Neighborhood: A Settlement Quarterly

Item Details

Boston, Massachusetts, Union Park/National Federation of Settlements, 1928-1932, wrappers

VG

In the late 1880s, the “settlement house” emerged in the US as a place where “socially motivated” persons from the middle & upper classes could live (“settle”) in lower-class neighborhoods among the poor populations whom they were trying to help. Living in such close proximity encouraged the settlement staff to regard the poor as neighbors rather than clients. The Neighborhood Guild (later renamed University Settlement) on New York City’s Lower East Side was the first of such settlements; others would emerge over the next few decades, often in buildings purchased or donated by a benefactor, including Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago & Robert Archey Woods’ South End House in Boston. The National Federation of Settlements (NFS) was created in 1911 to coordinate efforts & compare notes among settlement houses, & this journal was first published in 1928 to document their work & inspire other social reformers to open similar houses.  Special areas of concern included youth employment, childcare, health insurance, minority business development, the improvement of public housing, working women, immigrant integration & welfare. Some of the biggest names in social work & social welfare published in these pages, & contributions from other similar projects in cities around the world were encouraged.

Only 4 volumes of Neighborhood are held in the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota. Other libraries hold collections of other ephemeral material on the NFS, though these are primarily representative of later material from the 1930s-1940s & following the NFS’s change in names, with “and Neighborhood Centers” added in 1949 & again in 1979, when it became the United Neighborhood Centers of America. OCLC shows multiple holdings for 1928, but none for other years.

This is a nearly complete collection of 21 issues, Jan. 1928-Dec. 1932, missing 2 issues only, with duplicates of 3 issues. Condition is VG: exceptionally clean, with some issues showing minor edgewear, a couple with rusting staples, 1 with covers completely detached. Most have foxing to top outer edge of text block; interiors mildly tanned, but unmarked save for some marks to Table of Contents in 2 issues in nonreproducible blue pencil.