Background Information About Elam House
Elam House was owned by Mrs. Melissia Ann Elam. She was born in Missouri in 1853; her parents were slaves. After Emancipation, she moved to Chicago and worked as a maid until she married realtor Rubin Elam. Seeing the tremendous need for housing and guidance for the many single African American girls and women migrating into the city, Mrs. Elam purchased a home at 4555 South Champlain around 1920 and opened it as the Melissia Anne Elam Home for Working Women and Girls. Mrs. Elam and Isadore Anna Drell purchased the home at 4726 South Parkway in 1926, when demand outgrew space in the Champlain residence. Between the 1930s and the 1950s, Elam Home often housed over 30 women and girls at a time. The home was also the center of many Black, civic, social, and cultural events, including a state convention for African American women.
Mrs. Elam died in 1947. She willed Elam House to Centers for New Horizons, Inc. Centers for New Horizons is a not for profit social service agency that serves the Bronzeville and Riverdale communities on the Southside of Chicago, Illinois. Ms. Elam stipulated to Centers for New Horizons in her will that her home be kept in service to the community. She entrusted the home to a group of African American women, who maintained the home as a boarding home. As times changed, fewer women sought housing in boarding homes like Mrs. Elam’s, and the population of Elam House declined, although several women continued to live there well into the 1970s. In 1979 the home was declared a Chicago Historical Landmark.
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