The Marcy-Newberry Association is a Methodist-supported social service center that has a long history of providing services to residents of the Near West and West Side of Chicago. The digital collection includes photographs drawn from the larger Marcy-Newberry Association collection. This digital collection includes photographs from the collection.
The Marcy-Newberry Association is a Methodist-supported social service center that has a long history of providing services to residents of the Near West and West Side of Chicago. In 1882, Elizabeth Smith Marcy founded the Rock River Conference Woman’s Home Missionary Society. Its first project was a one-room mission providing relief and service to Bohemian immigrants on the Near West Side. In 1896, a 3-story brick building was erected and the mission was named the Elizabeth E. Marcy Industrial Home. As Jewish immigrants began to replace the Bohemian population, Marcy Home extended its mission to this new community.
Marcy Home offered a wide range of activities including a kindergarten, manual training classes, a Sunday School, a choral group, an employment bureau and a class on social purity and temperance. A dispensary staffed by volunteer doctors, nurses, and specialists dealt with 3,500 to 7,500 cases, mostly women and children, per year. In 1910, the Dispensary affiliated with the medical department of the University of Illinois as an outpatient department. Marcy Home programs were funded by the Society and governed by “The Home Committee” made up of Society officers.
In 1912, under the new name of Marcy Center, superintendent Anna Heistad expanded the mission’s proselytizing efforts. She created a “Prayer Gang” of fifty young Jewish people, a Friday night gospel service, a Queen Esther Circle, and a Vacation Bible School. In 1917, the Marcy Woman’s Auxiliary organized as an official Woman’s Home Missionary Society – the center’s first Jewish missionary society. As Jews began to move from the Maxwell St. neighborhood to the Lawndale Community, Marcy Center purchased land in Lawndale for a new center. In 1927, a supporter of the Center explained the purchase by commenting “Jews are more open to a frank discussion of Christianity than ever before. Many are studying the Christian religion and a great many are accepting Christ and are joining Protestant churches.” The new building was completed in 1930 at 1539 S. Springfield Ave. By the 1950s, the Center was serving a primarily African American population.
A 1930 survey of the neighborhood convinced the Women’s Union of First Methodist Church in Evanston to revive the work at the old center at Maxwell and Newberry. Renamed the Newberry Avenue Center in 1935, it continued a service program that included a nursery school, sewing, cooking, gym, handicraft classes, day camp, and a playground. When Mexicans began to replace Jewish immigrants the Center offered religious services in Spanish once a week. Later, African Americans became the new constituency. In 1965, the Center moved to a new building at 1073 W. Maxwell to better serve the occupants of the several public housing buildings located in the neighborhood.
In 1943, the Board of Marcy Center formulated a new purpose that called for a program of Christian social service “without indoctrination or sectarian teaching.” In 1969, the Newberry Avenue Center and the Marcy Center merged to become the Marcy-Newberry Association. The Association is a National Mission Institute of The General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church. It has 15 program sites and is supported by government funds, grants, and the donations of private corporations and individuals. It continues to address the needs of West Side communities in Chicago.
The image featured at the top of this collection is MNCR_0064_0864_008, "Selling live poultry in the market, Maxwell Street".