USA > New York > Erie County > Buffalo > A history of Buffalo : delineating the evolution of the city > Part 9
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large confidence in the revenue that her tenants would yield ; and her reckonings were proved to be right.
The bargain for the building was struck. A carpenter, a painter, a paper-hanger and a plumber were found who would do an honest work of renovation unprofitably, and wait for their pay. The old house was made decent, and in November Miss Remington, Miss Hyde, her constant com- panion and helper, Mr. J. D. Holmes and Mr. W. E. Wadge, who had taken a great interest in the work, took apartments in it; and three of the number have been resi- dents ever since. Most of the former tenants were allowed to remain, and a process of training them to cleanly and regulated habits of life began. They quickly appreciated the better conditions created for them, and were so prompt in the payment of rent that their landlady knew always exactly what income from her property to expect.
After ten years of her experiment, Miss Remington had not only bought the house, but the leased ground on which it was built. She had put the building in a condition to more than satisfy the stringent requirements of the State tenement house law, and had paid for the whole work. In doing this she has had help from Mrs. Lewis and some others, but in the main the money put into the property has come from its own earnings, derived from tenants who have all the time been helped and uplifted in their lives. The object lesson afforded by the Revere Block as a tenement house reformed is a bit of social betterment promotion that cannot easily be surpassed.
The regular work of the settlement, carried on as it is almost entirely by volunteers, is practically self-sustaining. It conducts classes in many kinds of instruction, including manual training on its simpler lines, and a few useful arts, like the repairing of shoes. By clubs, meetings and enter- tainments it keeps a large number of all ages interested, and
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MISSIONS AND SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS
its influence is wide. Sometimes the corps of helpers thins sadly, but a small band is always faithful, and the cour- ageous head of the mission never loses heart.
Under the lead of Mrs. Herbert P. Bissell, an association of Catholic ladies established the Angel Guardian Mission, about 1898, as the pioneer of Catholic social settlement work. Hitherto the Mission has been conducted in a house on Seneca Street; but recently two commodious dwellings have been purchased on East Eagle Street, overlooking Bennett Park, one for a day nursery, in connection with the kindergarten, the other for a boarding house for wage- earning young women. Nursery, kindergarten and board- ing house will be maintained by the Angel Guardian Mis- sion Association, but conducted by three resident Sisters of St. Francis, from the convent on Pine Street. Mrs. Mark Packard is the president of the Association.
Zion House, on Jefferson Street, at No. 456, established about 1902 by the Sisterhood of Zion, an organization con- nected with Temple Beth Zion, is an institution of great importance to the Jewish population of the east side of Buffalo. It is a social settlement, and more than that, be- cause it touches its clientage more naturally and closely and enters more intimately into their lives. It has its classes for many kinds of teaching, its clubs, games and en- tertainments; its Penny Provident Bank, its kindergarten, in connection with Public School No. 41, and its supply of books from the Public Library, with an attendant from the Library to receive calls for them once a week. At the same time it is the headquarters of the Federated Jewish Char- ities, and, altogether, it is a very busy and a very useful House.
CHAPTER IV INSTITUTIONS OF SPECIALIZED BENEVOLENCE
T HE Buffalo Orphan Asylum, "for the care of orphan and destitute children," was founded by an associa- tion of charitable women from Protestant churches, organized in November, 1836, and incorporated in the fol- lowing year. In 1838 the ground which the asylum now occupies was given for the purpose by the generous Louis Le Couteulx, but thirteen years passed before the funds necessary for building on it were obtained. Meantime the institution was opened and maintained in rented houses, on Franklin, Seneca and Niagara streets successively.
In 1845 the trustees acquired property at the corner of Main and Virginia streets, which they sold in 1848 to Bishop Timon, for the Sisters of Charity Hospital, estab- lished that year. The proceeds of this sale, augmented by a State appropriation of $20,000, and by private subscrip- tions, enabled the trustees to erect a building on the ground which Mr. Le Couteulx had given, at the corner of what is now Elmwood Avenue and Virginia Street. This was opened in 1851. In 1878 a gift of $10,000 from Mrs. Stephen G. Austin was applied to the addition of an infant ward. Other additions and improvements have been made since, from gifts and funds of the asylum; but neither the building nor its site is now sufficient for the needs of the institution. Its proper capacity is for 150 children, and it has to receive more than that number at times.
