Fairview Settlemlent

Fairview Settlemlent
Opened	1907
Current Status	Closed
Building Style	Cottage Plan
Location	Indianapolis, IN
Alternate Names

History

Fairview Settlement, organized and operated by the Indianapolis Benevolent Society (today Families First) on five acres at the location of 42nd and Haughey, Indianapolis, Indiana, was in operation from 1907 to about 1920, to provide housing and support for widows and their children. Many of the structures (up to 20 per Sanborn Fire Maps) on the property had been built by out-of-work men for Rev. Oscar McCullough's Summer Mission for Sick Children, started around the turn of the 20th Century. It appears that Fairview Settlement may have been an outgrowth of Rev. McCullough's endeavors to further meet the greater needs of poor widows with children, especially after the Panic of 1907-08. From newspaper accounts it seems this Settlement was home to some of the following buildings and programs: the Spann Nursery; the McCullough Hospital for Children; a dispensary (1915); Eliza Blaker's all day Kindergarten #28 (which showed 19 students in 1917); The Student Building (site of boys and girls vocational training); The Children's Club (1915); a bathhouse; six cottages; six tent cottages (1915); the Kirshbaum, the Mystic Tie, the Independent, the Anniversary, the Lockerbie, Calumet, Ashland, Charlotte (dorms); the Bonnie Marie (administration building); and various other structures.

This location eventually became part of Butler University and Christian Theological Seminary.