Progressive Housing in New York City: - Columbia University ...

State in 1895. Of these organizations, the Charity Organization Society of the City of New York
was among her greatest achievements. The Society gave form and direction to all the efforts of
distinguished philanthropists in New York. Its primary concern was to distinguish between the
deserving and the undeserving poor sine they believed that giving out charity without
investigating the problems behind poverty created a class of citizens that would always be
dependent on people giving them money.
Josephine Shaw Lowell influenced a number of women into becoming more involved with social
problems. Among these women were Lillian Wald, who in 1893 founded the Henry Street
Settlement where she taught health and hygiene to immigrant women in the impoverished Lower
East Side; and Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch, who in 1902 founded the Greenwich House in
order to improve the living conditions among the predominately immigrant population in
Greenwich Village.
Lillian Wald
Image from the Encyclopedia Britannica web site.
Henry Street Settlement
Image from the New York Architecture Images web site.
With Josephine Shaw Lowell as their leader, women became more involved in the progressive
housing movement by becoming philanthropists in the subject. They started reacting to the
terrible conditions in which low-income people lived by funding projects that provided better
housing conditions. Women as philanthropists could only donate money under their husbands’
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