"To bring together for mutual benefit people of different classes and conditions is declared to be the distinctive purpose of the settlement.

It was opened in October 1896, by Samuel S. and Harriet M. Van Der Vaart, under the auspices of the Young People's Society of the Universalist Church, of Englewood, Chicago, (now known as Beverly Unitarian Church) and with the assistance of teachers of the Perkins, Bass, and D. S. Wentworth public schools.

[1] It was officially established in the Fall of 1897 by Harriet Van Der Vaart as the outgrowth of the kindergarten opened the year before "to bring together for mutual benefit people of different classes and conditions.

[2] It had a kindergarten, library, social clubs, industrial school, drawing, choral, manual training and basket weaving classes.

[1] Neighborhood House had its beginning in 1897 when Harriet Van Der Vaart thought to give to the girls of her Sunday School class a chance to be really useful.

They called together their friends in the district with the result that a Neighborhood House Association was formed and a building committee appointed.

[5] The part on 67th Street, which at the back adjoined the other section, contained a large auditorium, seating 500,[6] with dressing rooms and a stage.

On the wall of the auditorium, there was a large map of the district, prepared by the Juvenile Protective League and showing every saloon and dance hall in the neighborhood.

Van Der Vaart, as chair of the industrial committee of the State Federation of Women's Clubs, made a study of working children in Chicago and Cook County, and did much to secure legislation.

Reading and lecture rooms, a boys' band, summer outings, annual training, domestic economy, and other practical benefits attracted the children from the streets, as well as the fathers away from the saloons and other objectionable locales, and his work proved to be of material progressive benefit to the community in the district where Neighborhood House was built and where the Van Der Vaarts resided.

[2] To Anna Nicholes, the purpose of the settlement seemed to be to bring the neighborhood into touch with the larger life of the city, the state and the nation.