The Home Management House

While working on the University of South Dakota (USD) Photograph Collection: Historical Series, I noted an image of a house labelled Home Management House. With some research, I discovered that the Home Management House was used as part of the Home Economics curriculum from 1957 through the spring semester of 1966 for senior level students. According to the course catalogue description, students taking the Home Management House course lived in the house for six weeks and dealt with “problems that arise in a home”.

As part of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of Home Economics was started at USD in 1913. In the 1930s attempts to eliminate it were thwarted. However, in 1966 Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Elbert Harrington phased out the Departments of Home Economics and Applied Sciences, seeing them as vocational programs with possible duplications of programs at other schools of higher learning in South Dakota*.

Although USD Archives Home Economic files described in detail that with the dissolution of these two programs, furniture and other items were dispersed to several departments within the University, what happened to the Home Management House was not noted. The picture of the building in this blog was taken in January 1966 at the time the Home Economics Department was in its last semester.

Additional research indicates that the house currently exists as a single-family dwelling located 409 North Plum Street, not far from the USD campus. Few people remember that the structure was part of the Home Economics program of study at USD that lasted for over 50 years.

*Cedric Cummings, Robert C. Hildebrand, and Stephan R. Ward. The College of Arts and Sciences 1882-1982, A History. College of Arts and Sciences, 1982, University of South Dakota.

Photograph of the Home Management House taken in 1966. USD Photograph Collection: Historical Series