The John Stewart Settlement House
Indiana
When the steel mills of Gary drew thousands of Black families up from the South and home from the First World War, many arrived with no place to land. Out of the hard year of nineteen twenty one, Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church built an answer. They called it the John Stewart Settlement House, and from a Tudor Revival building finished in nineteen twenty five, it offered food, shelter, schooling, medical care, legal advice, and a foothold in the city.
The building itself carried meaning. It was designed by William Wilson Cooke, the first African American licensed as an architect in Indiana. The congregation and the community it served helped pay for it.
The house served Gary for decades. The building is gone now, but a marker on Massachusetts Street remembers the thousands who passed through.
