American History.
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