WHAT IS A SETTLEMENT HOUSE? WHERE DID THE NAME COME FROM?

North East Neighborhood House, settlement house in Minneapolis, MN, founded in 1915.

Whenever I tell people that I grew up in a settlement house, the first question is, “But what is a settlement house? Why are they called settlement houses?”

I try to explain in the introduction to my book SettlementHouse Girl, without going deeply into the history of the settlement house movement. But here, I think, is a better answer.

The following is from the introduction of an article about the history of the National Federation of Settlements by John E. Hansan, Ph.D.:

In 1886, Stanton Coit founded America’s first settlement house, the Neighborhood Guild (later renamed University Settlement) on New York City’s Lower East Side. Over the next 15 years, settlement houses were established in cities as places where socially motivated middle-class men and women could live, or “settle,” among the poor.  Settlement house staff resided in the same buildings in which neighborhood residents participated in programs and activities. Living in close proximity, settlement staff regarded the people who used the settlement as “neighbors,” not “clients.”  Jane Addams founded Hull House in Chicago, Robert Archey Woods founded South End House in Boston, and other civic leaders, including Lillian Wald, John Lovejoy Elliott and Mary K. Simkhovitch, established settlement houses in New York City.

Many of these individuals had been influenced by the founders and staff of London’s Toynbee Hall and other British social activists who believed that students and people of wealth should “settle” in poverty-stricken neighborhoods both to provide services to help improve the daily quality of life, as well as to evaluate conditions and work for social reform. The settlements taught adult education and English language classes, provided schooling for immigrants’ children, organized job clubs, offered afterschool recreation, initiated public health services, and advocated for improved housing for the poor and working classes.

As explained above by Dr. Hansan, settlement houses were often called "neighborhood houses" with settlement house staff, like my social worker parents, regarding the people who came to the settlement house for classes and social services as "neighbors" not "clients".  From the age of four, until I was ten, my family lived at North East Neighborhood House, a settlement house in Minneapolis. Before that, my father had been the director of another settlement house, Neighborhood House in Syracuse, NY. 

While the term "settlement house" is no longer common, many of the institutions that began as settlement houses still exist and have evolved to meet the current social service needs of their communities. North East Neighborhood House, founded in 1915, continues as East Side Neighborhood Services, in a new modern building just a few blocks up the street from the original building. That building has been converted to low-income apartments and has been placed on the National Historical Register. Settlement House Girl: Growing Up in the 1950s at North East Neighborhood House, Minneapolis, Minnesota is a memoir of my childhood there. In the Appendix to the book is a short description of the history of North East Neighborhood House and an article about some of the activities offered when my father was the director.