A Beacon of Light In A Bustling Young Metropolis

The story of the Eleanor Foundation is a history of Chicago itself: a story of urban pioneers—energetic, determined, and visionary—pursuing opportunity in turn-of-the century Chicago. It’s a story of entrepreneurship and adaptability. For the Eleanor Foundation, this has meant evolving with the changing needs of working women over time.

The 1890s saw young women pour into Chicago in great numbers—outnumbering men moving into the city at the rate of seven to one. These women were seeking jobs as shop girls, clerks, teachers, etc. One of these women would found the Eleanor Foundation.

Ina Law Robertson was the daughter of Oregon settlers. At first a country schoolteacher, Robertson left her post as principal of the Waitsburg Academy in Washington to pursue graduate study at the University of Chicago.

In 1898, in the wake of the Colombian Exposition, Chicago was still a rough town. For almost two decades, the city had been the fastest growing in America. But safe, affordable housing was difficult to find, especially for single women whose modest weekly pay was between $3 and $7. Robertson established the Eleanor Foundation in an effort to create livable housing in which independent, single working women could thrive.

Armed with that simple idea and a small grant, Robertson opened her first residential club for women in 1898 at 6231 Lexington Avenue (now University Avenue). Christened as “The Hotel Edward,” it became the home of a small community of twenty-eight self-supporting women.

Its residents, however, decided it needed a better name—one more suited to a community of young female residents. They chose a Greek word for light, eleanor, and the building became the first of six Eleanor Clubs established by 1914.

In 1908, Robertson addressed a different need: women were shut out of all of the downtown-based clubs in Chicago. Robertson launched a social, educational and philanthropic club called the Central Eleanor Club, where working women could gather. At its peak, the CEC had over 2,000 members involved in classes, drama clubs, membership dinners, bridge parties, musicals, concerts, trips, and language lessons.

In 1909, Robertson next launched The Eleanor Camp, a vacation getaway for women in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Six years later came the first Eleanor Junior Club, a home for junior girls on their own but “too young to be received in the Eleanor Clubs.”

In fewer than twenty years, Ina Law Robertson had built an institution that provided safe housing, educational opportunity, and modern facilities for working women to use, better themselves, and enjoy their lives. All Robertson’s efforts were in pursuit of a mission that the Eleanor Foundation upholds to this day: to create conditions in which lower-income working women can help themselves build successful, self-sufficient lives.

However, as Chicago evolved, so too did social mores and working conditions. Changing with it were the needs of lower-income working women. Today, such women are apt to be working single mothers struggling to make ends meet for themselves and their children.

The Eleanor Foundation evolved to meet the needs of this population. By early 2001, the Foundation’s one remaining facility on North Dearborn was rarely at full capacity, reflecting the diminished demand for single gender, dormitory-style living for grown women. The Foundation closed the last Eleanor Residence on North Dearborn Parkway on September 30, 2001 and sold the property in order to seek a more effective means to fulfill its mission: to help lower-income working women to achieve economic self-sufficiency, but now by helping launch and fund innovative programs that help them.

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