Who was Lillian Wald?
One of the most influential and respected social reformers of the 20th century, Henry Street Settlement founder Lillian Wald (1867-1940) was a tireless and accomplished humanitarian. Born into a life of privilege, and descended from a family of Jewish professionals, at age 22 Wald came to Manhattan to attend the New York Hospital School of Nursing.
What was the purpose of the settlement house movement?
In 1894, Wald and Brewster started the Henry Street Settlement House, an organization dedicated to providing social services and instruction in various subjects for the Lower East Side community. Historians have since critiqued the settlement house movement for the ways in which it forced certain expectations and behaviors on immigrant communities.
What did Harriet Wald do for Henry Street Settlement?
In 1930, Wald retired and became the Director Emeritus for the Henry Street Settlement. Beyond her work with the Henry Street Settlement, Wald was a tireless advocate for the rights of women, children, immigrants, and laborers.
What did Lillian liilian do at the Henry Street Settlement?
Lillian believed that everyone, regardless of income level, deserved access to health care. As part of her work at the settlement house, LiIlian provided educational and recreational opportunities to children, including those with disabilities. The Henry Street Settlement boasted a large playground for all children to enjoy.
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What did Lillian Wald do for the Progressive Era?
Lillian Wald was a nurse who worked for social reform during the American Progressive Era. She is best known for establishing the idea of public health nursing, and for starting the Henry Street Settlement in New York City in 1895 to provide services to the area's residents.
What roles did Lillian Wald play in the founding of the naacp?
Pioneer Nurse Lillian Wald The settlement provided a visiting nurses service and social services to that poor immigrant quarter. From this base, Wald founded public health nursing in the U.S. She introduced public school nurses and the Red Cross Town and Country Nursing Service.
What was Lillian Wald goal?
Her goal was to ensure that women and children, immigrants and the poor, and members of all ethnic and religious groups would realize America's promise of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." As a young nurse, Wald hoped to provide decent health care to residents of New York's Lower East Side tenements.
What was the name of Lillian Wald's settlement house in New York?
Henry Street SettlementHenry Street Settlement, settlement house complex in New York City, founded in 1893 by American nurse and social worker Lillian D. Wald as a nursing service for immigrants. Initially composed of several properties on Henry Street, the settlement later expanded throughout the Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Who founded the NAACP and why?
The NAACP was created in 1909 by an interracial group consisting of W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Mary White Ovington, and others concerned with the challenges facing African Americans, especially in the wake of the 1908 Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot.
Who played a major role in founding the NAACP?
The NAACP's founding members included white progressives Mary White Ovington, Henry Moskowitz, William English Walling and Oswald Garrison Villard, along with such African Americans as W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Wells-Barnett, Archibald Grimke and Mary Church Terrell.
Why is the Henry Street Settlement important?
Henry Street is designated the official provider of AIDS Mental Health Services for the Lower East Side by New York City's Department of Mental Health. The Urban Family Center is singled out by Diana, Princess of Wales, when she visits New York City, as one of the most effective programs for homeless families.
What is the Henry Street Settlement known for?
Today, Henry Street is known for its pioneering efforts in social service and health care delivery.
What is Lavinia Dock best known for?
A staunch advocate of legislation to control nursing practice, Lavinia Lloyd Dock is also remembered for her outstanding contributions to nursing literature. She graduated from Bellevue Training School for Nurses in 1886 and soon after became night supervisor at Bellevue.
Who founded the Henry Street Settlement quizlet?
Lillian Wald established the Henry Street Settlement. 26.
What is the definition settlement house?
Definition of settlement house : an institution providing various community services especially to large city populations.
What did Lillian Wald believe in?
She advocated for civil rights, women's suffrage, and for peace. Wald worked to create a more just society so that women, children, the poor, immigrants, and people of all ethnic and religious groups would be able to realize the American promise of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
What role did the NAACP play in the early civil rights movement?
The NAACP-led Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition of civil rights organizations, spearheaded the drive to win passage of the major civil rights legislation of the era: the Civil Rights Act of 1957; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
What was the original name of the NAACP?
the Niagara MovementSeven of the members of the Niagara Movement joined the Board of Directors of the NAACP, founded in 1909. Although both organizations shared membership and overlapped for a time, the Niagara Movement was a separate organization.
How did naacp fight segregation?
Early in its fight for equality, the NAACP used the federal courts to challenge disenfranchisement and residential segregation. Job opportunities were the primary focus of the National Urban League, which was established in 1910.
What was Lillian Wald known for?
Lillian Wald was a nurse who worked for social reform during the American Progressive Era. She is best known for establishing the idea of public he...
