The Settlements Collection contains manuscript and published material that primarily relate to the College Settlement Association (which later became the Intercollegiate Community Service Association), and the individual settlements affiliated with it, primarily the College Settlement of Philadelphia, Denison House in Boston, the Smith Alumnae Chapter, and the Rivington Street Settlement in New York City. Types of material include articles, correspondence, newspaper clippings, promotional pamphlets, histories, annual reports, fundraising appeals, minutes, newsletters, pamphlets, photographs, programs, and one unpublished thesis. These items illustrate the emergence and evolution of the settlement movement in the 1880s and 1890s, the settlement founders' efforts to legitimize their work, and their increasingly successful endeavors to draw educated young women into the field of settlement work. The collection also documents the crucial contributions the settlements made to poor and working-class communities, and the gradual decline that most settlements faced in the post-World War II period.
