Denison House (Boston, Mass.)

Denison House, the third college settlement in the United States, was founded in 1892 by a small group of college-educated women who were "distressed" and "made restless" by "a sense of privileges unshared," and who looked forward to "a time when there should be no barriers between workers of any kind and the so-called 'leisure class.'" Their ideal was not philanthropy but democracy, which they defined as "a free flowing life between group and group."

Residents and members of the Executive Committee, Emily Greene Balch (a Wellesley College professor who later won the Nobel Peace Prize ), Helen Cheever, and Vida Scudder, and other residents and day workers of Denison House in 1892 and 1893 kept a communal diary in which they recorded their daily conversations with each other, the parish priest, and with the people they referred to as their neighbors. Throughout the early years a strong connection with Wellesley College continued. In 1893 Helena Dudley became the headworker, and for the next fifteen years a more business-like day book was kept of the expanding activities. The settlement, originally located at 93 Tyler Street in the Old South Cove area of Boston, grew rapidly and four neighboring buildings were purchased.

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