What was the purpose of the Henry Street Settlement?
The Henry Street Settlement, which opened in New York City in 1895, was established to provide health care, educational opportunities, and social s...
What did Lillian Wald do for the poor?
Lillian Wald felt that everyone, no matter their nationality, gender, or income, deserved access to services such as affordable health care in thei...
What did Lillian Wald do for the Lower East Side?
March 1867-September 1940) Lillian D. Wald helped to bring health care to the residents of New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century. As a “practical idealist who worked to create a more just society,” Wald fought for public health care, women’s rights, and children’s rights while running the Henry Street Settlement.
Why did Wald dedicate her life to the tenement community?
Because of the cramped quarters and lack of upkeep on the buildings , many tenement residents were frequently sick. After providing health care to a young girl’s mother in a dirty, dilapidated tenement, Wald decided to dedicate her life’s work to the tenement community.
Where was Lillian Wald born?
Born the third of four children to a Jewish family in Cincinnati, Ohio on March 10, 1867, Lillian D. Wald experienced a childhood of privilege. Her ancestors had left Europe after the 1848 revolutions to seek new opportunities in the United States and had done well. Her father, Max D. Wald, was a successful optical goods merchant and her mother, ...
How many members were there in the Henry Street Settlement?
By 1913, the Henry Street Settlement had expanded to seven buildings on Henry Street with two satellite centers. It had 3,000 members in its classes and clubs and 92 nurses making an estimated 200,000 home health calls a year. Wald also made the Settlement available as a meeting place for the NAACP.
Lillian Wald's Education and Influences
Lillian attended private schools and received an education in everything from Latin to trigonometry to physics. She was popular and bright, and even applied to Vassar College at the age of 16, but was rejected because of her young age. Her older sister, Julia, married into a wealthy family.
Lillian Wald's Contributions to Nursing
After Lillian left medical school, she devoted her time and efforts to bringing healthcare to the poor, especially impoverished immigrants on the Lower East Side. She and her former classmate Mary Brewster lived in the neighborhood and, in addition to providing nursing care, also helped area residents with education, job, and housing concerns.
Lillian Wald's Henry Street Settlement
With the help of friend Mary Brewster and some generous donors, including philanthropist Jacob Schiff, Lillian moved into a house on Henry Street in 1895 and founded the Henry Street Settlement. She and her fellow nurses who lived in the house provided care for lower-class area residents on a sliding scale.
Lillian Wald's Late Life
Although Lillian maintained many close friendships throughout her life, she never married or had children. She devoted much of her life to the Henry Street Settlement and her work in social reform. She died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1940 at the age of 73.
Who was Lillian Wald?
Lillian Wald, one of the Progressive movement’s most influential leaders, was born in 1867 and died in 1940. Her working life spans the entirety of the American Progressive era (1890 to 1920).
What did Wald do for the community?
She lobbied for parks and playgrounds, worked to elect reform candidates, advocated for decent housing conditions, and supported the struggle for worker’s rights, women’s rights, and children’s rights. She was tireless in promoting public health issues, and was instrumental in creating and professionalizing the field of public health nursing. She raised money to fund higher education programs for public health nurses, and made the Henry Street Settlement available for their training.
What did the Settlement of New York do for children?
Many of the Settlement’s residents also helped to improve conditions for children in New York City’s public schools . Elizabeth Farrell created and ran special education classes, while Lina Rogers established and administered a program for school nurses. Mabel Kittredge ran a model housekeeping program through the Settlement, which later became incorporated into the city’s schools as home economics classes. After she left the settlement, Kittredge was instrumental in creating the city’s school lunch program. Wald assisted this effort on multiple occasions, and became a member of the Committee on School Lunches, which Kittredge chaired.
What was the first priority of Wald?
Wald’s first priority was to provide nursing services to her neighbors.
What was Henry Street Settlement?
Within a few years the Henry Street Settlement had become a vibrant neighborhood center, offering residents of the Lower East Side not only nursing services, but a playground and a kindergarten, afterschool programs, classes for adults, boys’ and girls’ clubs, mothers’ groups, day trips and vacations to the country, summer camps, a theater, and the myriad other activities that came to be associated with the settlement house movement.
What was Wald's contribution to the field of public health nursing?
Wald’s contributions to the field of public health nursing and the improvement of the lives of the poor and children are far-reaching, and the institutions that she founded are still in existence. The Henry Street Settlement to this day provides a multitude of community services, while the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, an offshoot of the Settlement, offers a wide variety of home health care services.
Who was the first nurse to establish a settlement house?
