Houchen Community Center
El Paso, El Paso County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This center has served El Paso since 1912, though its roots go back to 1893 when Rose Gregory Houchen, a teacher from Michigan, met Margaret Tripp, a member of the Women's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Tripp was a missionary in Segundo Barrio, a Hispanic neighborhood along the U.S.-Mexico border. In 1910, Houchen donated $1,000 to build an institution to help the poor. Completed in 1912 at the corner of Tays and Fifth streets, the Rose Gregory Houchen Settlement House offered English language classes, Bible study, daycare, kindergarten and social gatherings. An influx of immigrants arrived in Segundo Barrio during the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s. The poor conditions in which they lived contributed to outbreaks of disease; residents especially suffered during the 1918 flu epidemic. The center began to focus on health care, teaching hygiene, treating illnesses and opening public showers. Soon, the Women's Division of the Methodist Board of Global Ministries purchased a neighboring building, opening Freeman Clinic. In 1937, a building with two wings replaced the clinic, with one wing for Freeman Clinic and the other for Newark Maternity Hospital, which provided pre- and post-natal care as well as delivery for more than 62,000 babies before closing in 1986. The center continued to grow in the following years, adding new programs. Later it was joined by El Buen Pastor Methodist Church (1945) and Houchen Day School (1947) to form a compound known as Friendship Square. In 1988, a gymnasium was built and in 1992, a playground and Head Start building replaced the old settlement house. Today, Houchen Community Center continues to offer many programs to serve and encourage residents of Segundo Barrio. (2007)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Houchen Community Center traces its roots to 1893, when Michigan teacher Rose Gregory Houchen backed missionary work in El Paso's Segundo Barrio, a Hispanic neighborhood on the border. Her 1910 donation built a settlement house that opened in 1912 offering English classes, daycare, and kindergarten. As Mexican Revolution refugees poured in and disease spread, the center pivoted to health care, eventually running the Freeman Clinic and a maternity hospital that delivered more than 62,000 babies.
Why it matters
Houchen exemplifies the Progressive Era settlement-house movement adapted to the borderlands, serving generations of Mexican immigrants with education, health care, and community.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
At the turn of the twentieth century, El Paso's Segundo Barrio was one of the great gateways of the American Southwest — a densely packed Hispanic neighborhood pressed against the U.S.–Mexico border, where new arrivals found their first foothold in the United States. It was a place of hard work, tight quarters, and constant movement across the river.
This was also the height of the Progressive Era and the settlement-house movement, when reformers — often women, often working through churches — established neighborhood centers to help poor and immigrant families with education, health, and daily survival. The idea was to plant a helping institution in the middle of a struggling community and let it grow with the people it served.
Into this world came the upheaval of the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, which sent waves of refugees north into border cities like El Paso. They arrived in need of everything — housing, work, schooling, medicine — and often lived in conditions crowded enough to breed disease. The stage was set for an institution that could adapt as fast as the neighborhood changed.
People & events
The story reaches back to 1893, when Rose Gregory Houchen, a teacher from Michigan, met Margaret Tripp, a member of the Women's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church who was already doing missionary work in Segundo Barrio. That encounter planted a seed. In 1910 Houchen donated $1,000 to build an institution to help the poor, and in 1912 the Rose Gregory Houchen Settlement House opened at the corner of Tays and Fifth streets, offering English classes, Bible study, daycare, kindergarten, and social gatherings.
Then the neighborhood's needs shifted, and the center shifted with them. As Revolution-era immigrants crowded into the barrio, illness followed, and residents suffered terribly during the 1918 flu epidemic. The settlement house pivoted toward health care — teaching hygiene, treating the sick, and even opening public showers. The Women's Division of the Methodist Board of Global Ministries bought a neighboring building and opened Freeman Clinic.
From there it kept growing. In 1937 a two-wing building replaced the clinic, one wing for Freeman Clinic and the other for Newark Maternity Hospital, which provided prenatal and postnatal care and delivered more than 62,000 babies before closing in 1986. Over the following years the campus expanded into a compound known as Friendship Square, joined by El Buen Pastor Methodist Church in 1945 and Houchen Day School in 1947. A gymnasium came in 1988, and in 1992 a playground and Head Start building replaced the original settlement house — the old giving way to the new on the very same ground.
Its place in the American story
Houchen is a vivid example of the settlement-house movement carried to the borderlands and sustained for more than a century. Where the famous settlement houses of the industrial North served European immigrants, Houchen shows the same reforming impulse meeting the very different world of the U.S.–Mexico border and the Mexican families who shaped it.
Its evolution also traces the broader history of American social welfare in miniature: from moral and educational uplift, to public health in the face of epidemic disease, to full-fledged medical and maternity care, to modern early-childhood programs like Head Start. One neighborhood institution moved through nearly every chapter of how the country learned to care for its most vulnerable.
And then there is that staggering number — more than 62,000 babies delivered at Newark Maternity Hospital. For generations of El Paso families, this place is quite literally where life began. Few local institutions can claim to be woven so deeply and so personally into a community's very existence.
If you visit
Come to Segundo Barrio understanding that you're visiting a living institution, not a preserved relic. Houchen has continually rebuilt and expanded itself, so much of what you see is the newest layer of a story more than a hundred years deep — the settlement house of 1912 has literally been succeeded on its own footprint by facilities for a new generation.
As you take in the marker, let the numbers and dates become people: English learners in a 1912 classroom, families lined up for public showers after the 1918 flu, and the tens of thousands of newborns carried home from a maternity hospital that served this neighborhood for nearly half a century. This is a place best appreciated by imagining the human traffic that has passed through it.
Houchen sits within one of El Paso's most historic and characterful neighborhoods, making it a natural stop on a route that explores the city's border heritage. Respect the ongoing work of an active community center, and take a moment to appreciate an institution that has spent well over a century simply refusing to stop being useful to the people around it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Rose Gregory Houchen
- · Margaret Tripp
Related events
- · Mexican Revolution
Themes & tags
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