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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 March 2017
This article examines an early twentieth-century town-gown conflict to illuminate the class and religious tensions that complicated student voluntarism at Harvard University, where the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) formed in 1900 to unify the university's religious and service organizations. With PBHA, Harvard joined universities across the country in promoting student service and joining Progressive Era reform initiatives. The controversy following a student's talk at a Protestant Boston church—where the speaker criticized predominantly Catholic East Cambridge—shows why university representatives had trouble achieving their goals. In the decade following, PBHA struggled to articulate its mission, torn between its commitment to the Protestant Christian Association and a more secular approach, while striving to train effective volunteers and establish smooth relationships with professional social service organizations. This story of PBHA's early years exemplifies the challenges universities faced as they sought to put idealism into practice and transform students into social servants.
Thanks to my colleagues in the Stetson University History Department who have offered feedback, especially Eric Kurlander, as well as the anonymous readers for JGAPE.
1 “A Whitechapel Town,” Boston Herald, Feb.9, 1903.
2 “A Whitechapel Town,” Boston Herald.
3 “A Whitechapel Town,” Boston Herald.
4 “Is East Cambridge a ‘White Chapel’ Town,” Pamph. (pub. In Boston Sacred Heart Review), Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) Records (UAV 688.27 Misc. Files 1903–14), Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts (HUA). All quotations from HUA materials reproduced courtesy of the Harvard University Archives.
5 “Is East Cambridge a ‘White Chapel’ Town?,” 4–6.
6 Kane, Paula M., Separatism and Subculture: Boston Catholicism, 1900–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 59Google Scholar; Moloney, Deirdre M., American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 5, 6, 121–24Google Scholar. Moloney points out that Catholic lay reformers' attitudes toward the poor tended to be more inclusive than those of Protestant reformers (119).
7 Kane, Separatism and Subculture, 24–27.
8 Setran, David, The College ‘Y’: Student Religion in the Era of Secularization (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 13–32 Google Scholar.
9 The organization began as Phillips Brooks House, where religious and service groups gathered. In 1904, its members loosely affiliated and became the Phillips Brooks House Association. “A Life of Phillips Brooks and a History of PBH,” undated pamphlet, PBH Records (HUD3688.2), Folder of Misc. Undated Material, Folder: Brochures, HUA. For ease, this article will use PBHA throughout to refer the organization, and PBH to refer to the physical location in Phillips Brooks House.
10 Quote from George Lyman Paine, “The Union and the University,” Pamph., “The Prospect Union 1891–99,” Prospect Union Papers (HUD 3712xxx), HUA; on “sympathy,” see Murphy, Kevin P., Political Manhood: Red Bloods, Mollycoddles, & The Politics of Progressive Era Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 176–77Google Scholar.
11 Emily Mieras, “‘A More Perfect Sympathy’: College Students and Social Service, 1889–1914” (PhD diss., The College of William and Mary, 1998); Mieras, “‘Latter-Day Knights,’” The College Settlements Association and the Redefinition of Higher Education in the Progressive Era” in The Educational Work of Women's Organizations, 1890–1960, eds. Knupfer, Anne M. and Woyshner, Christine (New York: Palgrave, 2007), 101–19Google Scholar; Mieras, , “Tales from the Other Side of the Bridge: YMCA Manhood, Social Class and Social Reform in Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Philadelphia,” Gender & History 17:2 (Aug. 2005): 409–40Google Scholar.
12 Intercollegian, Feb. 1891; The Christian Association of Wellesley College, Annual Report 1905–06, Wellesley College Archives, Wellesley, MA; “Mid-Winter Report of the Christian Association of Cornell University 1902–1903,” YMCA Student Work Files, Box 16, Folder: NY/ Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota, St. Paul.
13 Diner, Steven J., A City and Its Universities: Public Policy in Chicago, 1892–1919 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980)Google Scholar.
14 Mieras, “‘Latter-Day Knights,’”101–2.
15 The College Settlements Association has received most attention, though discussions of the CSA say little about its significance for student volunteers themselves. Rousmanière, John, “Cultural Hybrid in the Slums: The College Woman and the Settlement House, 1889–1894,” American Quarterly XXII (Spring 1970): 45–66 Google Scholar; Spain, Daphne, How Women Saved The City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 85–88 Google Scholar, 113–18.
