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Henry Street Settlement "About" copy
(from the Henry Street Settlement's website )

About Henry Street Settlement
In 1893, Lillian Wald founded the Henry Street Settlement to help build better lives for the inhabitants of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Today, a community mental health clinic, a battered women's shelter, transitional residences for homeless families and single women, three day care centers, a senior center, programs and services for older adults, a multi-disciplinary arts center, arts-in-education programming, home care initiatives, and a broad spectrum of educational, employment, recreational, camping, community service, after-school, counseling, and leadership development programs for youth are all a part of the Henry Street Settlement. While focused on the Lower East Side, Settlement programs reach all of New York City's five boroughs- including New York City public schools, housing developments, and transitional shelters.

Through a commitment to its community, its willingness to change and adapt and by consistently offering diverse, creative, innovative, and effective programs to a multiethnic and multicultural population, the Henry Street Settlement realizes its core mission to challenge the effects of urban poverty by providing individuals and families with essential social and cultural services.

Lillian Wald Highight
One of the most influential and respected social reformers of the 20th century, Henry Street Settlement founder Lillian Wald was a tireless and accomplished humanitarian. Born into a life of privilege at age 22, Wald came to Manhattan to attend the New York Hospital School of Nursing. In 1893, Wald founded the Henry Street Settlement and began teaching health and hygiene to immigrant women on the impoverished Lower East Side. Wald devoted herself to the community full-time, and within a decade, the Settlement included a team of twenty nurses and was offering an astonishing array of innovative and effective social, recreational and educational services.

Wald provided leadership to the Settlement until around 1933 or 1934. During that time, she established herself as a national leader of social reform, and as an international crusader for human rights. Wald pioneered public health nursing by placing nurses in public schools and with corporations, and by helping found the National Organization for Public Health Nursing and Columbia University's School of Nursing. Wald was also an advocate for children and women's rights. She helped institute the United States Children's Bureau, National Child Labor Committee, and the National Women's Trade Union League. She led the fight to build playgrounds in poor neighborhoods, and was a tireless advocate and activist for labor rights.