Whittier House (Jersey City, New Jersey)

Christian, but non-denominational, its aims were to help all in need by improving their circumstances, by inspiring them with new motives and higher ideals, and by making them better fitted by the responsibilities and privileges of life.

[4] The Boys & Girls Clubs of Hudson County continues the work and mission started at Whittier House and is still located in Paulus Hook.

[5] Whittier House was established May 14, 1894, by Cornelia Foster Bradford as the outgrowth of social work begun December 20, 1893, in a small room called an “office" in the People's Palace.

[1] Whittier House established:[2][3] In 1896 the mayor appointed two residents on the Investigation and Relief Committee for the purpose of inquiry into the origin of a large fire, and to administer funds to the victims.

[2] Mary Philbrook, the first female attorney in New Jersey and the first to be admitted to the state bar association, volunteered to be the settlement's first Legal Aid Society advisor.

In 1902, Sayles studied the problems of over two-thousand tenement apartments in the working-class section of the First Ward (Paulus Hook), known as "Gammontown", in Jersey City.

Her report The Housing Conditions of Jersey City (1902) received national acclaim and was published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1903).

In response to the report, mayor Mark M. Fagan (1902–1907 & 1913–1917) created the Municipal Sanitary League and opened city's first public bath house on Coles Street in 1904.