ABSTRACT
The founder and director of Greenwich House in New York, one of the best known of the settlement houses, which was started in 1902, was born in Newton, Massachusetts, September 8, 1867. In 1899, Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch married Vladimir G. Simkhovitch, an economics professor at Columbia University. She had received her B.S. degree from Boston University in 1890 and also attended for a time Radcliffe College, the University of Berlin, and Columbia University. She listed herself a member of the Episcopal Church and declared herself a Democrat in politics. Mayor La Guardia appointed her a member of the New York City Housing Authority and Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed her to the New York State Board of Social Welfare. The neighborhood avidly responded to the opportunity; before her year was up a floor was engaged in the wooden house opposite, and the music school began to live its own life.
