Settlement and community houses in the United States

Settlement and community houses in the United States were a vital part of the settlement movement, a progressive social movement that began in the mid-19th century in London with the intention of improving the quality of life in poor urban areas through education initiatives, food and shelter provisions, and assimilation and naturalization assistance.

The movement spread to the United States in the late 1880s, with the opening of the Neighborhood Guild in New York City's Lower East Side in 1886, and the most famous settlement house in the United States, Hull-House (1889), was founded soon after by Jane Addams and Ellen Starr in Chicago.

In the Bowling Green Neighborhood Association's annual report in 1926, they stated that they that “never prod[ded] them [the immigrants] into citizenship, but when they have reached the point where they want to become citizens, we give them all the help we can with their papers.”[9] A succession of more or less informal national gatherings of settlement workers were held from time to time between 1892 and 1910.

It was there decided to arrange for a series of settlement discussions at the following National Conference, which was to take place at St. Louis with Jane Addams as its president.

Three sessions were held, and a national committee of ten was appointed to gather and collate the results of settlement experience as to the most needed and most promising directions of service, and to present a year later (1911) at a similar series of meetings in Boston a platform for united action among settlements throughout the country.