University Settlement - Expanded Day

About us: 

In the 1880s, the Lower East Side was flooded with new immigrants living in poverty, nurturing a dream, and struggling to adapt to a new country. Into this overcrowded urban neighborhood came a group of reformers — people like Stanton Coit, Charles B. Stover and Carl Schurz — who settled in the community, became intimately acquainted with its problems, and recognized a need for change.

They didn’t believe that handouts or paternalistic charity were effective or honorable answers to immigrants’ poverty. Instead, in 1886, Coit, Stover, and Schurz established University Settlement — a physical, psychological and spiritual haven where people of all ages, from all countries and every walk of life could seek advice, assistance, education or a simple respite from the harsh realities of everyday life. With University Settlement, the American settlement house movement was born and other settlement houses soon followed, on the Lower East Side, in Chicago and across the country.