Abstract: Previous scholarship has pointed to the transatlantic transfers that occurred in the realms of social welfare policies and state involvement in the solution of the “social question.” Both, Daniel T. Rodgers and Axel Schäfer, reminded historians that social policy was created nowhere in the North Atlantic world in national isolation. American and European reformers developed a transatlantic network that furthered exchange and learning processes. And although Rodgers already reminded his audience that this exchange was characterized by an “asymmetry of the exchange”— meaning that the United States received many more ideas and concepts in the field of social policy during the nineteenth century than it exported during the twentieth century— he still neglected to take into account the extensive exchange of ideas within the field of private social welfare. An investigation of the European roots of American private social housing projects in Boston and New York will show the extent of this transfer and its impact on social reform debates in the United States. From the 1840s to the turn of the nineteenth century, American housing reformers such as Henry I. Bowditch, Alfred T. White, and Elgin R. L. Gould traveled repeatedly to Europe in search of models for the solution of the pressing housing problems back home. In this process, British and German organizational and architectural models for social housing companies were imported by social reformers and philanthropists who did not have a government mandate but acted on their own or in company with like-minded individuals. London and Leipzig became the favorite destinations of these reformers who observed social housing models in various economic, social, and cultural settings to find the best fit for solving the housing crisis at home.

This chapter was first published online as a working paper of the International Society for Third Sector Research Conference in 2008. Parts of it were later included in my book Buying Respectability: Philanthropy and Urban Society in Transnational Perspective, 1840s to 1930s, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2009, 39– 79.

Introduction

Previous scholarship has pointed to the transatlantic transfers that occurred in the realms of social welfare policies and state involvement in the solution of the “social question.” Both, Daniel T. Rodgers and Axel Schäfer, reminded historians that social policy was created nowhere in the North Atlantic world in national isolation.