Skip to main content

School of Domestic Arts and Science

 Organization

Biography

In June 1901 philanthropists Bonnie Winthrow Evans, Mary D. Sturgis, and Clara A. Blackwell founded The School of Domestic Arts and Sciences as a means of professionalizing domestic labor; dignifying the housewife; and training college and working women in “scientific” household management. While the School-which awarded its first Associate of Home Economics degrees in 1908-initially instructed women in private home management, by 1916 its curricula had expanded to include advanced training for institutional management careers in restaurants, hospitals, and other food service areas.

A 1924 admissions brochure states that, while the majority of students were of “moderate income,” they represented “all classes of people.”

Inheriting equipment and three instructors from the Armour Institute's discontinued program in domestic arts, the School of Domestic Arts and Sciences opened in September 1901 at the Lees Building on Fifth Avenue (address later designated 19 S. Wells Street.) with an enrollment of 100 students. In 1903 it moved to the Burton Building at 177 N. State Street; and in 1915 to the Tower Building at 6 N. Michigan Avenue. The School acquired its “North Branch” at 350 Belden Avenue in 1921, where—aided by association and eventually a legal merger (1940) with Indiana House, a nonprofit organization offering room and board to single working women—it housed students and provided practice facilities, including a “model house” (1924).

At its inception women governed the School through a board of female directors —many active in the Women's Club movement—which divided into specialized committees, including an Executive Committee of governing officers. In response to the School's financial need, Chicago businessmen formed an advisory board in 1904 to assist the women in fundraising. An all-male board of trustees, organized to satisfy influential donors, took charge of the School's investments between 1907 and 1908. In 1929 the School's government re-organized itself as an elected board of trustees composed of both women and men. Membership dues, food sales, the Tilton Endowment (bequest of Lucretia J. Tilton, announced in December 1906 and received in 1908, as recorded in the Board of Directors' minutes), and donations from such prominent Chicago women as Mrs. Marshall Field and Mrs. P.D. Armour sustained the School through 1916, when it received a significant gift from the World's Fair Fund (proceeds of the 1893 Woman's Building exhibits) stewarded by Mrs. Potter Palmer. Bonnie Winthrow Evans served as president of the School of Domestic Arts and Sciences from 1901 until her death in 1936.

Supplementing both the School's fundraising efforts and its day and evening programs of instruction, activities at the School included food exhibits (1903-1908); management of a profitable tearoom and the Art Institute cafeteria; product testing for Armour and Company, Swansdown Flour, and Quaker Oats; public lectures; philanthropic work in ethnic neighborhoods and among girls from the Juvenile Court; the compilation and sale of cookbooks; radio lectures on homemaking (1926); and the submission of home economics essays to the Chicago Tribune. The School of Domestic Arts and Sciences also co-operated with the Chicago Board of Education and the Presbyterian and Evanston hospitals to provide student teachers and nurses with additional instruction. During World War I the School worked with the Food Administration and Chicago Health Department to test recipes, publish wartime consumption guidelines, and demonstrate that nutritious meals need only cost 40 cents per capita per day. Faculty and students also prepared and served meals to volunteer war workers.

Although the School enrolled as many as 1,800 students in 1922 alone, financial losses led to its substantial re-organization in 1929 and the closure of its Michigan Avenue campus in 1933. In 1943 the School of Domestic Arts and Sciences was absorbed into Northwestern University to form a bachelor's program in home economics (College of Liberal Arts) that persisted until 1973.

Found in 1 Collection or Record:

Records of the School of Domestic Arts and Sciences

 Collection
Identifier: 50/1
Abstract The School of Domestic Arts and Sciences began operation in 1901, and was absorbed into Northwestern University in 1943. The School's records consist of historical documents, governing documents, minutes, correspondence, financial records, subject files, and ledgers. The records span the years 1899 to 1972, but the bulk of the material dates from 1901 to 1943. The historical documents (1911-1943) consist of official histories, clippings, press releases, and course bulletins that articulate...
Dates: 1899-1972