Wald was the first person to establish a settlement house with the primary goal of providing nursing services for the poor. In the summer of 1893, she and her friend and sister nurse, Mary Brewster, moved to the Lower East Side of New York City and began to minister to the poor sick. After a few months they started their own “Nurses’ Settlement,” operating out of the top (fifth) floor walkup apartment in a Jefferson Street tenement on the Lower East Side of New York City. Within a couple years, the burgeoning Nurses’ Settlement became the “Henry Street Settlement,” with expanded quarters located on the street of the same name.
What was Lillian Wald known for?
Known for. Founding the Henry Street Settlement; nursing pioneer, advocacy for the poor. Lillian D. Wald (March 10, 1867 – September 1, 1940) was an American nurse, humanitarian and author. She was known for contributions to human rights and was the founder of American community nursing.
What was Wald's vision for Henry Street Settlement?
Wald's vision for Henry Street was one unlike any others at the time. Wald believed that every New York City resident was entitled to equal and fair health care regardless of their social status, socio-economic status, race, gender, or age.
What was the name of the organization that Wald founded?
In 1915, Wald founded the Henry Street Neighborhood Playhouse. She was an early leader of the Child Labor Committee, which became the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC). The group lobbied for federal child labor laws and promoted childhood education. In the 1920s, the organization proposed an amendment to the U.S. constitution that would have banned child labor. In the 1920s, Wald was a vocal proponent of the social welfare initiatives of New York Governor Al Smith, and in 1928 she actively supported Smith's presidential campaign.
Why did Mary Brewster move into a spartan room?
Along with another nurse, Mary Brewster, she moved into a spartan room near her patients, in order to care for them better. Around that time she coined the term " public health nurse " to describe nurses whose work is integrated into the public community. Wald advocated for nursing in public schools.
When was Lillian Wald inducted into the Hall of Fame?
In 1993 , Wald was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. The Lillian Wald Houses on Avenue D in Manhattan were named for her. Wald paved the way for women in the public health world in numerous ways: As a medical provider, an employer, and an educator.
What was Wald's unique opportunity for women?
One of the most notable benefits was the opportunity for women to have a career and to build their own wealth independent of husbands or families. Employment also provided women with the opportunity to gain independence from their husbands and work outside of the home.
How did the Settlement change the health care system?
These programs helped to cut back on time patients spent at hospitals while also making at-home-care more accessible and efficient.
What was Wald's inspiration for the College Settlement Association?
A major source of Wald's inspiration was the College Settlement Association, founded in 1887 by seven Smith College graduates who were dismayed by the lack of professional opportunities available to college-educated women, and sought to help the poor while providing themselves with independent, meaningful careers. In 1889, the Association set up the College Settlement at 95 Rivington Street in Manhattan, which Wald visited several times during her early forays into the Lower East Side. Together with Mary Brewster , a friend from nurses' training school, Wald decided in 1893 to create a "Nurses' Settlement," which would provide inhabitants of a poor neighborhood with nursing care and teach them the rudiments of healthy living.
What did Wald do for the public?
In addition to the Henry Street Visiting Nurse program, Wald helped to create a number of institutions that extended the concepts of public health nursing beyond the settlement movement. In 1902, she convinced the New York City Board of Health to establish the first public-school nursing program in the United States. In 1909, Wald persuaded the Metropolitan Life Insurance to adopt a public health program for industrial workers to prevent these clients from succumbing to premature death or disability.
Where did Wald and Brewster live?
During the first few years, Wald and Brewster worked out of makeshift quarters in the College Settlement and a tenement building on Jefferson Street. Eventually the generous contributions of Jacob H. Schiff, a wealthy New York banker, allowed Wald and Brewster to acquire a permanent home at 265 Henry Street. The two nurses were soon joined by nine other residents, many of whom were also trained nurses. By 1913, Wald had a thriving Visiting Nurses' Service consisting of 92 nurses who made more than 200,000 visits per year from the Henry Street headquarters and branch settlements in upper Manhattan and the Bronx. The service provided low-cost home health care for invalids, first aid stations, convalescent facilities, and follow-up care for patients recently released from the hospital.
What was Henry Street's model of nursing?
The Henry Street model of nursing care spread rapidly beyond New York City as similar programs were set up across the country and around the world, culminating in the birth of a new profession that Wald called public health nursing. Central to Wald's concept of public health nursing was the idea that the nurse should do more than simply care for sick patients, by working to prevent illness before it starts through improvement of the clients' environment and their education in the principles of a healthy lifestyle.
What was the role of the women's vote in the 1920s?
