By Anne M. Filiaci, Ph.D.

Lillian Wald, one of the Progressive movement’s most influential leaders, was born in 1867 and died in 1940. Her working life spans the entirety of the American Progressive era (1890 to 1920). This website, an ongoing project, examines her life and the world she inhabited, focusing on her work as a Progressive and detailing her contributions to the cause of reform.

Wald was the first person to establish a settlement house with the primary goal of providing nursing services for the poor. In the summer of 1893, she and her friend and sister nurse, Mary Brewster, moved to the Lower East Side of New York City and began to minister to the poor sick. After a few months they started their own “Nurses’ Settlement,” operating out of the top (fifth) floor walkup apartment in a Jefferson Street tenement on the Lower East Side of New York City. Within a couple years, the burgeoning Nurses’ Settlement became the “Henry Street Settlement,” with expanded quarters located on the street of the same name.

Wald’s first priority was to provide nursing services to her neighbors. Soon, she and an ever-growing number of nurses who came to live at the Settlement were well known figures on the streets of the Lower East Side, making their daily rounds to those who had put out a call for help.

Within a few years the Henry Street Settlement had become a vibrant neighborhood center, offering residents of the Lower East Side not only nursing services, but a playground and a kindergarten, afterschool programs, classes for adults, boys’ and girls’ clubs, mothers’ groups, day trips and vacations to the country, summer camps, a theater, and the myriad other activities that came to be associated with the settlement house movement.

In addition to nurse residents, Wald also opened the doors of the Henry Street Settlement to peers, friends and colleagues, offering many women a home as they pursued progressive experiments. Lavinia Dock, a women’s rights activist and an early leader in the movement to professionalize nursing, lived at the Settlement while she wrote textbooks and articles, assumed a leadership role in fledgling nursing associations, and traveled widely to advocate for women’s rights and for the independence of nurses as health care workers Florence Kelley, a long-term resident during her tenure as National Secretary (i.e., Director) of the National Consumers’ League, advocated against child labor and for the rights of working women. Labor activist Leonora O’Reilly established and operated a model shirtwaist factory while living in one of the Settlement’s houses. There, O’Reilly taught young women the highly-skilled craft of making complete garments (instead of piecework) using quality materials under ideal working conditions.

Many of the Settlement’s residents also helped to improve conditions for children in New York City’s public schools. Elizabeth Farrell created and ran special education classes, while Lina Rogers established and administered a program for school nurses. Mabel Kittredge ran a model housekeeping program through the Settlement, which later became incorporated into the city’s schools as home economics classes. After she left the settlement, Kittredge was instrumental in creating the city’s school lunch program. Wald assisted this effort on multiple occasions, and became a member of the Committee on School Lunches, which Kittredge chaired.

Wald did not limit her work to establishing a visiting nurse service and a settlement house where progressive ideas could take root. She was also active in many of the other reform movements of the era. She lobbied for parks and playgrounds, worked to elect reform candidates, advocated for decent housing conditions, and supported the struggle for worker’s rights, women’s rights, and children’s rights. She was tireless in promoting public health issues, and was instrumental in creating and professionalizing the field of public health nursing. She raised money to fund higher education programs for public health nurses, and made the Henry Street Settlement available for their training.

Besides being a public health advocate, perhaps the cause closest to Wald’s heart was improving the lives of children. She worked tirelessly to enhance their health, life expectancy, public environment, housing conditions, family life, education, and even what she asserted was their right to leisure and playtime. Teaming up with housemate Florence Kelley, the two waged a decades-long fight to ensure these improvements in children’s lives by abolishing child labor in this country. They sat on committees, spoke at public gatherings, lobbied and testified to local, state, and federal legislatures, and successfully worked to create a federal Children’s Bureau. The bureau gathered data and wrote reports, which helped enforce existing child labor laws and supported calls for new and better legislation.

Wald’s contributions to the field of public health nursing and the improvement of the lives of the poor and children are far-reaching, and the institutions that she founded are still in existence. The Henry Street Settlement to this day provides a multitude of community services, while the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, an offshoot of the Settlement, offers a wide variety of home health care services.