The History of the Mary E. McDowell Settlement House in Chicago, Illinois.

Mary McDowell's (1854-1936) abolitionist father, Malcolm McDowell, brought the family from Cincinnati to Chicago after the Civil War, arriving in Chicago in 1870. At the time of the Great Chicago Fire in 1871 (Mary was 17), her father, though ill himself, consented to her taking their horse and wagon out to help rescue fleeing citizens and some of their possessions.

Mary Eliza McDowell

The governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes, an old friend of the McDowells, was one of the first to rush aid to the stricken city and, of course, he sent it to the home of the McDowells for distribution. Mary worked unceasingly in those first days after the fire before central relief forces were organized and helped form the “Relief and Aid Society,” from which United Charities of Chicago later emerged. Another organization was distributing, en masse, Chicago Shelter Cottages, kit houses (short-term housing) for 1871 Fire Victims nearly days after the fire.

Mary McDowell with two unidentified individuals.

When Rutherford Hayes became president, Mary was invited to spend a month at the White House and later spent a summer in California with her uncle, Major General McDowell. In the early 1880s, her family moved to Evanston, Illinois, a very Methodist suburb at the time.

There Mary became a friend and follower of Frances Willard, founder of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, which advocated the right of women to vote. After graduating from the National Kindergarten College and teaching for a private family in New York, she returned to Evanston in 1890. 

Her interest in the social experiment, which Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr began in General Hull’s old mansion in Chicago, led her to help found such an experiment in Evanston, the Northwestern University Settlement.

The University of Chicago - Mary McDowell Settlement House, 4655 Gross Avenue, Chicago, Illinois.

Soon thereafter, she lived at Hull House as one of the first kindergarten workers until her mother's illness called her back to her family (she was one of six children) in Evanston. In the meantime, a new University of Chicago was being established, and members of its faculty transformed an association called the Christian Union, determined to learn the causes of this pervasive unrest and, at the same time, to minister to the needs of a neighborhood in the mode of Hull House. It was agreed that the district was called "Packingtown," just in the back of the Union Stock Yards (now the Back of the Yards neighborhood), which was the scene of bloodshed and rioting during the 1894 strike, was greatly in need of such a center. 

At the recommendation of Jane Addams, Mary McDowell, then 40 years old, was invited to take charge of the new house. In November 1894, she settled in a building in the heart of a most difficult, transient area, in four small rooms, in a tenement on Gross Avenue (now McDowell Avenue) and she began to live there as a neighbor to the workers of Packingtown.

From left: Mary K. Simkhovitch, Mary McDowell, Graham Taylor, and Jane Addams.

By 1906, the Settlement House had moved to a new building on the same block, which remained its home for some 60 years. By the 1930s, the site contained 45,000 square feet in a central, four-story building. It included a boxing room, five club rooms, a game room, junior and senior girl's rooms, a library, manual training and sewing areas, a music room, nursery, showers, and two play lots-one on the roof.

Eventually, there were two gymnasiums, one for boys and one for girls, and a visiting nurse program. The residents worked with those of all ages–from infants in the nursery to senior citizens. Most attention went to the children; having children at the Settlement house meant that parents would come too. The Mothers’ Club was an active organization for many years. Older children took classes in woodworking, manual training (for the boys), cooking and sewing (for the girls) and arts and crafts (for both). Some children had their own plots of land and learned to keep a garden. Once a week there was a show produced by the youngsters. Settlement house clubs participated in sports and other activities with the many ethnic, Parish-sponsored social and athletic clubs. 

In 1900, the city built the William Mavor Bathhouse (named after a Chicago alderman) at 4645 Gross (later McDowell) Avenue under the prodding of Mary McDowell and the Settlement House Women’s Club. The alderman who finally was moved to facilitate its building was so convinced of the potential political power of Mary McDowell that he had to be dissuaded from naming it the “Mary McDowell Municipal Bathhouse.” 

Sometimes called the "Angel of the Stockyards," Mary McDowell preferred to think of herself as a concerned citizen. She reached out from that base to promote trade unionism, safer working conditions, woman suffrage, inter-racial understanding, and reforms in municipal waste disposal.

While representing the union at the 1903 American Federation of Labor convention, she joined with others to establish a National Women's Trade Union League, to which she was elected as its first president. As the first president of the Illinois branch of the WTUL, she recruited glove-maker Agnes Nestor and boot and shoe worker Mary Anderson into the battle for shorter hours for factory women in Illinois. McDowell also persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to authorize the first federal investigation of working conditions and wages for women and children in the industry.  President Theodore Roosevelt and Congress authorized $300,000 to study women in the workplace. This landmark study took four years and filled 19 volumes!

