JP Morgan, Philanthropist: How did he pay it forward?
April
17, 1837 - March
31, 1913
John Pierpont Morgan may have died 101 years ago, but his New York
City philanthropic legacy lives on through a progressive New York City housing
movement experiment and a settlement house.
Morgan, one of the country’s most famous and important financiers
in American history, is forever known for his contributions and influence in
the development of corporate icons such as General Electric, International
Harvester, U.S. Steel, and the railroad corporations among others.
He calmed the storm in the Panic of 1907 by essentially acting as
the “central bank”…today, he would be comparable to Warren Buffet.
Lesser known are his contributions as a philanthropist…even over a
century after his death we ask the question: How did he pay it forward?
Two of the greatest philanthropic projects Morgan helped blossom
into major successful social experiments of his time, are still in existence
and flourishing today. They include:
East Side House Settlement - Morgan was a major donor
to this project, founded in 1891 as a settlement house on New York's Upper East Side
neighborhood called Yorkville, and home to a massive immigration population
explosion in the late 1890’s.
The urban settlement house
movement was a reformist social movement,
beginning in the 1880s and peaking around the 1920s, with a goal of providing
services to the working poor and new immigrants. These social services included an
introduction to American culture, homemaking, daycare, education, and
healthcare to improve the lives of the poor in these areas. In the US, by 1913
there were over 400 settlements in 32 states.
The settlement house was the
hub of the community. Immigrant parents
took classes to introduce them to New York City, childrearing, and the city’s
schools system. Children had classes in
art, painting, athletics and academic pursuits.
Young adults came to the dances at the East Side House…some even meeting
their future spouses there! Mothers had
training in homemaking and some even found employment there washing laundry.
East Side House Settlement
also worked on getting children out of the city for fresh air in the country at
summer camps. This was of such great
interest to Morgan, that one weekend he opened his own estate to the
youngsters.
Settlement houses influenced
urban design, architecture and model tenement experiments of the housing reform
movement in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Today the East Side House
Settlement, now located in the Bronx, is flourishing and still carries on its
mission from over a century ago.
City & Suburban Homes Model Tenements –
Morgan’s interest in limited dividend companies, dedicated to providing profit
to their investors, as well as creating affordable housing for the working
poor, led to his and his descendants becoming donors and their continued
involvement on the board of directors of City & Suburban Homes
company. The model tenements were not
only an urban design experiment created by some of the members of the East Side
House Settlements major donors, but also launched philanthropic interest in the
new concept of “benign capitalism” which
is a not wholly philanthropic venture, but a business venture where the
stockholders agree to receiving a limited dividend [usually 4% - 7%] and the
leftover funds go into continuing building new housing.
Other early supporters,
included some of the New York’s socially prominent and important philanthropic
families, such as Morgan’s descendants, the Carnegie’s, Vanderbilt’s,
Rockefeller’s, Astor’s, Auchincloss, and Gould’s.
One of the most significant
projects in the history of the reform housing movement, it was designed in
response to the horrific living conditions of working poor areas such as the
Lower East Side, at that time, one of the most densely populated neighborhood
in the world. Photographer, Jacob Riis,
who published photographs of the horrors of tenement life, and Lillian Wald,
one of the most respected social reformers and advocates for the poor, among
others, drew public attention to the plight of these families, thus making it a
popular cause for well-to-do New Yorkers…either for their own charitable
reasons, or because they feared the spread of disease, crime caused by the
lamentable unsanitary and overcrowding in these early types of tenements which
had a sudden increase of the city’s population caused by massive
immigration. The publicity led to the
creation successful reform housing movement.
The
City & Suburban Homes York Avenue Estate is one of the most significant
projects in the history of the reform housing movements in New York City. Built
between 1901 and 1913, the 14 model tenements are a New York City Landmark and
were placed on the New York State and the National Registers of Historic
Places.
The
largest low cost housing development in the world at the time of its
construction became the model for all large scale public housing post WWII and
remains an excellent example of reform housing.
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