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17 Stromquist, Reinventing “The People,” viii, 4.
18 Stromquist, Reinventing “The People,” 3.
19 McGerr, A Fierce Discontent, xv.
20 Mieras, “‘Latter-Day Knights,’” 102, 106, 111; Spain, How Women Saved the City, 114–17.
21 Diner, A City and its Universities, 3–10; Potts, David B., “The Prospect Union: A Conservative Quest for Social Justice,” The New England Quarterly 35:3 (Sept. 1962): 347–66Google Scholar.
22 Hard, William, “The Northwestern University Settlement” in Wilde, Arthur Herbert, Northwestern University: A History 1855–1905 Vol. II (New York: University Publishing Society, 1905), 379–91Google Scholar; Undated history, c. 1957, Box 1, Folder 13, Christian Association Records (UPS 48.1) University of Pennsylvania Archives (UPA); Ellen V. Connorton, “University House and Its Place in the Development of the Settlement Movement, with Implications for Contemporary Social Work Practice,” MSW Thesis (University of Pennsylvania, May 1992), 18; Mieras, “Latter-Day Knights,” 102; Spain, 113–16. Harvard established its own extension school under Eliot's successor, A. Lawrence Lowell, in 1910; see Shinagel, Michael A., ‘The Gates Unbarred’ A History of University Extension at Harvard, 1910–2009 (Hollis, NH: Puritan Press, 2009), 18–27 Google Scholar.
23 Deutsch, Women and the City, 11–13; on “redemptive places,” see Spain, How Women Saved the City, 1–29.
24 Potts, “The Prospect Union,” 355.
25 Peabody, “Aims and Work of the Prospect Union,” Prospect Union Review, Mar. 21, 1894, Pamphlet Collection, Box 2, Folder: Cambridge, MA: Prospect Union, Social Welfare History Archives (SWHA), University of Minnesota Libraries.
26 Prospect Union Review, Jan. 30, 1895, SWHA.
27 Potts, “The Prospect Union,” 363.
28 Harvard Alumni Bulletin, Nov. 2, 1910, Prospect Union Papers (HUD 3712xxx), HUA.
29 Prospect Union Review, Mar. 21, 1894, Pamphlets Collection, Box 2, SWHA.
30 Prospect Union Review, Jan. 30, 1895, Pamphlets Collection, SWHA.
31 The majority of these were Canadian, Irish, Scottish, English, Scandinavian, and German, suggesting that the Union's “diversity” was primarily Northern European.
32 Prospect Union Review, Feb. 6, 1895, Pamphlets Collection, Box 2, SWHA.
33 George Lyman Paine, “The Union and the University” in “The Prospect Union, 1891–99,” Prospect Union Papers (HUD 3712xxx), HUA.
34 Winter, Thomas, Making Men, Making Class: The YMCA and Workingmen, 1877–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 4Google Scholar; Murphy, Political Manhood, 110–21.
35 Peabody, “Aims and Work of the Prospect Union.”
36 Peabody, “Aims and Work of the Prospect Union.”
37 “The Prospect Union 1891–1895,” Prospect Union Review, Jan. 30, 1895, SWHA.
38 Lears, T. J. Jackson, “From Salvation to Self-Realization” in The Culture of Consumption, eds. Fox, Richard and Lears, (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 3–38 Google Scholar.
39 Francis Peabody, “Address upon the Opening of Brooks House” In “PBH: An Account of Its Origin, Dedication and Purpose as an Endowed Home for the Organized Efforts Now Making to Perpetuate the Influence and Spirit of Phillips Brooks Among the Students of Harvard University” Pamph., Dec. 31, 1900, Phillips Brooks House Records (HUD 3688. 200.4), HUA.
40 Brown, Julie K., “Making ‘Social Facts’ Visible in the Early Progressive Era: The Harvard Social Museum and Its Counterparts” in Instituting Reform: The Social Museum of Harvard University 1903–1931, eds. Kao, Deborah Martin and Lamunière, Michelle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Art Museums, 2012)Google Scholar, Lamuniere, “Sentiment and Science” in Instituting Reform, 46.
