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Godman Guild Audiovisual Collection
Description: A group of boys poses on the steps outside of the Godman Guild House in Columbus, Ohio. A sign advertises services including a free public library, free kindergarten, public baths and a district nurse. In 1898, Anna B. Keagle, a high school and Sunday School teacher in the Flytown neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, and fourteen others became neighborhood activists and rented half of a brick double on West Goodale Street. In 1900 the group set out to build a sufficiently large settlement house. Henry C. Godman of the Godman Shoe Company gave $10,000 to the building fund, and construction was completed in November. The Godman Guild provided English classes, employment opportunities, children's programming and needs assessment. The District Nurses' Association used the Guild as a distributing point for free milk into the 1930s and the Guild pioneered the recreation center movement, conducting the first supervised playground in Columbus. The Guild opened the first public baths in the city and The Ohio State University College of Dentistry provided free dental care for children and adults. Godman Guild also founded an exclusively African Americans camp, Camp Wheeler in Chesterville, Ohio, 51 miles north of the city. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: AV148_B01F01_01
Subjects: Ohio History--State and Local Government--Social Welfare; Social services--Ohio; Children--Ohio; Community organizations
Places: Columbus (Ohio); Franklin County (Ohio)