The Chicago Home for the Friendless.

Chicago Home for the Friendless, 51st Street and Vincennes Avenue.

When the population of Chicago grew dramatically, it increased the need for social services to poor and destitute women and children. The Chicago Home for the Friendless, founded on March 18, 1858, responded to that need.

Eventually, the organization served as an orphanage, a shelter for women and children, and also cared for older people in need. From August of 1897 to 1938, the home was located near East 51st Street and South Vincennes Avenue in the Washington Park community area. In 1980, the agency changed its name to Family Care Services of Metropolitan Chicago.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Home for Self Supporting Women, Chicago, Illinois.

The original Home for Self Supporting Women was located at 275-277 East Indiana Street.

The Chicago Woman's Club managed a lodging house, costing $2.50 per week, for temporarily stranded women, and, for at least a few years, the Home for Self Supporting Women ran the Provident Laundry (established in 1889) which provided temporary employment for unemployed women.

The Home for Self Supporting Women moved to this building at 12 E. Grand Avenue in Chicago in 1908 when construction was completed.

Provident Laundry - Objective:
"To provide a new channel of work for able-bodied women out of employment and desirous to become self-supporting; to maintain a training school where superior work is taught, and an Employment bureau where permanent situations are securied for those desiring them."

The laundry was conducted in the read of the home at 275-277 East Indiana Street, overtaxing its accommodations. An average of 20 women find employment daily. A large number of these women become proficient enough to take permanent position in families.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Ryerson Building, 16-20 E. Randolph Street, Chicago

Adler and Sullivan's "Ryerson Building," at 16-20 East Randolph Street, Chicago was built in 1884-85. The building was a 68'x169', six-story masonry and cast-iron loft that cost $152,127 ($4,212,238 today).

Orginally occupied by Gray, Kingman & Collins Store, a wholesale grocery business, then by the Charles H. Slack wholesale and retail grocer & winery. The building was demolished in 1939.