41 Lamunière, 41.
42 Lamunière, 48.
43 Lamunière, 50.
44 Robert Treat Paine, “Address,” in Pamph., “PBH: An Account of Its Origin.”
45 Chesebrough, David B., Phillips Brooks: Pulpit Eloquence (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Woolverton, John F., The Education of Phillips Brooks (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995)Google Scholar.
46 Diner, A City and Its Universities, 3–10.
47 Hawkins, Hugh, Between Harvard and America: The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot (New York: Oxford, 1972), 58–72 Google Scholar, 84–85; Smith, Richard Norton, The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 28–29 Google Scholar, 40–41.
48 Hawkins, Between Harvard and America, 167.
49 Bederman, Gail, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 192–93Google Scholar; Eliot qtd. in Smith, The Harvard Century, 29.
50 Reuben, Julie A., The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalization of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 77–81 Google Scholar.
51 Peabody, “Address upon the Opening of Brooks House” in Pamph., “PBH: An Account of Its Origin.”
52 On Christian Association role in founding, see Setran, The College ‘Y,’ 126; on establishment of college Ys, Mieras, “‘A More Perfect Sympathy,’” 73–106; Setran, 13–32.
53 “A Life of Phillips Brooks and a History of Phillips Brooks House,” Undated Pamph., Folder: Brochures, PBHA Records (HUD 3688.2), HUA.
54 George Gleason to Davis, Thayer, and Moore, Jan. 5,1907, PBH Records (UAV 688.5), Box 1, Basis of Membership, HUA (nb: handwritten note corrects date to a more likely ’08.)
55 Mieras, “Tales from the Other Side of the Bridge,” 410–11, Setran, The College ‘Y,’ 134,141–49.
56 Arthur N. Holcombe, “The Meaning of Social Service to a College Man,” Intercollegian, Nov. 1905.
57 Hopkins, C. Howard, A History of the YMCA in North America (New York: Association Press, 1951), 635–36,642Google Scholar; Setran, The College ‘Y,’ 3–5, 131–47.
58 1903 Handbook, Handbooks Collection, PBHA Records (HUD 3688. 190.36), HUA.
59 Psalm 24, The Bible, King James Version.
60 “A Whitechapel Town,” Boston Herald.
61 Mieras, “Tales from the Other Side of the Bridge,” 430; Setran, 135.
62 Maycock, Susan E., “Early East Cambridge, 1630–1915” in All in the Same Boat: Twentieth-Century Stories of East Cambridge, ed. Boyer, Sarah and Maycock, (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Historical Commission, 2005), 3Google Scholar; Woods, Robert A. and Kennedy, Albert J., The Zone of Emergence: Observations of the Lower Middle and Upper Working Class Communities of Boston, 1905–1914 (orig. pub. 1914) (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), 98Google Scholar.
63 Woods and Kennedy, The Zone of Emergence, 99–102; Boyer and Maycock, “Immigration Routes,” viii.
64 Woods and Kennedy, The Zone of Emergence, 98–99.
65 Woods and Kennedy, The Zone of Emergence, 99.
66 Woods and Kennedy, The Zone of Emergence, 101.
67 Maycock, “Early East Cambridge,” 9; “Proposed Landmark Designation Study, St. Francis of Assisi Church,” Cambridge Historical Commission, www.cambridgema.gov/historic.
68 Woods and Kennedy, The Zone of Emergence, 102.
69 Woods and Kennedy, The Zone of Emergence, 109.
70 “A Whitechapel Town,” Boston Herald.
71 Woods and Kennedy, The Zone of Emergence, 108–10.
72 Woods and Kennedy, The Zone of Emergence, 112.
73 Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 5–6 Google Scholar, 62, 77–87.
74 Dec. 27, 1892, Denison House Daybook, 13. Folder 72. Denison House Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, MA (DHP); Carson, Settlement Folk, 62–63.
75 “A Whitechapel Town,” Boston Herald.
76 “A Whitechapel Town,” Boston Herald; “The Harvard University Christian Association Pamphlet,” Mid-Winter 1902–03, Christian Association Records (HUD 3279), Box 1, HUA.
77 O'Brien was originally the pastor of St. John's, the first Catholic Church in the neighborhood and in Cambridge (1842). In 1873, O'Brien “began a campaign for a new church,” which became Sacred Heart, opened in 1883. “Proposed Landmark Designation Study, St. Francis of Assisi Church.” Osgood to O'Brien, PBHA Records (UAV 688.27/misc. files 1903–14), HUA.
