Settlement Houses and Neighborhood Houses: Placemaking of a Social Infrastructure in Milwaukee

Mania Taher (Ph.D Program Student)

The idea of social infrastructures for cities of the United States were introduced to settlement houses which started as philanthropic organizations working for the betterment of early 20th-century European immigrants. Later, the changing immigration and migration pattern in U.S. cities since the first Great Migration made many of these settlement houses transform into neighborhood houses. During the time of the second Great Migration, neighborhood houses came up as the new social organizations for African-American migrants from the south. In today’s context of Milwaukee, neighborhood houses have been majorly state-funded community organizations to create social agencies in the marginalized neighborhoods. Since the late 20th century, they are also the state’s primary support organizations for social sustenance among relocated international refugee families and communities in Southside Milwaukee. This paper explores the spatial significance of settlement houses and neighborhood houses in shaping the immigrant and migrant communities of Milwaukee over one hundred years. The research unfolds the placemaking processes of these social infrastructures in three ways. On the first approach, the paper analyzes these organizations’ spatial mapping in order to understand how they have been serving the communities regardless of their demographics. On the second approach, the paper discusses how the transformation process from settlement houses to neighborhood houses changed the broader discourse on spatial politics and agency of social organizations in urban Milwaukee. On the third approach, the paper discusses a local neighborhood house in Milwaukee as a case study, and describe its present process of placemaking. Finally, as an urban place researcher studying the social infrastructures and their impact on communities in Milwaukee, I claim that the neighborhood houses and settlement houses are to be strongly considered as part of the social architecture category.

Back in early 20th century Milwaukee, there were three major settlement houses to provide educational, recreational, health and social service programs for new immigrants. These houses also acted as social spaces for cultural assimilation of these immigrants. The transformation of organizational activities from settlement houses to neighborhood houses shifted their objectives from assimilation and Americanization towards community development and outreach. The neighborhood houses in Milwaukee adopted more open policies for social reformation in comparison to the settlement houses, and majorly reflected on building communities and providing support networks in racially segregated and blighted neighborhoods. The settlement houses were neighborhood-based, charity-run, ethnic social organizations working for the European immigrants to assimilate in the American socio-cultural landscape. On the other hand, neighborhood houses work as state-funded social organizations for the community development of impoverished neighborhoods and refugee communities in Milwaukee. This paper points to these differences of organizational principles in order to inspect how their spatiality has been informed along with this transformation.