Showing posts with label Rebecca Gratz Club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rebecca Gratz Club. Show all posts
Monday, March 7, 2011
Revision: The Rebecca Gratz Club
I have revised my earlier post on the Rebecca Gratz Club to reflect new information I recently came across. To see the revised version, click here.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The Rebecca Gratz Club
(This post was revised on March 7, 2011, to reflect more and more accurate information which I recently discovered.)
In the 1920's, the Club moved to 532 Spruce St. where the words "Rebecca Gratz Club," carved into the arch over the courtyard gateway, are still visible. As immigration was being stifled by new legal restrictions in the 1920's, the Club began to accept single Jewish women born in America who were in the labor force or going to school in Philadelphia. At this time, there were many women's boarding houses in the city, most run by religious groups, to provide secure housing and to support the religious identity of their tenants. In the 1950's the popularity of women-only residences was waning, and the Rebecca Gratz Club took on a new role, as a nonsectarian half-way house for girls and women who had been under hospital care for emotional problems. In the years to come the organization would modify its services to meet new needs, offering residential care for troubled girls who could not live with their families and outpatient care for the girls' families and to teenagers in the community.
I have received so many queries about the Rebecca Gratz Club that I feel I should write a post on the subject. The problem is that although there are records pertaining to it at Temple University in Philadelphia, the Club is on the very periphery of my research. I do not have time to delve into the primary documents of which I am so fond.
I have looked through some secondary sources, which often contradict each other, and this is as much as I can say. Most people agree that in 1904 a group of Jewish women in Philadelphia founded a boarding house for immigrant Jewish girls working on their own in the city. Besides housing the organization provided "naturalization" services like English lessons to help the tenants adjust to America. Its location may have been on North 6th St. It may not have been called the Rebecca Gratz Club from the start, but somewhere along the way that was the name given. (Some sources use the term "Rebecca Gratz House," and I am not sure if this is a mistake or an earlier version of the name.)
In the 1920's, the Club moved to 532 Spruce St. where the words "Rebecca Gratz Club," carved into the arch over the courtyard gateway, are still visible. As immigration was being stifled by new legal restrictions in the 1920's, the Club began to accept single Jewish women born in America who were in the labor force or going to school in Philadelphia. At this time, there were many women's boarding houses in the city, most run by religious groups, to provide secure housing and to support the religious identity of their tenants. In the 1950's the popularity of women-only residences was waning, and the Rebecca Gratz Club took on a new role, as a nonsectarian half-way house for girls and women who had been under hospital care for emotional problems. In the years to come the organization would modify its services to meet new needs, offering residential care for troubled girls who could not live with their families and outpatient care for the girls' families and to teenagers in the community.
In 1976, the Club opened a treatment unit for severely disturbed adolescent girls and in 1978 it introduced a program which developed "foster care homes for adolescents who wanted to remain with their baby....By living in homes of foster parents" the girls could finish high school and learn the parenting and life skills needed to be self-sufficient.
The Club moved to Wynnewood in the early 1980's. In 1987, it merged with another organization and became known as SERV/Greater Philadelphia. In 1990 SERV became the mental health division of Tabor Children's Services, a private non-profit organization to support children and families. All that remains of the Rebecca Gratz Club is the building on Spruce with its carved name above the gate; it was sold to a developer sometime ago and has been turned into condominium.
The Club moved to Wynnewood in the early 1980's. In 1987, it merged with another organization and became known as SERV/Greater Philadelphia. In 1990 SERV became the mental health division of Tabor Children's Services, a private non-profit organization to support children and families. All that remains of the Rebecca Gratz Club is the building on Spruce with its carved name above the gate; it was sold to a developer sometime ago and has been turned into condominium.
I will editorialize here by saying that the women who founded the Club must have been themselves inspired by Rebecca Gratz's contributions to the common good, especially by her work helping Jewish women. By naming their endeavor the Rebecca Gratz Club they were announcing that they were carrying on her legacy and also using her name as an inspiration to their tenants for what a Jewish woman could achieve in America.
I am sorry this post is so meager. If anyone has more information, please leave a comment.
(The new information I have added is from Invisible Philadelphia: Community Through Voluntary Organizations, edited by Jean Barth Toll and Mildred S. Gillam. The entry for the Rebecca Gratz Club, which deals mostly with its modern incarnation as a mental health facility, is by the Executive Director during the 1980's and 90's and is much more reliable than any other secondary source I have discovered.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
