United Charities Building

The United Charities Building, also known as United Charities Building Complex, at 105 East 22nd Street or 287 Park Avenue South, in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, near the border of the Flatiron District, was built in 1893 by John Stewart Kennedy, a wealthy banker, for the Charity Organization Society. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991 for the role played by the Charity Organization Society played in promoting progressive social welfare policies, including the development of academic disciplines in that area.
The Charity Organization Society was something like a "Charity Trust", in that it represented the combined resources of many Protestant charities, including more than a thousand prominent families and over 500 churches and societies. The United Charities Building also housed others of Kennedy's favorite charities, including the Charity Organization Society, Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, the Children's Aid Society, and the New York Mission and Tract Society, providing them with a low cost location for their operations. Other charities were allowed to rent space at below market rates. In 1891, the New York City Consumers' League, founded by Josephine Shaw Lowell, Helen Campbell – author of the 1882 book The Problem of the Poor – and Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, established its offices in the building.

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