Third Street Music School Settlement
Founded in 1894, Third Street Music School is the oldest community school of the arts in the United States and traces its roots to the late 19th century settlement house movement. As part of this settlement movement in which young university graduates “settled” in poor, immigrant communities to improve the quality of life, Third Street originally employed live-in social workers and gave baths to children along with their music lessons. It was the unique inspiration of Third Street founder Emilie Wagner to make high quality music instruction the centerpiece of a community settlement house that also provided social services to the immigrant population of the Lower East Side.
In this context, music would provide a source of spiritual and cultural nourishment, inspire achievement in its young students, and serve a universal language to unite the community's Jewish, Irish, Italian, Russian, Greek, and Hungarian immigrants. Third Street soon grew to include an extensive library of books and music, a rooftop playground and a summer camp in New Jersey, and provided help with housing, employment and medical care. By 1915, Ms. Wagner's vision had inspired similar music school settlements in thirty American cities.
Over the years, graduates of Third Street have joined the rosters of major symphony orchestra and opera companies across the country. The School's most famous graduates include concert violinist and music educator Josef Gingold, and renowned songwriter Irving Caesar, whose more than 2,000 works include Tea for Two, Swanee and I Want to Be Happy.
Read more about Third Street Music School Settlement: Mission, Notable Faculty and Students, Early Benefactors
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“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man: wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Green, green is El Aghir. It has a railway station,
And the wealth of its soil has borne many another fruit:
A mairie, a school and an elegant Salle de Fetes.
Such blessings, as I remarked, in effect, to the waiter,
Are added unto them that have plenty of water.”
—Norman Cameron (b. 1905)
“[The Settlement House] must be grounded in a philosophy whose foundation is on the solidarity of the human race, a philosophy which will not waver when the race happens to be represented by a drunken woman or an idiot boy.”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)