Henry Street Settlement

The Henry Street Settlement began with a pivotal moment in eighteen ninety-three when a young nurse named Lillian Wald decided to live directly among the people she served. After witnessing the extreme poverty of the Lower East Side, she and her colleague Mary Brewster moved into a tenement to provide nursing care to immigrant families in their own homes. This radical act of moving into the community they were helping transformed the neighborhood, eventually leading them to occupy these Federal-style row houses on Henry Street with the support of banker Jacob Schiff. By shifting the focus of healthcare from hospitals to the patient's home, Wald pioneered the concept of public health nursing and forever changed how urban centers address the needs of their most vulnerable residents.