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The completed project! Provided by RGHF Senior Historian
Dr. Wolfgang Ziegler
5 April 2008
From which book the attached photo of the "comfort station"
is, I don't know. A small photo is found on page 24 of "A
Century of Service". According to this book, the restroom was
built in 1907 outside the new City Hall in Chicago at the
corner of LaSalle and Washington streets and remained there at
least for
a few decades (still there?)
Again according to this book, it was the second "Community
Service" after, also in 1906, the Chicago Club bought a horse
for a country doctor who lived near Joliet, Illinois, whose horse had
died and - too poor to buy another one - was unable to make the
rounds of his country patients. Also see the
history of D6450
Wolfgang
(editor's note) Some might interpret that the "passing of the
hat" for a charitable donation was the first, in a long lime, of
charity efforts by Rotarians, eventually leading to an endowment
and then The Rotary Foundation, which we find at
www.foundationhistory.org
However, please see pages 75 and 76 of "This
Rotarian Age."
"In such atmosphere, Rotary’s first public
service was rendered. It consisted of initiating and
promulgating the establishment of public comfort
stations in Chicago. Of all the multitudinous
undertakings of Rotary, the writer can not recall
one more ambitious. Rotary’s first public
76 THIS ROTARIAN AGE
undertaking resulted in the enrollment of every
important civic organization in the city of Chicago,
and also the city and county administrations, in its
support..." Paul Harris, 1935
One could assume that Paul Harris' writing is
correct, that this Public Comfort Station was the first
community service project. |
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