Sympathy and Science: Social Settlements and Museums Forging the Future Through a Usable Past

SYMPATHY AND SCIENCE: SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS AND MUSEUMS FORGING THE FUTURE THROUGH A USABLE PAST A Thesis Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS by Cynthia F. Heider August 2018 Examining Committee Members: Hilary Iris Lowe, Ph.D., Advisory Chair, Department of History Seth C. Bruggeman, Ph.D., Department of History Lisa Junkin Lopez, M.A., Executive Director, Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace ABSTRACT Affiliates of the United States settlement house movement provided a historical precedent for engaged, community-centered museum practice. Their innovations upon the social survey, a key sociological data collection and data visualization tool, as well as their efforts to interpret results via innovative, culturally democratic exhibition techniques, had a contemporary impact on both museum practice and the history of social work. This impact resonates in the socially-responsive work of community museums of the recent past. The ethics of settlement methodology- including flexibility, experimentalism, empathetic practice, local community focus, and social justice activism- foreshadow the precepts and practices of what is now known as public history. ii I dedicate this thesis to Peter Heider, my husband, whose love, humor, patience, and encouragement made this dream obtainable. I owe you one. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the support of dozens of wonderful people. Thanks are due especially to the staff and clientele of the Lutheran Settlement House, who generously welcomed me, a stranger, into their community. I am touched and humbled by their magnanimity. For their assistance with my numerous research requests, thanks to the archivists and librarians of the Drexel University Medical School Special Collections and Archives, the Temple University Special Collections Research Center, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia. Thanks also to the interlibrary loan librarians of the Temple University Libraries. Too often the labor of these professionals is rendered invisible. I see you and I deeply appreciate your help. For their emotional and intellectual support, thanks to the members of my cohort and department, in particular Chelsea Reed, Ted Maust, Holly Genovese, and Menika Dirksen. I would have been utterly lost without Michelle Fitzgerald and Jacqueline Cast. Sarah Berndt deserves credit for inspiring me to write about settlements. Lastly but not least, thank you to my adviser and mentor, Dr. Hilary Iris Lowe. Thank you for believing in me, encouraging me, and pushing me when I needed it. It has been a pleasure working with you. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................ ii DEDICATION ....................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................1 2. FOUNDATIONS OF SETTLEMENT IDEOLOGY AND MUSEUM PRACTICE ........................................................................................................4 3. THE SOCIAL SURVEY: A SETTLEMENT INNNOVATION ....................34 4. MUSEUMS & SETTLEMENTS REACT TO A CHANGING WORLD ......50 5. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................66 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................69 APPENDICES A. LUTHERAN SETTLEMENT HOUSE HISTORY PROJECT .......................77 B. IMAGES ..........................................................................................................85 v CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In this study, I explore early settlement house-affiliated social justice initiatives in their contemporary contexts. It is my intention to not only expound upon the pathbreaking methods of data collection and display employed by settlement affiliates, but to challenge narratives common in the discourse surrounding settlements, museums, and the history of public history work. Firstly, I challenge the view that settlements were inconsequential, ineffective at reform, and that the settlement methodology failed leading to the extinction of the institution. Rather, settlements were instrumental in popularizing public education initiatives, such as the social survey, that regularly led to legislative reform. Secondly, I propose that progressive museum models were influenced by social scientists affiliated with settlements. The methods they employed and have continued to employ at various times since the 1890s incorporate aspects of settlement ideology. Indeed, the settlement ethic, methodology, and exhibitory technique belong at the center of a narrative of the origins of public history in opposition to current scholarship which emphasizes the later, 1930s-era federal roots of the discipline. A fair amount of debate has recently surrounded the origin story of the public history discipline. This impetus of this period of self-evaluation is largely the prompting of Denise Meringolo, currently Director of Public History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her 2012 book Museums, Monuments, and National Parks: Toward a New Genealogy of Public History challenged a narrative that places emphasis on the roots of community-centered, civically-engaged historical work within academic history 1 departments. Although this origin story supports inter-field efforts to establish professional and scholarly legitimacy, it neglects an older, broader, and more interdisciplinary origination of the values now associated with the praxis of public history. In the search for alternative narratives, Meringolo and several other public historians and scholars have convened a working group under the auspices of the National Council on Public History entitled “Radical Roots: Civic Engagement, Public History, and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism.” Among the ideological antecedents to public history identified by the group are New Deal folklorists, National Park Service historians, 1970s oral historians, and a short-lived preservation education program.1 These scholars have uncovered a number of solid examples of public-facing, community- driven history practice. However, none of these historical precursors date back prior to the 1930s. If we are to take a definition for the values underpinning public history work, in order to trace its roots, a pithy example can be found in the phrase of historian Elizabeth Belanger. Besides identifying key methodologies like flexibility, empathetic listening, and self-reflectivity, Belanger highlights the central values inherent in public history work: “reciprocity, respect, and understanding.”2 She strives to embed these values in classroom work with public history students. She also notes the intricacy and difficulty of 1 For more examples, see the NCPH’s History@Work blog, which featured articles in 2017 by members of the “Radical Roots” working group, including Will Walker, Elizabeth Belanger, Linda Shopes and Amy Starecheski, Judith Jennings, Rachel Donaldson, and Denise Meringolo. 2 Elizabeth Belanger, “Public History in the Classroom,” History@Work. National Council on Public History. Feb. 22, 2017. http://ncph.org/history-at-work/public-history-in-the-classroom/ 2 doing the work with a community, and ensuring its ethicality throughout both process and product. Emulating the practice of self-reflection, she candidly asks, “Is it possible to have a process that reflects meaningful collaboration and an end product that does not?” My immediate answer to this question is a resounding yes. I see in Belanger’s examples both the optimistic values of settlement worker methodology, and the pragmatic difficulties of applying this methodology to social service work itself. The good intentions and interpretive missteps that Belanger fears are embedded in the history of settlement houses: their projects, their clients, and their residents. Community-engaged public history and museum work predates the 1930s, beginning at least in the first decade of the twentieth century. The antecedent values that the “Radical Roots” working group seeks to trace originate earlier, in the investigative, interpretive, and social justice activism work of these complicated figures and institutions. I had originally hoped with this thesis to initiate a collaborative public history project with a Philadelphia-area settlement house, the Lutheran Settlement House. Ultimately, this project met with some complications and is still in progress. This outcome is not terribly surprising, given that public history work often cannot be expected to fit within the confines of an academic calendar. Additionally, the LSH performs myriad other and more pressing services to their constituencies that can and should take precedence over an institutional history project. I have included a brief introduction and letter of intent for this project as originally conceived within Appendix A. 3 CHAPTER 2 FOUNDATIONS OF SETTLEMENT IDEOLOGY AND MUSEUM PRACTICE ‘Settlements’: To those uninitiated to the history of Anglo-American social philanthropy, the word calls to mind a distant outpost, a windswept prairie, or a lonely pioneer town. A “social settlement” is

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