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.

NEW BOOK! SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL, My Memoir About Growing Up in Minneapolis at North East Neighborhood House

Caroline, Age 4, with her parents and brother Steve, on the steps of North East Neighborhood House

A book project long in the making is a memoir of my childhood years in Minneapolis, Settlement HouseGirl: Growing Up in the 1950s at North East Neighborhood House, Minneapolis, Minnesota. It focuses on the time our family lived at the settlement house that my father directed, as well as its influence on my life even after we moved to our own house in South Minneapolis. My original intention in writing the book was to explore the mid-20th century history of NENH and its role in the community at a time when settlement houses like it were in transition to today’s social service centers. But as I wrote down my memories and researched letters and documents, I realized that it was really a story about me and my family set in the context of a functioning settlement house and the surrounding neighborhood. The book ends in the summer of 1966, after I have graduated from Grinnell College, and the Scheaffer family heads to California. You can find the book on Amazon but you have to search for Caroline Scheaffer Arnold (which Google keeps trying to misspell!)

Settlement House Girl chronicles my childhood at North East Neighborhood House in Northeast Minneapolis, Minnesota, as I interacted and shared meals with other settlement house residents, participated in clubs, sports and community activities, and observed the roles of the staff and my social worker parents. It is an inside view of a working settlement house in the 1950s. The 38 chapters of the book range from my first days at the NENH nursery school, to after-school clubs and community holiday celebrations at the settlement, family and school life, and summers at Camp Bovey, the NENH camp in Wisconsin.

North East Neighborhood House, 1929 2nd Street NE. Our apartment was on the third floor.

North East Neighborhood House, founded in 1915, was part of the settlement house movement that began in England in 1884 and was brought to the US by people like Jane Addams at Hull House, in Chicago. Settlement houses, often called neighborhood houses, provided social services in immigrant and poor urban neighborhoods. NENH was supported by charitable donations and by the Community Chest (United Fund.)  Activities were led by volunteers who came from other parts of the city and by staff members who lived at the settlement house.

My father, Les Scheaffer, was the NENH director from 1948 to 1966. Few families lived in settlement houses as ours did and we were one of the last. By the 1950s, the tradition of social workers living in settlement houses was coming to an end. When my family moved out, it was the end of an era.

The stories in this book will spark memories in adults who grew up in the same time period, whether in Minneapolis or elsewhere. Librarians and teachers who know my books for children will find clues to my future life as a writer and illustrator. This book is about the role of settlement houses in urban neighborhoods at mid-century. It is a window onto a time when settlement houses were in transition from their roots in immigrant communities at the turn of the 20th century to becoming today’s modern social service agencies. What began as Northeast Neighborhood House more than 100 years ago, continues as East Side Neighborhood Services and it is still serving the needs of people in Northeast and East Minneapolis. My childhood at North East Neighborhood House provides a unique perspective on the role it has played in our social history.

SHADOWS ON A WALL: The Autobiographical Writings of Lester Lewis Scheaffer (edited by Caroline Arnold) now an ebook at Amazon

My father's memoir, SHADOWS ON A WALL: The Autobiographical Writings of Lester Lewis Scheaffer, is finally up at Amazon as an ebook. (I am the editor.) These are poems and essays about his family, growing up in Kenosha, Wisconsin in the 1920s and 1930s, and a few stories about his life as a settlement house worker. If you enjoyed reading his story, Celebration at Tea Lake (about the memorable family celebration of my parents' 13th wedding anniversary) that I recently posted at my travel blog (The Intrepid Tourist), you may enjoy reading his other stories too.
The title of the book comes from a quote by Wallace Stegner, saved by my father in a folder he called "food for thought."
I was reminded of a remark of Willa Cather's, that you can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life, as Socrates has been so tediously advising us to do for so many centuries, do you really examine the life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or a rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others?
Wallace Stegner, THE SPECTATOR BIRD, p. 162

