By Anne M. Filiaci, Ph.D.
Over the course of her first decade on the Lower East Side, Wald grew from Shaw Lowell’s protégé to her friend and colleague. The two women worked together on a multitude of initiatives, lobbying local and state government to adopt a reform agenda, persuading citizens, and working with other progressives to elect anti-Tammany reform-minded municipal officials, clean up streets, enact tenement housing reform laws, create public parks and playgrounds, and improve labor and living conditions for working men and women.
Josephine Shaw Lowell succumbed to cancer on Thursday, October 12, 1905 at the age of sixty-one. She remained active in reform movements until the last few months of her life. There were multiple memorial services in her honor shortly after her death, and at that time many of those who remembered her advocated for a monument to be erected in her honor. Some years later, a committee dedicated to this task came to a decision on the nature of the monument, and hired an architect to design a granite fountain to be placed in Bryant Park near the New York City Public library. The fountain was dedicated on May 22, 1912 and presented to New York City. In the presence of an audience of hundreds of people, several speakers—including Lillian Wald—remembered the life of the woman for whom the fountain was dedicated.
Copyright Anne M. Filiaci 2016