New York has honored Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in the U.S. cabinet, by naming 46th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues in recognition of her efforts at the nearby Hartley House Settlement after moving to the city in 1909.
(L-R) Roberta Reardon, New York State Commissioner of Labor and Tomlin Coggeshall, grandson of Frances Perkins.
West 46th Street / Frances Perkins Place
This action is just in time for her 142nd birthday on April 10. Born in Boston in 1880, she graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1902 and went on to graduate study in sociology, economics, and social work.
Frances Perkins
She became a suffragist, and volunteered at Hartley House before beginning her public service work in New York focused on workplace safety after the city’s devastating Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire that killed 146 women and men, which she witnessed on March 25, 1911.
Hartley House
In 1918 she was appointed by Governor Al Smith to New York State’s Industrial Commission and remained with that agency under Governor Franklin Roosevelt who elevated her to Industrial Commissioner. When he became president, FDR appointed her Secretary of Labor and she served with him his entire presidency. She was the driving force behind some of the most significant legislation of the New Deal, including Social Security, unemployment compensation, the federal minimum wage, and the ban on child labor, and helped create the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Public Works Administration, both programs designed to quickly create jobs and get money to hard-up American families. By her death on May 14, 1965, she had more than fulfilled an early vow “to do something about unnecessary hazards to life, unnecessary poverty.” The Frances Perkins Center, at her family’s ancestral farm in Newcastle, Maine, continues to promote her public policy legacy.
