SOCIAL SETTLEMENT HOUSE

As an emerging organization, College Club grew slowly, rarely numbering more than fifty members. Girls who went to college in those days, except to prepare for the teaching profession, were the exception, and teachers were allergic to club life at that time. In the beginning it was a sublimated culture club, standardized in the rigid framework of Robert’s “Rules of Order.” Our founders were eager to maintain a fraternal and collegial spirit. Their efforts to keep the intellectual fires burning led them to read and write scholarly dissertations on such topics as “Aristotle and Pestalozzi: Their Theories of Education Compared and Contrasted.”

Within two years, however, their research into social problems led them to teachers, writers and social workers who were developing the city’s first Social Settlement. For the settlement house, the members devoted their energies to develop clubs, classes, and choruses for both young and old. This Social Settlement House occupied the energies of these dedicated women for seven years until other social agencies such as the University Settlement House absorbed this effort. In its day, the settlement house initiated many social and educational experiments which are commonplace today. The location of this house moved three times to various locations on East Third Street until it finally faded out in a tiny house on Eastbourne Terrace.