Building for Health YWCA
Marie Danforth Page, The Strobridge Litho. Co. Cincinnati & New York
1918
DIMENSIONS
45 1/2 x 29 1/2 in. (115.6 x 74.9 cm)
OBJECT NUMBER
PH.5831
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
United States
CREDIT LINE
Poster House Permanent Collection
KEYWORDS
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This was probably the only poster designed by the Boston portrait painter Marie Danforth Page. It promotes the campaign of the Young Women’s Christian Association (Y.W.C.A.), “Building for Health,” during World War I. The American Y.W.C.A. had been founded in 1858, only a few years after the original one in London; both were evangelical organizations intended to protect single working women from the moral and social iniquities of city life. By the time this poster was published, however, the Y.W.C.A. USA had become a largely secular operation focused on women’s health issues, sex education, support for immigrant women, and social and political activism. The mores of the time nonetheless required its message to be presented using the conventional image, with its obvious Christian overtones, of a well-dressed mother lovingly embracing her child.

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