Channing House: the Story of a Unitarian Neighborhood House in Baltimore
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Channing House: The Story of a Unitarian Neighborhood House in Baltimore Diana K. Davies Channing House was a neighborhood house in Baltimore, Maryland, established and managed by members of the First Independent (Christ’s) Church of Baltimore,1 in the early twentieth century. Its story fills a gap in the larger Unitarian Universalist history of urban missions and sustained social justice endeavors. While the stories of Unitarian and Universalist settlement houses in New England, New York, and the Midwest are known, there is no mention of this successful, Baltimore-based project in any of our major history books. Perhaps this is partly because Baltimore itself is so difficult to categorize within regional studies: culturally and historically, it exists somewhere in between the North and the South. Likewise, in the first part of the twentieth century, Unitarians in Baltimore were neither the established elite, like their peers in Boston, nor were they cutting-edge, progressive leaders. And yet, it may be this very “in between” nature of the Baltimore Unitarians that makes the story of Channing House so compelling. It is at once a uniquely Baltimorean tale, and an example of a Unitarian social justice endeavor that bears much in common with similar ventures of its time. The basic idea of a neighborhood house wasn’t exceptional, in and of itself. Originally inspired by London’s Toynbee Hall and brought into popular consciousness with the success of Hull House in Chicago, settlement houses and neighborhood houses weren’t uncommon in large U.S. cities, by the beginning of the twentieth century. Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened 1 The First Independent (Christ’s) Church of Baltimore became the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore in 1912, under the leadership of Rev. Alfred Rodman Hussey. Under a previous minister, Rev. Charles Richmond Weld, the word “Christ’s” had been inserted into the name, although it was never legally changed; hence, “Christ’s” is always presented in parentheses. In this paper, I will use “First Independent (Christ’s) Church of Baltimore” when referring to events that took place prior to the 1912 name change, and “First Unitarian Church of Baltimore” for events after that date. 1 Hull House in 1889, and similar settlement houses soon appeared in other U.S. metropolitan areas: about 100 of them by the turn of the century,2 and as many as 400 by 1910.3 Empowered by the What-Would-Jesus-Do, anti-Social Darwinist energy of progressivism and the Social Gospel movement, and carried (largely) on the shoulders of middle-class women, the settlement house movement strove to assimilate immigrants into the U.S. work force by teaching them middle-class values and life skills, and to provide some relief from the crush of poverty. This was accomplished by offering safe play spaces and gymnasia; vocational and cultural enrichment classes; children’s day care; visiting nurses or other health care services; housing alongside resident, middle-class role models (in the case of settlement houses, vs. “neighborhood houses,” which lacked a residential focus); subsidized meals; and healthy entertainment alternatives to alcohol, prostitution, and “hooliganism.” Baltimore was not untouched by the settlement house movement. Prior to World War I, the United Settlement Workers of Baltimore and Washington DC reported that there were at least 11 settlement houses and neighborhood alliances operating within Baltimore city.4 Each Baltimore settlement house or neighborhood house served a unique clientele; yet, the services offered were quite similar, and Channing House didn’t stand out from the crowd in this regard. According to that same United Settlement Workers report, Channing House aimed “to furnish a social, recreational, and educational center which shall increasingly focus and invigorate the neighborhood life.” The Channing House neighborhood is described as: 2 Louise Carrol Wade, “Settlement Houses,” Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago Historical Society (2005), accessed Feb. 11, 2017, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1135.html . 3 J.E. Hansan, “Settlement Houses: An Introduction,” Social Welfare History Project (2011), accessed Feb. 21, 2017, http://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/settlement-houses/settlement-houses/. 4 Harris Chaiklin, “Settlement Workers of Washington DC and Baltimore MD,” Social Welfare History Project, accessed Feb. 11, 2017, http://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/settlement-houses/settlement-workers- of-washington-dc-and-baltimore-md/. 