78 “The Osgood Incident,” Boston Sacred Heart Review, Feb. 21, 1903, http://newspapers.bc.edu/cgi-bin/bostonsh.
79 Harry J. Mulville to Phillips Endecott Osgood, Feb. 16, 1903; and Osgood to unindicated recipient, Feb. 16, 1903, PBHA Records (UAV 688.27/misc. files 1903–14), HUA.
80 Osgood to O'Brien, PBHA Records (UAV 688.27/misc. files 1903–14), HUA.
81 Maycock, “Early East Cambridge,” 15.
82 “The Boston Papers Give Some Attention to the Affair,” Boston Sacred Heart Review, Feb. 21, 1903.
83 “Is East Cambridge a ‘Whitechapel’ Town?,” 4.
84 “Is East Cambridge a ‘Whitechapel’ Town?,” 6.
85 “Is East Cambridge a ‘Whitechapel’ Town?,” 4.
86 “Editorial Notes,” The Boston Sacred Heart Review, Feb. 14, 1903.
87 “Is East Cambridge a ‘Whitechapel’ Town?,” 6.
88 “Is East Cambridge a ‘Whitechapel’ Town?,” 7.
89 Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz, College Life: Undergraduate Cultures from the End of the Eighteenth Century to the Present (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 11–13 Google Scholar, 42.
90 Qtd. in “What the Cambridge Papers Say,” Boston Sacred Heart Review, Feb. 21, 1903.
91 “East Cambridge Vindicated by the Press and the People of the City,” Boston Sacred Heart Review, Feb. 28, 1903.
92 Raymond Oveson, “The Philanthropic Work of Harvard Men,” Thesis for Philosophy 5, Dec. 22, 1903. PBHA Records (HUA. UAV 688.27/misc. files 1903–14), HUA.
93 McGreevy, John T., Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2003), 11–13 Google Scholar.
94 Pamph., Harvard Christian Association 1903–04, Box 1, Christian Association Records (HUD 3279), HUA; Harvard Handbook, 1903, Christian Association Records, Box 3, HUA; Woods and Kennedy, Handbook of Settlements, The Russell Sage Foundation, NY: Charities Publication Committee, 1911; Report of the Social Service Secretary for the college year 1911–12, PBHA Records (UAV 688.27/misc. files 1903–14), HUA.
95 Reuben, 3.
96 Setran, The College ‘Y,’ 125–26; G. K. Shurtleff, “A Review of Opinions Concerning the Evangelical Test in American Associations,” Nov.1907, Pamph., PBH Records (UAV 688.5), Box 1, Basis of Membership, HUA.
97 “An Interview—Sometime Previous to Mar. 25, 1904,” PBH Records (UAV 688.5), Box 1, Basis of Membership, HUA; Edward C. Moore to John Mott, 11 Nov. 1907, PBH Records, (UAV 688.5), Box 1, Basis of Membership, HUA.
98 Gleason to Davis, Thayer, and Moore, Jan. 5, 1907, PBH Records (UAV 688.5), Box 1, Basis of Membership, HUA (handwritten note corrects date to ‘08).
99 Ibid.
100 Charles W. Gilkey to J. S. Davis, Jan. 4, 1908, PBH Records (UAV 688.5), Box 1, Basis of Membership, HUA.
101 Davis to Spinney, Jan. 9, 1908, PBH Records (UAV 688.5), Group IX, Social Service Box 8, Folder: “Basis of Membership,” HUA.
102 Letter to John P. Munn, copy, author not indicated, Nov. 8, 1909, PBH Records (UAV 688.5), Box 1, Basis of Membership, HUA.
103 Davis to John R. Mott, Jan. 9, 1903, PBH Records (UAV688.5), Group 1, Box 1: Folder, “Basis,” HUA.
104 Mott to Davis, Feb. 3, 1908, PBH Records (UAV688.5), Group 1, Box 1: Folder, “Basis,” HUA.
105 Charles W. Eliot to Arthur Thayer, Nov. 8, 1907, PBH Records (UAV 688.5), Group IX, Social Service, Box 8: Folder: Basis of Membership, HUA.
