Women's Rights & Issues

littlemissmartypants

(29,912 posts) Thu Oct 2, 2025, 05:02 PM 10 hrs ago

'Women adrift': How single women lived independently in early Chicago

The types of housing single women were afforded in Chicago at the turn of the century say a lot about society and residents.

By Ari Mejia Oct 1, 2025, 6:00am EDT

Eleanor Club residents, circa early 1900s.Courtesy of the Women and Leadership Archives, Loyola University Chicago

Picture Chicago in the year 1900: The trains are packed, department stores glitter on State Street and thousands of young women are pouring in from all over the country and world. They’re looking for work and seeking freedom and autonomy.

Reformers and society at large at the time named these women “adrift” — it meant if they were without a husband or family they were lonely, unprotected and vulnerable.

“The notion at the time was that a woman without a family was unprotected, that she was flotsam and jetsam on the sea of life, floating adrift that she didn’t have any anchor of home,” said professor Joanne Meyerowitz, author of “Women Adrift, Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880-1939.”

But these women weren’t drifting at all; they were making choices, taking them to different addresses.
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https://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-history/2025/10/01/women-adrift-how-single-women-lived-independently-in-early-chicago

Framed portrait of Ina Law Robertson

Founder Ina Law Robertson opened the Eleanor Hotel in 1898 to provide safe, affordable housing for women coming to Chicago to work. What was later known as the Eleanor Foundation grew to include locations throughout Chicago that provided housing, social spaces, and activities for women for 104 years. The records of the Eleanor Foundation were donated to the Women and Leadership Archives in 2015. This sampling of photographs, documents, and objects from the Eleanor Foundation collection shows a small piece of this rich history.