Denison House, a woman-run settlement house, occupied three buildings across the street from the Quincy School for fifty years. Founded in 1892 by the College Settlement House Association, Denison House was directed by Helena Dudley (1858-1932) and Vida Scudder (1861-1954), a Wellesley College professor. Their shop sold crafts produced by local women. They ran a medical dispensary, a milk station, and taught English. The heritage of Lebanese, Syrian, and Italian immigrant women was honored through crafts and folk dancing. Dudley believed women’s greatest need was for a living wage and helped organize the Women’s Trade Union League. When aviator Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) was a social worker there, she showered Boston with leaflets from a plane announcing a Denison House street fair. After an earlier association with Chicago’s settlement house, Hull House, labor organizer Mary Kenney O’Sullivan (1864-1943) worked for a time at Denison House. She lived there with her husband, John F. O’Sullivan, labor editor of the Boston Globe, and their three children. After his sudden death in 1902, she managed a model tenement and continued her labor organizing activities. She was one of the principal founders of the National Women’s Trade Union League at Faneuil Hall in 1903. O’Sullivan supported many union activities, including the 1912 Lawrence textile strike. She was a strong supporter of woman suffrage and opposed the entry of the United States into World War I, joining the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In 1914, she became a factory inspector under the Massachusetts Department of Labor and Industries.