In 1906 the trustees purchased a tract of ten acres on Elm- wood Avenue, nearly opposite the Buffalo Historical So- ciety building, having a frontage of nearly 70 feet. A new building on this fine site is the present hope.
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THE FIRST HOSPITAL
One of the earliest of the lasting public charities of the city was the Buffalo City Dispensary, organized in 1847 and incorporated in 1850.
Emergencies like that of the cholera visitation in 1832 had called out some temporary provision of hospitals, prior to 1848; but it was not until that year that the city acquired permanently a public place for the care of the sick. An association for the purpose of establishing a public hospital had been organized in 1846, with Dr. Josiah Trowbridge as its president; but the undertaking did not succeed. It was left for the kindly-hearted and energetic head of the Cath- olic Church, Bishop Timon, to supply the urgent need. On his invitation, six Sisters of Charity came from Baltimore, in June, 1848, to conduct a hospital and an orphan asylum, both of which were brought into operation with little delay.
For the hospital, Bishop Timon bought from the trustees of the Buffalo Orphan Asylum the property which the asylum was then occupying, at the corner of Virginia Street, on what is now known as Pearl Place, but which at that time was open to Main Street. It included a building which had been erected some twenty years before, for an academy, or high school, and which had been used for school purposes for some time. Joined with contiguous dwelling houses, a quite commodious structure was made up, in which the hospital work of the Sisters of Charity was begun. It was most timely-a blessing inestimable to the city in the following year, when cholera came again. Of 134 cholera patients then cared for, 82 were restored to health. From time to time the original building was enlarged and improved, and it housed the hospital until 1876, when the institution was removed to the large, ex- cellently appointed building that it occupies at 1833 Main Street. It now does a very extensive beneficent work. The connected Emergency Hospital, on Pine Street, founded in
IIO
CULTURAL EVOLUTION
1902, treats about 1,200 patients per year, having accommo- dations for 250. At the main hospital a training school for nurses is carried on.
Of the six Sisters of Charity who came to Buffalo in 1848, on the invitation of Bishop Timon, three gave themselves to the work of the hospital and three to the care of the St. Vincent's Female Orphan Asylum which the good Bishop lost no time in founding for them. The asylum was opened in a house at the corner of Broadway and Ellicott streets, and was called quickly, like the hospital, to meet a dread- ful emergency created by the cholera visitation in 1849.
In 1855 the old St. Patrick's Church building, adjoining the house then occupied, was remodelled for the asylum, and was the home for the children for thirty years. Then, in 1885, the property at 1313 Main Street was bought, at a cost of $30,000, and the institution removed thither in 1886. This sufficed until 1899, when two reasons, as the Sisters explained in a circular, urged them to build again; they were having to turn many little children from their doors, and they saw the need of an enlargement of their technical school-about which school something is told in another place. Accordingly, with the approval of Bishop Quigley, they undertook the erection of a large fireproof building, at the corner of Riley and Ellicott streets, in the rear of 1313 Main Street. The asylum now occupies this safe and commodious edifice, giving its former home to the technical school. Two hundred and fifty children reside in the former till they have reached their sixteenth year, when they are transferred to the latter, to be trained for some employment by which their living may be earned.
In connection with the asylum, a summer home, called Villa St. Vincent, is maintained at Youngstown, on the Niagara.
III
BISHOP TIMON'S BENEVOLENT CREATIONS
In the year following the establishment of St. Vincent's orphanage for girls, Bishop Timon made provision for the care of fatherless boys, by founding St. Joseph's Male Orphan Asylum. This was opened in Buffalo, in 1849, transferred to Lancaster in 1850, returned to Buffalo in 1854, and permanently seated at Limestone Hill, in West Seneca, in 1872. It shelters and educates more than two hundred boys.
The German Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, at 564 Dodge Street, was originally, from 1851 to 1874, connected with St. Mary's Church, as an undertaking by the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, who conducted the parochial schools of that parish. In 1874 it was adopted for the diocese by Bishop Ryan, and incorporated, under a board of trustees. The old cemetery site, near the Parade, between Best and Northampton streets, was bought for it, and a building erected there, to which several additions have been made since. The asylum is still under the charge of the Sisters of St. Francis.
