University Settlements
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
houses in the poor districts of cities where educated men and women live and with the working classes come in contact for social, educational, and civic purprovide clubs, poses. These settlements and offer a home and recreation for wage-earners. The idea of the university settlement grew out of the London establishment of 1860. An the Working Men's College in Oxford graduate, Edward Denison, in 1867, was the first to make a real home among the poor. He lived but a short still time, leaving his work when it was of the an experiment; but out of his idea social elevation of the poor grew a great work-resulting in the establishment of (q. v.), so called after TOYNBEE HALL worked Arnold Toynbee, who in 1875 . among the poor of Whitechapel A memorial was built to him, due to the Various influence of Samuel A. Barnett. and settlements were started in London in several cities in Scotland. The first settlement in the United States was founded in New York City, Sept. ept. 1, 1889, by the graduates of several . It was located in one women's colleges districts of the most crowded tenement of the East Side. In the same month a opened settlement called Hull House was in Chicago. On May 14, 1891, another York settlement was organized in New by the graduates of Yale, Columbia, universities. In Princeton, and other graduates October of the same year the and of Andover Theological Seminary work other ex-collegians began a similar . There in the tenement district of Boston are settlements, besides those mentioned, , Hartin Brooklyn, Buffalo, Jersey City , Cincinnati, ford, Philadelphia, Cleveland , and Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Francisco altogether many other cities; numbering the College Settlenearly 100. In 1891 , with the ments Association was formed women and purpose of uniting all college their friends, who were interested in set- Hull House, in Chicago, tlement work. under the leadership of Jane Addams, is one of the most widely known of Uni- ternational High Commission, a member versity Settlements.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 the settlement was a live experiment, with "nearly 100" houses in American cities and Jane Addams's Hull House the flagship. The movement peaked soon after at several hundred houses, then faded as its functions passed to trained social workers, public welfare agencies and New Deal programs; Addams herself won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 and died in 1935. The survivors mostly dropped the "university" label and became neighborhood or community centres: Toynbee Hall still works in Whitechapel and University Settlement on New York's Lower East Side still operates, but the Jane Addams Hull-House Association closed in 2012, leaving the original house as a museum on the University of Illinois Chicago campus. Historians now also weigh the movement's paternalism and its pressure on immigrants to Americanise alongside its achievements.
Written for this edition, 2026.