106 Reuben, The Making of the Modern University, 77–81.
107 Reuben, The Making of the Modern University, 36–73.
108 Davis to Gilkey, July 24, 1909, PBH Records (UAV 688.5), Group IX, Social Service, Box 8, Folder: Social Service, Con., HUA.
109 Ibid.
110 Hopkins, A History of the YMCA in North America, 466, 607; Gilkey to Davis Sept. 18, 1909, PBH Records (UAV 688.5), Group IX, Social Service, Box 8, Folder: Social Service, Con., HUA.
111 Gilkey to Davis, Sept. 18, 1909, PBH Records (UAV 688.5), Group IX, Social Service, Box 8, Folder: Social Service, Con., HUA.
112 Ibid.
113 Arthur W. Beane, “What Harvard Men are Doing for Boston Along Social Service Lines,” clipping, Lewiston, Maine, Dec. 5, 1912, Harvard Biographical Files, HUA.
114 Forest Cooke, “Phillips Brooks House,” Harvard Illustrated Magazine (Feb. 1910), PBH Records (UAV 688.5.13), Box 30, Folder: Articles on Programs, 1910–33, HUA.
115 Recommendations for the Fall,” c. 1912, Vol. 1 Scrapbook of Forms 1912–24, PBH Records (UAV 688.280), PBH/Social Service, HUA.
116 Form Letter, February 26, 1912, Vol. 1 Scrapbook of Forms 1912–24, PBH Records (UAV 688.280), PBH/Social Service, HUA.
117 Handwritten annotation, Form Letter, Feb. 26, 1912, Vol. 1 Scrapbook of Forms 1912–24, PBH/Social Service, PBH Records (UAV 688.280), HUA.
118 “Program—Social Service Dinner,” c. 1916; report of the Social Service Committee, 1916–17, Vol. 1, Scrapbook of Forms, etc., 1912–1924. PBH Records (UAV 688.280), PBH/Social Service. In this period, Harvard classes had approximately 500 students who received degrees and often a couple hundred who were connected with the class but did not end up receiving a degree. See Class Reports, HUA. These reports show fewer students doing service, but they did not include responses from all members of the class.
119 John D. Adams to Beane, Dec. 20, 1915, Vol. 1, Scrapbook of Forms, etc., 1912–1924, PBH Records (UAV 688.280), HUA.
120 Ibid.
121 Settlement Investigation Sheets, Group IX, Social Service, Box 8, Folder: Social Service History and Reports, PBH Records (UAV 688.5), HUA.
122 Settlement Investigation Sheets, HUA. Leverett Saltonstall, class of 1914, and a tenth-generation Harvard student, was part of an influential Boston family, became a four-term senator and governor of Massachusetts, and was known as “the Grand Old Man of Massachusetts politics” when he died in 1979. Saltonstall, Biographical Files, HUA. “Salty” exemplified the meeting of privilege and philanthropy at PBHA.
123 Report from Cambridge Associated Charities, Folder: Social Service History and Reports, Box 8, Group IX, Social Service, PBH Records (UAV 688.5), HUA.
124 “Report of the Social Service Secretary for the college year 1911–12,” May 5, 1912, PBHA Records (UAV 688.27/misc. files 1903–14), HUA.
125 “Hints to Teachers,” in “Social Service As An Opportunity for University Students,” pamph. 1914, 1915, 1917 Social Service Committee/Reports, PBH Records (UAV 688.182.3), HUA.
126 Intercollegian, “Work Among College Students,” Dec. 1881; Timothy Dwight, “Formative Influences in College Life Apart from the Curriculum,” Intercollegian, Feb. 1899; Mieras, “Tales from the Other Side of the Bridge,” 430–32.
127 “What Leading Citizens Say” in “Social Service: An Opportunity for the College Man,” pamph., 1919, Social Service Committee/Reports, PBHA Records (UAV 688.182.3), HUA.
128 Robert W. Kelso, ’04, “Social Service And the Community,” Social Service Committee Report for 1940 (original article 1930), Social Service Committee/Reports, PBHA Records, (UAV688.182.3), HUA.
129 1940 Social Service Committee report, PBHA Records (UAV 688.182.3), HUA.
130 Harvard Class of 1904 Class Reports (1914–1946), HUA.
131 Rosen, Christine, Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 124–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
132 Harvard Class of 1904 Class Report, 1954, HUA.