2 [t]he center of the tobacco manufacturing district which contains also several large bakeries. A large element of the population is negro, resident chiefly in alleys between the main streets. Other racial elements in approximately even numbers are American, Hebrew, Italian, and German. They do not represent the progressive people of these nationalities. They live chiefly in two and three-story houses with one or two families in a house. These houses are mainly without sewer connection. Tuberculosis prevails. Park and playground facilities are as yet entirely inadequate. There is one public bath in the neighborhood.5 Other settlements and neighborhood houses in Baltimore tended to serve less diverse populations, with, for example, the Ann Street Settlement serving the Polish quarter, Carrolltown House serving “colored people,” the Hampden-Woodbury alliance focusing on mill workers, and the Maccabean House/Daughters of Israel serving primarily Russian Jews. Yet, the services offered by these establishments were comparable. Channing House offered: “[a] lunch room where inexpensive hot lunches, averaging eight cents, are served at noon to the women operatives of the neighboring factories. Clubs and classes similar to those usual in settlements.”6 There was nothing unique about Unitarians sponsoring a settlement or neighborhood house. Certainly, even if we discount the Unitarian connections of Jane Addams7 and Ellen Gates Starr,8 we can see that members of this faith were very active in the settlement/neighborhood house movement, including Mary Collson at Hull House;9 Mary White Ovington, at the 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Unitarian Universalist Association, “Jane Addams,” Tapestry of Faith Curricula, http://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/ethics/workshop7/191955.shtml . 8 Jennifer L. Bosch, "Ellen Gates Starr," Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), 838. 9 Cynthia Grant Tucker, Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women Ministers of the Frontier, 1880-1930 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 176-181. 3 Greenpoint Settlement in Brooklyn, and Tuskegee Apartments in Manhattan;10 Eleanor Gordon, at the Roadside House in Des Moines;11 and Celia Parker Wooley and Fannie Barrier Williams, at the Frederick Douglass Center in Chicago.12 Beyond individual involvement, Unitarians were engaged in the settlement movement at the congregational level. Perhaps the best known example is the Abraham Lincoln Center, founded by Jenkin Lloyd Jones and the All Souls Church in Chicago in 1905, an expansion of their earlier experiment with the Helen Heath House/Fellowship House.13 In New York, the First Unitarian Congregational Society of Brooklyn established a settlement house under the leadership of its trustee and deacon, Alfred T White;14 the Unitarians in Yonkers launched Prospect House;15 and All Souls Unitarian Church in Manhattan ran the Friendly Aid Society, later the Warren Goddard House.16 Further afield, in Pittsburgh PA, Rev. Charles Elliott St. John, a staunch supporter of the Social Gospel, inspired his First Unitarian Church members to rally around the Kingsley Settlement House.17 While not technically a part of the settlement movement, Joseph Tuckerman’s early nineteenth century urban ministry in Boston, especially his idea of the farm school, “where slum children just starting on a career of crime might go to be 10 Dorothy Senghas and Catherine Senghas, “Mary White Ovington,” Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (2002), accessed Feb. 11, 2017, http://uudb.org/articles/marywhiteovington.html . 11 Grant Tucker, 174. 12 June Edwards, “Fannie Barrier Williams,” Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (2005), accessed Feb. 11, 2017, http://uudb.org/articles/fanniebarrierwilliams.html . 13 Cathy Tauscher and Peter Hughes, “Jenkin Lloyd Jones,” Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (2007), accessed Feb. 21, 2017, http://uudb.org/articles/jenkinlloydjones.html . 14 Francesca Norsen, “The First Estate,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle May 20, 2009, accessed Feb. 11, 2017, http://50.56.218.160/archive/category.php?category_id=31&id=28345 . 15 “New York Letter,” Unitarian Register 86.22 (1907): 446-447. 16 Grant Tucker, 173-174. 17 Kathleen Parker, “Charles Elliott St. John: Moral Enthusiasm and the Social Question, 1892-1900,” http://www.test.uucollegium.org/Research%20papers/09paper_Parker.pdf. 4 taught good citizenship,”18 set a precedent for later efforts, especially as it received the full support of the American Unitarian Association (AUA). Although I am focusing on Unitarian settlement and neighborhood houses, it’s worth noting that Universalists were also active in the peak years of the movement. Examples include the Unity Settlement House, established by the First Universalist Church in Minneapolis,19 and the Neighborhood House, managed by the Universalist Church of Englewood in Chicago.20 A forerunner of the Universalist neighborhood house was