In 1923, reform Mayor William E. Dever appointed Mary McDowell Commissioner of the Department of Public Welfare (a department created in 1914, mainly through the efforts of Charles Merriam, alderman and UC professor), which consisted of a Bureau of Employment and a Bureau of Social Surveys. In 1921, the City Council had been ready to abolish the department saying it was ‘the most useless on the city payroll.’ The Chicago Tribune, on June 27th, 1923, quoted an alderman, after some argument, as proposing: “Let’s give Miss McDowell this one opportunity to work out some of her plans, and if she fails, then we’ll repeal the act which created her position.” She was commissioned, and the department really began to serve the city and its citizens. 

Mary McDowell had campaigned for Women’s Suffrage, World Peace, better schools, improved health care, and honest government for the day, as she wrote, “When wage-earners would have a decent American standard of living.” 

She had moved in prestigious circles too and sought the help of those in power for her many causes-for, for those in need, whom she considered her friends and neighbors. She had asked the questions and set up the procedures whereby accurate information could be assimilated and used. And she was years ahead of most of her fellow citizens regarding race relations. Her diligent work in the Settlement House, in Packingtown, in the city, and far beyond had bettered the life of countless people.

Medal Awarded to Mary McDowell by the Government of Lithuania.

Mary McDowell retired at the age of 75 in 1929 and died at 82 in 1936. The University Settlement was renamed The Mary McDowell Settlement in 1956 in her honor. It was put under the wing of Chicago Commons in 1967, and the old settlement house buildings were torn down in the early 1970s.

The Mary E. McDowell School, 1419 East 89th Street, Chicago (Pre-K-5), was McDowell's namesake. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Lost Communities of Chicago - Hyde Park Township.

Hyde Park Township was founded by Paul Cornell, a real-estate speculator and cousin of Cornell University founder Ezra Cornell. He paid for a topographical survey of the lakefront south of the city in 1852.

Paul Cornell, the founder of Hyde Park.

In 1853, following the advice of Senator Stephen Douglas, he bought 300 acres of speculative property between 51st Street and 55th Street. Cornell successfully negotiated land in exchange for a railroad station at 53rd Street setting in motion the development of the first Chicago railroad suburb. This area was 7 miles south of the mouth of the Chicago River and 6 miles south of downtown Chicago. In the 1850s, Chicago was still a walkable urban area well contained within a 2 miles radius of the center. 

He selected the name Hyde Park to associate the area with the elite neighborhood of Hyde Park in New York as well as the famous royal park in London. Hyde Park quickly became a popular suburban retreat for affluent Chicagoans who wanted to escape the noise and congestion of the rapidly growing city. By 1855 he began acquiring large land tracts, which he would subdivide into lots for sale in the 1870s.

The Hyde Park House, an upscale hotel, was built on the shore of Lake Michigan near the 53rd Street railroad station in 1857. For two decades, the Hyde Park House served as a focal point of Hyde Park's social life. During this period, it was visited or lived in by many prominent guests, including Mary Todd Lincoln, who lived there with her children for two and a half months in the summer of 1865; shortly after her husband, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The Hyde Park House burned down in a fire in 1879. The Sisson Hotel was built on the site in 1918 and was eventually converted into a condominium building (the Hampton House which still stands).

Hyde Park House at 53rd Street and Lake Michigan, Chicago.

Hyde Park was incorporated in 1861 as an independent township (called Hyde Park Township). Its boundaries were Pershing Road (39th Street) on the north, 138th Street on the south, State Street on the west, and Lake Michigan and the Indiana state line on the east.

In 1837, the City of Chicago incorporated, and by the 1870s the surrounding townships had followed suit. After 1850, Cook County was divided into basic governmental entities, which were designated as townships as a result of the new Illinois Constitution. Illinois's permissive incorporation law empowered any community of 300 resident citizens to petition the Illinois legislature for incorporation as a municipality under a municipal charter with more extensive powers to provide services and tax local residents. Hyde Park Township was created by the Illinois General Assembly in 1861 within Cook County. This empowered the township to better govern the provision of services to its increasingly suburban residents.

Following the June 29, 1889 elections, several suburban townships voted to be annexed to the city, which offered better services, such as improved water supply, sewerage, and fire and police protection. Hyde Park Township, however, had installed new waterworks in 1883 just north of 87th Street. Nonetheless, the majority of township voters supported annexation. After annexation, the definition of Hyde Park as a Chicago neighborhood was restricted to the historic core of the former township, centered on Cornell's initial development between 51st and 55th streets near the lakefront.

Two years after Hyde Park was annexed to the city of Chicago (1891), the University of Chicago was established in Hyde Park through the philanthropy of John D. Rockefeller and the leadership of William Rainey Harper. The University of Chicago eventually grew into one of the world's most prestigious universities and is now associated with eighty-nine Nobel Prize laureates.

Hyde Park hosted the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. The World's Columbian Exposition brought fame to the neighborhood, which gave rise to an inflow of new residents and spurred new development that gradually started transforming Hyde Park into a more urban area.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.