Our History

For more than a century, the Crown Family School has helped shape the fields of social work and social welfare. Its history is rooted in Chicago and in the work of a remarkable group of women who believed that addressing society’s most difficult problems required both rigorous inquiry and engagement with the lives of individuals, families, and communities. 

The School traces its origins to the Chicago settlement-house movement and the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, established in 1908. Its early leaders included Sophonisba Breckinridge, Edith and Grace Abbott, Julia Lathrop, and Jane Addams—pioneering scholars and reformers whose work connected research, policy, and practice. From the beginning, they insisted that professional social work education should be grounded in the social sciences and social research, an approach that distinguished the School from many of its contemporaries. In 1920, the School became part of the University of Chicago, deepening those intellectual connections.  

Sophonisba Breckinridge and Edith Abbott were especially important in establishing this intellectual tradition. Breckinridge, the first woman to graduate from the University of Chicago Law School, brought together scholarship, law, and social reform throughout her career and founded Social Service Review in 1927. Abbott, among the first women to earn a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, believed strongly that social work belonged in a great research university and was instrumental in bringing the School to the University. In 1924, she became its dean—the first woman to serve as dean of a graduate school in the United States. Under their leadership and that of other early faculty, the School brought research to bear on major questions of immigration, child welfare, labor, and public assistance; faculty research later helped inform the child-related provisions of the Social Security Act.  

That tradition continued across the decades as faculty helped shape social work education, policy, and practice through new approaches to casework, social policy, and evidence-based intervention. In 1965, the School moved into its distinctive home designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.  

In 2021, a landmark $75 million gift from James and Paula Crown and their family marked another important chapter, and the School of Social Service Administration became the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice.  

The School has evolved considerably since 1908, but a defining commitment has endured: bringing rigorous research and interdisciplinary scholarship into close conversation with policy and practice. Established by the School’s earliest leaders, that commitment continues to shape Crown’s research, education, and engagement today.