Elizabeth Milbank Anderson

[2] Anderson in her lifetime supported a wide range of health and social reform efforts during the Progressive Era, from tuberculosis and diphtheria eradication to relief work for European children following World War I, for which she was made in 1919 a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by the French government.

[3] Anderson's recorded public health benefactions began with her initial gift in 1891 to Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau's sanatorium for the tubercular at Saranac Lake, New York, where from 1893 until her death she underwrote the operating costs of his laboratory for the investigation of the treatment of tuberculosis.

[9] In 1916 Anderson gave $100,000 to Lillian Wald's Henry Street Settlement and joined its board of directors,[10] and separately became the lead donor to the city's Department of Public Charities' Children's Home Bureau, which outplaced orphans from institutions to families.

"[12] In the political sphere, Anderson used her influence with New York Senator Elihu Root to help push through passage in 1912 of the bill establishing the United States Children's Bureau (folded into the Federal Service Agency in 1946).

[17] Separately, in the field of human rights, Anderson provided $100,000 in funding to open in 1905 and support until her death the Harlem office of the Legal Aid Society.

[24] From the 1930s through the late-1960s, the theater enjoyed significant success, with performances by Helen Hayes, Leslie Howard, Lillian Gish, Douglas Fairbanks, and Ruth Chatterton.

Anderson lived in California for part of each year beginning in 1906 at 350 South Grand Ave. in Pasadena,[25] then in Los Angeles in 1907 when she built a home at 671 Wilshire Place.