Buffalo owes many and large debts to Bishop Timon for organizations of beneficent work that have wrought a con- stant increase of good to the community since his day; but none greater than for the Catholic Protectory, or St. John's Protectory, founded in 1854 and incorporated in 1864, under the care of the Society for the Protection of Destitute Catholic Children. The location of the Protectory is just outside of the present city limits, at Limestone Hill, in the town of West Seneca, and it receives inmates to some extent from even distant places, but it exists for Buffalo and belongs to Buffalo, nevertheless.
The first home of the Protectory was in a humble framed building; but it has built and rebuilt and enlarged and im- proved, until it has become, in the language of the business
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CULTURAL EVOLUTION
world, an enormous "plant," covering many acres of ground with its dormitories, workshops, school buildings, entertain- ment hall, farm, playgrounds, and every essential of an establishment for converting neglected or perverted boys into well-instructed and self-respecting men. By law, our city courts may commit children of Catholic parentage, between seven and fourteen years of age, to the Protectory, for truancy, viciousness or vagrancy, as well as for homeless destitution. They attend school regularly, and are taught useful trades, and are made familiar with the better ways of life.
The first superintendent of the Protectory was Father Early; the second was Father Hines, who was succeeded in 1882 by the Rev. Nelson H. Baker, still in charge.
A second general hospital association, formed in 1854, with a board of fifty trustees, failed, like that of 1846, to raise what was thought to be a necessary endowment fund. In the next year, however, a third attempt, more venture- some in spirit, perhaps, secured incorporation of The Buf- falo General Hospital, procured subscriptions from citizens to the amount of $20,000, obtained an appropriation of $10,000 from the State, and proceeded to erect a building on a noble site, at the corner of High and Goodrich streets, which was dedicated with distinguished ceremonies on the 24th of June, 1858. This is now the west wing of the hos- pital. The original trustees were George S. Hazard, Charles E. Clark, Andrew J. Rich, Bronson C. Rumsey, Roswell L. Burrows, William T. Wardwell, Peter Curtis, George Howard and Joel Wheeler. The first president was Mr. Clark.
"The assets of the infant hospital (writes Mrs. Elizabeth M. Howe, in 'A Brief History of the Ladies' Hospital Association') were apparently a 'superior location-over- looking the city, lake and river'-a good building, by the
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THE BUFFALO GENERAL HOSPITAL
standards of the day, and an empty treasury. Of the three, the last was to prove of the most permanent value. * * It was in 1869 that the asset of poverty rendered its first conspicuous service. In September of that year the Ladies' Hospital Association was organized to provide for the pressing wants of worthy indigent and sick women, for whom there was no provision in the city, and whose needs the hospital was unable financially to meet. The trustees offered 'to place the female wards of the hospital under the immediate supervision of the ladies of the city, represented for the time being by a committee chosen from the board of managers of the Home for the Friendless, who should assume the expense of furnishing those wards and the main- tenance of the persons admitted to them.' This very serious responsibility was accepted, and an effort made to organize the Protestant Churches of the city in support of the work." The desired organization was effected, each church being represented in the association by three delegated members.
In 1872 the Ladies' Association was invited by the trus- tees of the hospital to merge itself into the hospital board by electing three of its number for an assistant executive committee, to act with the executive committee of the board. Under that arrangement the Ladies' Hospital Association became, for the next twenty years, in the words of one of the reports of the trustees, "the mainstay and support of the institution." It raised most of the funds for its main- tenance, for the extension of its buildings, for the improve- ment of its equipment, and had practical charge of its in- ternal economy. "In 1892," to quote again from Mrs. Howe, "Dr. Renwick R. Ross was installed as warden, and the third era in the history of the hospital began. *
It has been that period of great gifts, of scientific equip- ment, of skilled administration, which has made the Buf- falo General Hospital to-day one of the large private hos-
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CULTURAL EVOLUTION
pitals of the country. In these years a new relation has been established between this association and the hospital, in the election, in 1901, of two of its members, Mrs. Hamlin and Mrs. Folwell, to the board of trustees. But in this later development of the hospital the Ladies' Association, as such, has had no proportionate share.
* As the work of the hospital, in one direction and another, has reached the point where volunteer service was no longer adequate to the task, it has perforce been transferred to other hands." There are now eight ladies in the board of trustees, and the Ladies' Association is fully merged in that governing board.
