Background
Louise de Koven Bowen was born on February 26, 1859, in Chicago, Illinois. She was the only child of John de Koven, a Chicago businessman, and Helen Hadduck de Koven. She grew up with all the advantages of wealth and power.
( Louise de Koven Bowen grew up in a Chicago caught betwe...)
Louise de Koven Bowen grew up in a Chicago caught between frontier and urbanity--a young city struggling to wipe the mud from its boots. Born into privilege and comfort, she demonstrated from an early age an extraordinary sense of social responsibility and alertness to how she could improve the circumstances of those around her. Smart, savvy, and bracingly candid, Growing Up with a City offers a rare portrait of Chicago and its growing pains from a woman's perspective. "When I took a walk," Bowen says, "I liked to go into the poorer parts of the town and see what was going on, especially in my own ward." An early and longtime supporter of Jane Addams and Hull-House, Bowen was active in a multitude of reform organizations, describing herself as a third-class train passenger who goes out every day and pushes the train uphill because it cannot make the grade on its own. She was instrumental in creating a separate juvenile court and Chicago's Juvenile Protection Association, and she helped found the Woman's City Club, an organization that brought women together in one central organization to work for the welfare of the city. She was serving as president of the Chicago Equal Suffrage Association when the Illinois legislature gave women of the state the vote in local and federal elections. She even flirted with the idea of running for mayor in 1923. More than a record of her accomplishments, Bowen's memoir is a disarmingly witty narrative of an enthusiastic, generous, and perpetually optimistic benefactor--with herself often the target of her own wry humor. Invigorating and endearing, her story lets us see how women made a difference in Chicago. This reissue features a substantial introduction by historian Maureen Flanagan.
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(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
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(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
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(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
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(This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)
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Louise de Koven Bowen was born on February 26, 1859, in Chicago, Illinois. She was the only child of John de Koven, a Chicago businessman, and Helen Hadduck de Koven. She grew up with all the advantages of wealth and power.
Bowen graduated from Dearborn Seminary at the age of sixteen.
After the graduation from Dearborn Seminary, Louise Bowen quickly tired of the social whirl and spent much of her time doing charity work, visiting the poor, and teaching Sunday school for the Episcopal church. In 1893, she discovered Hull House, and for the next sixty years her life was deeply involved with the settlement and its many activities. She gave almost $1 million to the institution.
In 1904, she built Bowen Hall, the Woman's Club building at Hull House, and in 1912, she established the Bowen Country Club (in memory of her husband who had died the previous year), consisting of seventy-two acres of land and ten buildings in Waukegan, Illinois, to be used as a Hull House summer camp.
If there was a deficit at Hull House or a crisis in the neighborhood, Bowen could be depended upon to come to the rescue.
Bowen served on the Juvenile Court Committee, which became the Juvenile Protective Association in 1909. She sought to humanize the juvenile justice system by writing many pamphlets, including Fighting to Make Chicago Safe for Children, The Department Store Girl, Boys in the County Jail, and a pioneer attempt in 1913 to describe the conditions of urban blacks entitled The Colored People of Chicago.
She also wrote a book, Safeguards for City Youth at Work and at Play (1914), and collected much of the information that Addams used as the basis of The Spirit of Youth and City Streets (1909).
Bowen died in Chicago.
Louise De Koven was both benefactor and leader, aristocrat and reformer, and one of a generation of powerful women who left their imprint on Chicago and the nation. Much of Bowen's time and effort was spent trying to help the juvenile delinquent. With Julia Lathrop and other Hull House residents, she succeeded in organizing in 1899 the first juvenile court in the United States. It was not a criminal court, and the judge was supposed to aid not penalize the juvenile offender. Although this goal was not always met, the system was a major breakthrough in the treatment of juvenile delinquency. Among her other achievements was building of the Bowen Hall in 1904, the Woman's Club building at Hull House, and in 1912, she established the Bowen Country Club (in memory of her husband who had died the previous year). Bowen contributed more than her money to Hull House; she was an active leader in the Woman's Club, president of the Juvenile Protective Association, and a longtime trustee, treasurer, and finally president of the Hull House Association.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
( Louise de Koven Bowen grew up in a Chicago caught betwe...)
(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)
(This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)
Bowen was an active supporter of many civic and reform movements. She campaigned for Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive party in 1912, was president of the Chicago Equal Suffrage Association, and was the American delegate to the Pan American Conference of Women in 1923. During World War I, she disapproved of Addams' pacifist stand and became chairman of the Illinois division of the Women's Council of Defense. This difference of opinion, however, did not end their friendship.
After Addams' death in 1935, Bowen became a powerful and controversial figure at Hull House. She often disagreed with the head residents who tried unsuccessfully to assume Addams' post, and Bowen was responsible for some of the women leaving the settlement. Yet from her position as treasurer and later as president of the Hull House Association, she made sure that Hull House survived.
Like most of the reformers of her time, Bowen tried to instill middle-class values into the young people she sought to assist. But although Bowen and her co-workers in the Juvenile Protective Association were blind to certain class and ethnic differences and had a prudish attitude toward sex, they did ease the burden for young people growing up in the city.
Louise Bowen was a member of the Hull House Woman's Club, of the Juvenile Protective Association, and of the Hull House Association.
Bowen was a formidable and toughminded aristocrat who could be seen most mornings, elegantly dressed, emerging from her chauffeur-driven limousine in front of Hull House.
Despite her refined appearance and upper-class background, Bowen got along well with most of the neighborhood women in the Hull House Woman's Club. Although some settlement residents resented and opposed her, she discovered that the women were proud of her frequent mention in the society columns of the newspapers.
On June 1, 1886, Louise married Joseph Tilton Bowen, a prominent banker from Providence, Rhode Island. They had three children and lived in a forty-room mansion in Chicago. They also maintained a large summer home in Bar Harbor, Maine.
15 December 1833 - 30 April 1898
19 October 1835 - 24 March 1886
American social reformer in the area of education
7 June 1892 - 29 February 1968
24 June 1890 - 9 August 1972
19 September 1888 - 12 July 1977
16 June 1887 - 22 November 1927
1 April 1854 - 29 March 1911
pioneer American settlement activist/reformer, social worker, public philosopher, sociologist, public administrator, protestor, author, and leader in women's suffrage and world peace. Bowen was a close friend, adviser, and protector of Jane Addams, often accompanying Addams on speaking tours and entertaining her at Bar Harbor.
