More than Neighbors: Catholic Settlements and Day Nurseries in Chicago, 1893-1930 by Deborah A. Skok

Abstract

158 Michigan Historical Review Deborah A. Skok. More thanNeighbors: Catholic Settlements andDay Nurseries in Chicago, 1893-1930. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007. Pp. 241. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth, $38.00. The National Federation of Settlements (NFS) defined the parameters of the settlement-house population by making a sharp distinction between religious-related setdement activity and "approved" settlement-house operations. This decision by the premier organization of the settlement-house movement, to exclude virtually all religious related settlements from its membership, has complicated historical understanding of the range of setdement activity in the United States during the early twentieth century. Scholars have followed the orientation set forth by NFS and, as a result, litde has been written about the settlement initiatives of two groups in particular: African American and Catholic communities. In Black Neighbors: Race and the Limits of Reform in theAmerican Settlement House Movement, 1890-1945 (1993), Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn challenged this traditional understanding of the settlement-house movement by expanding the definition to include religious work in the black community and revealed a vibrant settlement-house experience. Deborah Skok's volume, More than Neighbors, further expands our understanding by describing and analyzing settlement-related activities performed under the auspices of the Catholic Church in Chicago. Skok uses Chicago as a case study to examine the Catholic setdement house movement. According to Skok, Catholic settlements offered an opportunity for Catholic laywomen, including middle-class and working class paid workers as well as volunteers, to interact with populations in need while simultaneously providing an arena for these Catholic women to play more active public roles. Although some of these women focused their efforts on their parish neighborhoods, others moved beyond the local arena and emerged as leaders in Chicago's larger political and charitable communities. Additionally, Skok argues, the settlement experience facilitated the adjustment of urban Catholics to the social, economic, and cultural changes that were shaping turn-of-the-century cities. In this volume, Skok examines the movement of Catholic women into charity work, explores the variety of specific setdement and settlement-style organizations, and reflects on the role played by Catholic settlements in parishes and the larger urban community. She is at her best when she discusses the movement of Catholic laywomen into charitable activities and, later, settlement work and the challenges they faced in parishes dominated by priests who held the reins of power. The Book Reviews 159 more problematic section of her study is her discussion of the role played by women religious in settlement-related work, largely because the chapter devoted primarily to their efforts is not well integrated into the rest of the study. This weakness notwithstanding, More thanNeighbors deepens our understanding of the setdement impulse and the ways in which it manifested itself outside of the traditional definition of a setdement. Skok also nicely illustrates the ways in which settlement-house and charitable activities empowered women and increased their agency both within and outside of the traditional parish structure. Although her focus is on Chicago, Skok's study suggests avenues of inquiry for other cities with large Catholic populations. Patricia Mooney-Melvin Loyola University Chicago Carl Smith. The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. 183. Bibliographical essay. Illustrations. Index. Maps. Cloth, $22.00. To many observers of nineteenth-century American urban life, Chicago was an incomprehensible setting of rich, poor, pollution, and grandeur amid the fastest urban growth inAmerican history. The scene was difficult to define partly because it had virtually no past. Indeed, it is interesting that early in this fascinating book Carl Smith reminds us that it is no coincidence that with its Board of Trade Chicagoans invented the idea of buying and selling the future itself. Chicago could do nothing but look ahead, because unlike the great cities inEurope of the time?or even those on America's Eastern Seaboard?it had no spatial-social history to hold itback The book's story begins with Daniel Burnham, the architect-director of America's unsurpassed world's fair, the Chicago Colombian Exhibition of 1893. Influenced by Haussman's nineteenth-century rebuilding of Paris, Bumham's 1909 Plan...