Henry Street Nurses, courtesy of The Henry Street Settlement
November 30, 2018
Lillian Wald’s Lower East Side: From the Visiting Nurse Service to the Henry Street Settlement
In 1893, the 26-year-old nurse Lillian Wald founded the Lower East Side’s Henry Street Settlement, and what would become the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Two years of nursing school had given her the “inspiration to be of use some way or somehow,” and she identified “four branches of usefulness” where she could be of service. Those four branches, “visiting nursing, social work, country work and civic work,” helped guide the Settlement’s programming, and turned Wald’s home at 265 Henry Street into a center of progressive advocacy, and community support, that attracted neighbors from around the corner, and reformers from around the world.
Learn about Lillian
Learn about Lillian
