Personalizing the Institution: How the Rose Orphan’s Home Became the Nation’s Leading Example of Institutional Care

While the majority of late nineteenth century child welfare reformers rallied around the idea of a family home for each able-bodied child, a vocal minority worked on improving institutional care as a viable alternative to home placements.  Lyman Alden, nationally known by the late 1870s for his work as the superintendent of the Michigan State Public School, began managing and designing the privately endowed Rose Orphan’s Home in Terre Haute, Indiana (opened in 1884) as a way to provide high quality institutional care to children.  This paper will discuss placement alternatives provided by one of the nation's leading children's institutions: exploring the design, management, child agency, and community involvement at the Rose Orphan's Home.

Alden used the Rose Home as a platform to showcase institutional potential.  Inside the well-manicured grounds of the Rose Home, working class children of immigrants played and learned alongside the children of displaced farm laborers and out of work coal miners.  Instead of being isolated in the country or inside protective urban walls, Rose Home residents went to cultural events, attended high school, and benefitted from apprenticeships.  These efforts reinforced the idea that children were pliable and capable of improvement through options other than labor.  Furthermore, Alden respected the roles of parents in the lives of their children and allowed them to negotiate the dependency of their own children on friendly terms.

Alden is best known for his objections to placing out, but the primary success of his career came at the Rose Home where he refuted the dominant national discourse on a daily basis; children did not need farm labor to become successful members of society; attachments to institutions did not amount to moral destitution; biological relatives did not have to be cut off from children.