Elam House (Melissia Anne Elam Home for Working Women and Girls)

Simon L. Marks, the owner of a wholesale custom tailoring company, built the historic thirty-two-room, Chateauesque-style mansion in 1903. In 1926, he sold it to Melissa Ann Elam, who operated it for decades as an African American settlement house, mainly occupied by single, African-American working women. In addition to helping the women adjust and acclimate to city life, the home ostensibly served as cultural and community center from the late 1920s through the 1950s.

In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House, the nation's first settlement house on Chicago's West Side, Around the turn of the twentieth century, Northern cities experienced an influx of European immigrants and African Americans via the Great Migration from the American South. Usually founded and managed by women, settlement houses offered the impoverished and oppressed social, educational, and welfare services. However, most settlement houses refused to serve African Americans. 

African American activists such as Ida B. Wells proved integral in developing programs and facilities geared towards providing social services to African Americans, notably those moving to the North from the South. Melissa Ann Elam, who had been born in Missouri (1853) to slave parents, moved to Chicago in 1873, a few years after Emancipation. She first worked as a maid before marrying Rubin Elam, who worked in real estate. Elam grew concerned about the lack of housing for single African American women. So, In 1923, the Elams purchased a home on the South Side of Chicago and subsequently opened The Melissia Ann Elam Home for Working Women and Girls. The home's purpose involved assisting unmarried African American women in adjusting to living independently in Chicago. Demand proliferated, forcing Elam to seek a new, bigger location. So, in 1926, Elam, along with Isadore Anna Drell, purchased the now-historic home from Simon L. Marks. 

The second, larger Elam Home could accommodate thirty-five young women during its peak years of 1928-1935, and the home evolved into the social, civic, and cultural hub of the local African American community. The home, which operated as a settlement-type house until the 1950s, hosted numerous cultural affairs and social receptions, and in 1936, the Elam Home hosted the state convention for Black women.

Elam died in 1941. By the 1950s, only a handful of women sought housing in the home. By the 1970s, the house faced threats of demolition only to be designated a Chicago Landmark in 1979; renovations in the 1980s helped restore the building. A major fire in 1992 again threatened the house's survival, but a substantial renovation project saved it. 

Cohen, Mari. "Home Histories: Elam Home." South Side Weekly. January 31, 2017. https://southsideweekly.com/history-bronzeville-elam-home/.

"Elam House." City of Chicago: City Landmarks. Accessed March 14, 2023. https://webapps1.chicago.gov/landmarksweb/web/landmarkdetails.htm?lanId=1295.

"Preiliminary Summary of Information: Melissa Ann Elam Home." Commission on Chicago: Historical and Architectural Landmarks. April 11, 1978. https://ia600702.us.archive.org/5/items/CityOfChicagoLandmarkDesignationReports/ElamHouse.pdf. 

Ryerson, Jade. "Settlement Houses in Chicago." National Park Service. Accessed March 14, 2023. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/settlement-houses-in-chicago.htm.