One major accomplishment often attributed to the women's vote was the passage in 1921 of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity Bill, which offered federal matching funds for maternal and infant health care. Wald and other reform leaders were faced with a conservative political climate during the 1920s, however, and were disappointed to discover that many women did not share their liberal views. The Sheppard-Towner Bill was overturned in the late 1920s, and Wald and her associates found it increasingly difficult to drum up popular support for other reform causes.
What was Wald's passion?
Wald's main passion during this time, however, was the battle for woman's suffrage. From 1909 to 1917, she served as honorary vice chair of the New York State Woman Suffrage Party, which succeeded in winning the vote for New York women in 1917. Upon hearing the news that women had finally received the right to vote, Wald wrote to her friend and fellow settlement leader Jane Addams , "We are nearly bursting over our citizenship. … I had no idea that I could thrill over the right to vote."
Where did Max Wald live?
Max Wald's business eventually took the family from Cincinnati to Dayton and finally to Rochester , New York, which Lillian regarded as her hometown long after she had moved on to her life's work in Manhattan. In Rochester, the Walds joined a prominent German-Jewish community that enjoyed a lavish social life and tended to be conservative in its politics and attitudes toward social reform. Like other rapidly growing industrial cities of the time, Rochester had its share of working-class families who suffered from the deleterious effects of low wages, long working hours, poor nutrition, and a bad living environment, but there is no indication that Lillian was aware of their plight. Her parents appear to have been equally unconcerned with the situation of the poor. Although they occasionally performed private acts of charity, they were not involved in social causes of any kind, and devoted most of their time to ensuring their place among Rochester's elite professional class.
How long did Wald work for Henry Street Settlement?
As headworker of Henry Street Settlement for 40 years, until 1933, Wald drew from global intellectual currents of reform – especially networks of women and progressives – as she integrated her Settlement into powerful political networks for social change. She established herself as a courageous national leader in campaigns for social reform, public health and anti-militarism, and as an international crusader for human rights.
What did Wald do?
The group lobbied for federal child labor laws and promoted childhood education. In the 1920s, the organization proposed an amendment to the U.S. constitution that would have banned child labor.
What did Wald do in New York City?
Wald organized New York City campaigns for suffrage, marched to protest the entry of the United States into World War I , joined the Woman’s Peace Party and helped to establish the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which still exists.
What is the name of the building in the Settlement?
1832 federal row houses at 263, 265 and 267 Henry Street were designated New York City landmarks in 1966, and these buildings, along with the Neighborhood Playhouse building at 466 Grand Street, were collectively designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989. Lillian Wald was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in 1970.
What was the first theatrical influence of the playhouse?
Many well-known actors have cited their exposure to the playhouse as their earliest theatrical influence. In 1927 the Henry Street Music School began operation. Wald also taught women how to cook and sew, provided recreational activities for families, and was involved in the labor movement. Out of her concern for women’s working conditions, she ...
When was Lillian Wald inducted into the Hall of Fame?
Lillian Wald was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in 1970. Sources: www.henrystreet.org and Wikipedia. Tags: health care. Immigrants. Poverty. women.
Where was Lillian Wald born?
Founder of the Henry Street Settlement House in Lower Manhattan, Lillian Wald was born on March 10, 1867, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a family of German Jewish professionals, and spent her youth in Rochester, N.Y.
Who entertained the residents of the settlement?
One winter they were entertained on Friday evenings by resident Winifred Rooney O’Reilly, the mother of labor leader Leonora O’Reilly . Mrs. O’Reilly told stories and read aloud from the books of reformers like Henry George and Giuseppe Mazzini.
Who wrote the settlement idea?
Holden, Arthur C. , The Settlement Idea: A Vision of Social Justice, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1922.
What was Wald's greatest achievement?
Wald felt that one of her great accomplishments was the Henry Street Settlement’s reputation for an abundance of hospitality and a strong sense of community , which she proclaimed evolved naturally from its foundation “of respect for people and for their importance as human beings.” This respect was evident in the relationships that developed among both short-term and long-term members of the Family, and in the way the Family treated the settlement’s many guests. The respect extended beyond the house, into the neighborhood and beyond. To Wald, the secret of her success was both simple and profound:
What was the significance of Florence Kelley's settlement?
While the Settlement she founded became a window into the larger world for her neighbors, it was also a unique view of the Lower East Side for politicians, reformers, public health activists, social scientists and philanthropists. Long time residents like Florence Kelley could use their living situation to supply them with data and evidence for formal research . They also valued the deeper knowledge that informal, daily connection with the neighborhood provided. Conversely, neighbors could meet, mingle, learn from and teach middle class activists, prominent philanthropists and reform politicians who visited. The House was, in short, neutral ground, a meeting place for people from all backgrounds who rarely, if ever, met as social equals in any other circumstance.