In 1887 the training school for nurses was instituted. Then a diet kitchen was established, and an ambulance brought into use. In 1880 a large addition to the hospital building was undertaken. In 1884 a ward for children and a maternity ward were opened. These were all due to the exertions of the Ladies' Association. In 1885 Mrs. Sarah A. Gates built a cottage for gynecological work, and a few years later she erected a Nurses' Home on the hospital grounds. Mrs. Gates and her daughters have done more for the hospital than any other single family; though gifts and bequests to it in late years have been many and large. Its endowment fund was reported in 1907 to be $446,000. It extended its main building largely in 1896-8, and added not long since the Harrington Hospital for Children.
The president of the board of trustees is Mr. Charles W. Pardee, who gives much time and care to the business of the institution.
By the agency of Bishop Timon an institution that is, at once, conventual, reformative and charitably protective, was founded in 1855 by nuns from France, belonging to the order of Sisters of Our Lady of Refuge. It is known as the Asylum of Our Lady of Refuge, or as the House of the
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THE P. E. CHURCH CHARITY FOUNDATION
Good Shepherd, and its seat is a large property on Best Street. Its special work is described as being to "preserve and restore to society poor lost women, and to protect and educate destitute and wayward Roman Catholic female children." The convent was the first one of the order to be founded in the United States.
In 1855 Bishop Timon brought about the establishment of the St. Mary's Lying-in Hospital, which became finally consolidated with an infants' asylum in the present St. Mary's Infant Asylum and Maternity Hospital, on Edward Street.
A series of meetings by members of the Protestant Epis- copal Church was held in 1858, "to take measures for the foundation of a charitable institution for the relief of the indigent, infirm and aged, and other needy and destitute persons." The result of these conferences was the incor- poration of The Charity Foundation of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Buffalo. It was organized in Sep- tember, 1858, with the Hon. George W. Clinton for its first president, and in the following November it opened a Home for adults, in a brick dwelling, leased, on Washing- ton Street, opposite the old Trinity Church. It provided accommodations for about twenty inmates, and received nine before the close of the month.
Within a few years a second house was rented on Mohawk Street. In 1862 the Charity Foundation received a gift from Judge Smith of two acres of ground, at the corner of Rogers and Utica streets, and, by act of the Legis- lature in 1864 it was given the old Black Rock Cemetery (now "The Circle"), on North Street. By purchase of the Edwin Thomas residence and grounds, at the corner of Seventh and Rhode Islands, in 1866, the Foundation ac- quired a Home which included, from that time, an asylum
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CULTURAL EVOLUTION
for orphans, as well as a habitation for adults. The orphanage was enlarged in 1869, and established in a new building in 1895. In that year, also, the Hutchinson Memorial Chapel of the Holy Innocents was built by Edward H. Hutchinson, in memory of his father and mother. In 1903 the Foundation received a bequest of $50,000 from Mrs. Helen A. Campbell, for a memorial building in honor of her father, the late Thomas Thornton. The Thornton Memorial Building, finished in 1905, re- placed the old Home for the aged and infirm. In 1907 a quite remarkable entertainment named "Cosmovilla" was held in Convention Hall for the benefit of the Church Home, with such success as to go far toward freeing it of debt.
In 1860-61 the Providence Retreat, for the care and treat- ment of the insane, and of the unfortunate victims of alco- holism and drug habits, was founded by the Sisters of Charity, under the lead of Sister M. Rosalind. Its build- ing, on Main Street, Kensington Avenue and Humboldt Parkway, where it has ample grounds, was opened in July, 1861. Its present accommodations are for 200 patients. In 1905 the cornerstone of a new building was laid. This will be an entirely fireproof structure, equipped with all modern appliances, electro and hydro-therapeutical, for the treatment of mental and nervous diseases, and is expected to cost nearly $500,000.
St. Francis' Asylum for the Aged and Infirm was founded in 1862 by Sisters of the Franciscan Order, from Philadelphia. It was opened in a small framed dwelling on Pine Street, No. 337. Two years later a large building and a chapel were erected for the institution, and two wings were added to the former in 1870. In recent years two branches of the asylum have been established outside of the
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PROTECTION TO ANIMALS
city; one at Gardenville, at a cost of $150,000, on a farm bequeathed by Mrs. Regina Goetz ; the second at Williams- ville, on a farm of 120 acres, given by Mrs. John Blocher. In all, the asylum shelters about 600 inmates.
The Evangelical Lutheran St. John's Orphan Home was founded in 1864 by the oldest of the German Church con- gregations in the city,-the First Evangelical Lutheran St. John's. The Home for Boys, at Sulphur Springs, was established in 1868. It was burned in 1876, and rebuilt next year. A large new building was added in 1898.
