The Home Thrift Association

Abstract

This chapter describes efforts by the Progressive Era designer and social activist Louise Brigham to train working-class children in carpentry through an organization she founded in New York City, the Home Thrift Association. Launched in the then-disused Gracie Mansion, the HTA migrated around the city over the several decades of its existence. The HTA apprentices produced box furniture for their own homes as well as for Brigham’s showcase apartments. In its ethos and goals, the HTA was aligned with skills-training organizations like the Home Arts and Industries Association in Great Britain that emerged under the influence of ideas promulgated by William Morris and John Ruskin. In founding the HTA, Brigham also almost certainly drew on the ideas of John Dewey and the tenets of the Scandinavian sloyd movement, with which Brigham had become familiar during her European travels.