What was the Prime Minister's early visit to Henry Street?
The future Prime Minister’s “early visit to Henry Street” on his “wedding trip” was the “beginning of a long association” and a deep friendship.
Who did Wald invite to dinner?
On one special occasion during the early years of the settlement, Wald gave a dinner for Graham Wallas , a social psychologist, professor at the London School of Economics, and early member (with George Bernard Shaw) of the British Fabian Society. Wallas had arrived in the States for a lecture engagement. He carried letters of introduction to many people, but did not have the time to visit them all. Wald “ventured to invite the people on the list for Sunday supper.” Years later, she remembered that those attending included Theodore Roosevelt, then Police Commissioner of New York City (1895-1897), reformer and photographer Jacob Riis (author of How the Other Half Lived ), Seth Low (future mayor of New York, President of Columbia University, diplomat), Felix Adler (founder of the Ethical Culture Movement), American poet Richard Watson Gilder (head of the 1894 Tenement House Committee) and author and literary critic William Dean Howells.
What did nurses do at the Settlement?
Nurses met back at the Settlement for lunch if their schedules permitted. There, according to Dock (tongue planted firmly in cheek), they would “usually” find “some visitor or visitors interested and interesting, for no dull or stupid people ever appear at the Settlement.” The outside work of the nurses was usually finished one or two hours before dinner. When they returned to the Settlement—at least during the early years—resident nurses would pursue other interests of benefit to the neighborhood. Some officiated at mothers’ clubs, while others supervised the after-school activities of neighborhood children. Soon, however, the nurses found their daily rounds to be more than enough work, and generally left the Settlement’s other activities to lay members.
Overview
Lillian D. Wald (March 10, 1867 – September 1, 1940 ) was an American nurse, humanitarian and author. She was known for contributions to human rights and was the founder of American community nursing. She founded the Henry Street Settlement in New York City and was an early advocate to have nurses in public schools.
Early life and education
Wald was born into a wealthy German-Jewish medical family in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her parents were Max D. Wald and Minnie (Schwarz) Wald. Her father was an optical dealer; her uncle, Henry Wald, M.D., was a University of Vienna trained surgeon who began a New York City medical dynasty at Columbia University in the 1880s. In 1878, she moved with her family to Rochester, New York. She attended Miss Cruttenden's English-French Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies. She appl…
Nursing career
Wald worked for a time at the New York Juvenile Asylum (now Children's Village), an orphanage where conditions were poor. By 1893, she left medical school and started to teach a home class on nursing for poor immigrant families on New York City's Lower East Side at the Hebrew Technical School for Girls. Shortly thereafter, she began to care for sick Lower East Side residents as a visiting n…
The Henry Street Settlement
Wald's vision for Henry Street was one unlike any others at the time. Wald believed that every New York City resident was entitled to equal and fair health care regardless of their social status, socio-economic status, race, gender, or age. She argued that everyone should have access to at-home-care. A strong advocate for adequate bed-side manner, Wald believed that regardless of if a person could afford at-home-care, they deserved to be treated with the same level of respect tha…
Community outreach and advocacy
Wald also taught women how to cook and sew, provided recreational activities for families, and was involved in the labor movement. Out of her concern for women's working conditions, she helped to found the Women's Trade Union League in 1903 and later served as a member of the executive committee of the New York City League. In 1910, Wald and several colleagues went on a six-mo…
Personal life
Wald never married. She maintained her closest relationships and attachments with women. Correspondence reveals that Wald felt closest to at least two of her companions, homemaking author Mabel Hyde Kittredge and lawyer and theater manager Helen Arthur. Ultimately, however, Wald was more engaged in her work with Henry Street than in any relationship. In regard to Wald's relation…
Later life
She died of a cerebral hemorrhage on September 1, 1940. A rabbi conducted a memorial service at Henry Street's Neighborhood Playhouse. A private service was also held at Wald's home. A few months later at Carnegie Hall, over 2,000 people gathered at a tribute to Wald that included messages delivered by the president, governor and mayor. She was interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Rochester.
Legacy
The New York Times named Wald as one of the 12 greatest living American women in 1922 and she later received the Lincoln Medallion for her work as an "Outstanding Citizen of New York." In 1937 during a radio broadcast celebrating Wald's 70th birthday, Sara Delano Roosevelt read a letter from her son, President Franklin Roosevelt, in which he praised Wald for her "unselfish labor to promot…