Funeral services will be held this morning for Miss Rose Gruening, head worker of the Grand Street Settlement, who died Tuesday evening after a long illness at Camp Moodna, Mountainville, N. Y., the summer camp for children that she had founded and directed. Dr. John L. Elliott, senior leader of the Ethical Culture Society, will officiate.
By many a poor family on the lower East Side Miss Gruening was commonly referred to as the “angel of Grand street.”
Up to the time of her illness Miss Gruening worked for the settlement without compensation. She had founded it with her own funds in 1916, and had seen it through a number of financial crises.
Miss Gruening devoted her life to settlement work. She was the daughter of the late Dr. Emil Gruening, prominent eye and ear specialist, and the late Mrs. Rose Freidenberg Gruening. For her education she attended the Ethical Culture School here and later was graduated from Vassar College.
FOUNDS CAMP
Immediately after her graduation, Miss Gruening joined the staff of the Madison House, there working under Dr. Henry Moskowitz, whose wife later became the personal adviser of Al Smith.
While connected with the Madison House, Miss Gruening founded Camp Moodna. For bungalows in the camp she used horsecars which she had obtained from a trolley company that was about to replace the horses with electricity. The cars were redecorated and were in use for some years.
In 1916, Miss Gruening left the Madison House and founded at 257 Division street a new settlement, consisting of a small group of boys in their early teens who had belonged to the Stevenson Club at the Madison House. The new settlement was called the Arnold Toynbee House, after a famous English social service worker.
In 1918, a drive for funds was started and enough was raised to move into the four story building on East Broadway. In 1925 the name was changed to that of the Grand Street Settlement and the camp was transferred to the new settlement.
THE GUIDING SPIRIT
As time went on the settlement grew and became better known. More and more children of poor families flocked to the friendly doors. Miss Gruening until her death was the guiding spirit that hovered over all the activities of the settlement. All of the 1,600 children and the 200 mothers that came there weekly knew the kind, friendly and motherly woman. She often helped finance the college education of young people whom she had aided as children.
Well acquainted with the trials of poverty, Miss Gruening was a staunch advocate of birth control.
Miss Gruening lived at 39-59 Forty-fifth street, Sunnyside, Queens. She is survived by her brother, Dr. Ernest H. Gruening of New York, former managing editor of The Nation and former editor of The New York Evening Post; and by three sisters, Mrs. Clara Gruening Stillman of New York, an instructor at Brooklyn College, Miss Martha Gruening of New York, and Miss Mary Gruening of Switzerland.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