My father passed away in 1994. Here is the editor's note I wrote when I published a paper copy of the book in 1996:

            My father, Les Scheaffer, began this project in the late 1980's after the completion of his book Lutie and Mercy Ann, A Story of the Lockridge-Gibson Family 1875-1918, an historical account of the lives of his maternal grandparents.  The new book was to be a collection of his writings about his own life--poems, essays and stories--that focused on his family, childhood, school and early social work experiences.  Some of the pieces had been written as part of a creative writing class at the College of Marin, others were occasional pieces and some were created specifically for this project.  Two of the stories are about Camp Bovey, perhaps the greatest achievement of his life.  He once wrote, “But if there was a contest I think I would win: Camp Bovey, seventeen summers!  That was my great luck and my great love.” 

            From the earliest years of his life my father was a saver and keeper of records.  Many of his writings include excerpts from diaries, letters and notebooks or were inspired by them.  In all the pieces in this book as well as his other creative writing he always had the support and encouragement of my mother who was his “in house” editor and critic.  Some of the later stories are about experiences they shared.

            Born in 1914 at the beginning of World War I, my father’s life encompassed the Great Depression, World War II, the Vietnam War and tumult of the 1960s, moving from the Midwest, to the East Coast, back to the Midwest and finally to California.

            When my father died on May 1, 1994, he had made the final corrections on most entries but he had not yet begun assembling the book.  That job has fallen to me.  Not knowing exactly how he planned to organize the book, I have chosen to arrange the pieces chronologically and by theme.  Although I have listed myself as editor, I have changed as little as possible.  I have made a few spelling and punctuation corrections and, in a few cases, I’ve changed some words for clarity.  As far as I could tell he had not yet selected a title for the book, so I borrowed Shadows on the Wall from the Wallace Stegner quotation that he had chosen to be part of the book under a category he called “Food for Thought.”  The “shadows” in this book are vivid and multifaceted and tell us a great deal about the man that was my father.  We are fortunate that my father had the desire to tell the stories of his life and that he had the gift of telling them so well.  This book is a portrait of what it was like to grow up in a small Midwestern city in the 1920's and 30's and a glimpse into the lives of settlement workers just before and during World War II.  But that is not why he wrote it.  He wrote this book “for the kids” so that we might know a little of what made him the person he was.  For that I am glad.

                                                            Caroline Scheaffer Arnold

                                                            October 1996

 

Settlement Houses and Holiday Popcorn Balls

My childhood, until the age of ten, was different from that of most children.  That was because my family lived in the settlement house, which my father directed, along with some of the other staff.  The settlement house was a community center, something like the YMCA.  You can read about settlement houses and their origin in the late 19th century in my book, Children of the Settlement Houses.  Settlement houses still exist, but it is no longer typical for staff to be in residence. 
      Holiday parties were always a high point of the year at settlement houses. They were a time when everyone from the neighborhood could enjoy being together. In the 1950's, when I was growing up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I always looked forward to the children's Christmas party at the Northeast Neighborhood House (now East Side Neighborhood Services) where we lived. The auditorium was filled with fragrant evergreens and colorful decorations. We played games, sang songs, and watched the drama club put on a play. One year I was an actor and played the part of the littlest angel! At the end of the party each child always received a small gift and a popcorn ball wrapped in colored paper. I still remember their sweet and crunchy taste. Here's how you can make your own popcorn balls.

      POPCORN BALLS: Put ½ stick of butter or margerine, 6 cups of miniature marshmallows, and one 3-ounce box flavored gelatin in a microwave safe bowl and melt in microwave oven. (About two minutes. Check and continue melting if necessary.) Stir to mix. Pour over 12 cups popcorn. ( Optional, add ½ to 1 cup salted peanuts) Stir gently until evenly coated; butter your hands and shape into balls. Wrap in plastic wrap to store. Makes 16-20 medium size popcorn balls.