The Erie County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, organized in 1867, was the second of its kind in the United States, that of Henry Bergh, founded in the previous year, having been the first. An ardent leader in its organization and its first president was Mrs. Lord, wife of the Rev. Dr. John C. Lord. In its first years the society had no local habitation; but for some years past its work has been centralized at an office, now located in the Bowen Building, at the corner of Pearl and Huron streets.
"When the work was first started," writes a lady long con- nected with it, "it was looked upon by the majority of people with indifference and even with contempt. It was thought to be very much out of place for a woman to attempt to stop any cruelty seen in the public streets; but when poor canal horses, while being led through the streets, dropped in utter exhaustion in their tracks, and when the moans of suffering cattle on their way to the slaughter houses were heard constantly, and countless cruelties were inflicted on dumb creatures, large and small, true woman- hood asserted itself."
The branch of the work known as that of the Humane Education Committee was instituted by Miss Lucy S. Lord, in order to teach young and old, but especially the young,
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CULTURAL EVOLUTION
the duty of protection and kindness they owe to the dumb creatures who serve them in so many ways. Miss Lord visited every school in the city, talking with teachers and pupils, with the result that many auxiliary societies of children have been formed. This mission work, begun by Miss Lord, has been carried on since by the late Mrs. Lily Lord Tifft and by Miss Margaret F. Rochester, Mrs. Pascal P. Beals and Miss Matilda Karnes. Miss Rochester intro- duced a prize essay competition on the subject in the schools, which has wakened a lively interest among the children.
Latterly the society has employed three agents, one especially for the stockyards, and two for the city work. Under the Police Department it has charge of the City Dog Pound. At the stockyards it has looked after the treatment of many thousands. It now has a large membership. Its presidents since Mrs. Lord have been Mrs. Horatio Sey- mour, Rev. John W. Brown, Colonel E. A. Rockwood, Walter Devereaux, Rev. O. P. Gifford and DeWitt Clinton.
Consequent upon an appeal made by Mr. (now the Rev.) Edward Bristol, a meeting was held in May, 1867, at the residence of Mr. Francis H. Root, which resulted in an undertaking "to afford, by the establishment of a temporary Home, protection, employment or assistance to worthy females who are destitute or friendless, and to provide a permanent Home for aged women who are homeless." A society was organized, with a board of forty-one women as managers, chosen from Protestant churches. The first Home for the Friendless opened by the society was in a house on Seventh and Maryland streets, furnished by dona- tions. It received 26 temporary inmates the first year and 132 in the second. The house was enlarged in 1872, and twelve women were made residents for life.
In 1884-6 the large premises now occupied by the Home for the Friendless, at 1500 Main Street, were bought and
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THE INGLESIDE HOME
built upon, using existing buildings in part. It had 34 per- manent residents when it came to this place. Eighteen rooms were added to its accommodations in 1892 by a new building, the gift of the late William I. Mills. In the same year the Home received a legacy of $15,000 from Francis H. Root. In a statement published in 1895 the managers say, speaking of a small balance which they had in bank when they opened the Home on Seventh Street in 1868: "From that day on, the Home has never been in debt, and has always had a balance with its bankers, which, never but once, has fallen below the amount of its original deposit."
In 1869 the Rev. P. G. Cook ("Chaplain Cook," as he was always known after his services with the Twenty-first Regiment in the Civil War), doing Christian mission work in the "infected district" of that time, around Canal Street, in connection with the Y. M. C. A., became impressed very deeply with a sense of the need of some distinct agency for lending a helping hand to fallen women who could be per- suaded to reform their lives. He consulted an association of good women who had organized themselves for charitable work, and convinced them very quickly that they could not do anything more useful than in that field. They began by opening a weekly prayer meeting in a room on Evans Street, where the Y. M. C. A. was holding similar meetings for men. Girls and women of the neighborhood came in, and a few meetings sufficed to show that there must be a temporary home provided for those who desired to escape from the life they were in. A society for the purpose was incorporated on the 27th of September, 1869, by the following ladies: Ellen Wilkes, Mary R. Stearns, Susan Guild, Persis M. Otis, Ann M. Haines, Sarah A. Robson, Sarah J. Wilson, Annie F. Walbridge, Maria Webster, Annie McPherson, Charlotte E. Lewis, Elizabeth G. Clark. Mr. Joseph Guild, husband of one of these
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