The Five-Points House of Industry originated in an individual effort made by Rev. Lewis Morris Pease, in the summer of 1850, to obtain employment for a class of wretched females, who, with strong desire to escape from an abandoned life, were debarred from any other, through lack of employment. Mr. Pease was at first employed by the Ladies' Home Missionary Society of the M. E. Church at the Five Points, but, differing in his views from those of the society as to the methods to be employed, and some unfortunate complications occurring, an alienation was produced which resulted in the severance of his connection with the society, and the establishment of an independent enterprise. In the autumn of the same year he hired two houses, admitted fifty or sixty inmates whom he supplied with work; in February an additional room was added; and in May, 1851, four houses were taken, and the number of inmates increased to one hundred and twenty. In 1853 eight houses were taken, and five hundred persons supported either by their industry or the donations of the benevolent. Needle-work, basket-making, baking, straw-work, shoemaking, and ultimately farming, formed the chief employments.

Mr. Pease began the enterprise with great courage, but with scanty means, and must have soon failed if Providence had not raised up friends who early came to his assistance. After conducting the enterprise over three years, he succeeded in enlisting a number of gentlemen, who procured a charter and assumed the management of the Institution, Mr. Pease remaining the superintendent. The entire expenditures of the enterprise during the three years and a quarter, closing with the incorporation of the society in March, 1854, amounted to $48,981.87, more than half of which was profit on the work of the inmates, the remainder being made up by donations.

Soon after the incorporation of the society, the trustees resolved to relinquish the rented buildings and erect permanent ones of their own. A plot of ground on what is now Worth street was purchased, and in 1856 they completed a massive six-story brick edifice, with a front of fifty-four feet, covering nearly the entire depth of the lots, and seventy feet high. Much of the means necessary to complete the edifice-was contributed by friends, and the remaining incumbrance' on the property was removed several years later by a bequest of $20,000, received from Mr. Sickles. In 1864, Chauncey Rose, Esq., whose generosity extended to so many institutions, presented the board with the handsome sum of $10,000 which led to the purchase of several adjoining lots. Here they erected a large two-story building, the ground floor, ninety by forty-five feet, being devoted to a play-room for the children, while the upper was, divided by sliding partitions-into appropriate school-rooms, and thrown on the Sabbath into a large chapel. After a few years it became manifest that the growing wants of the Institution demanded more ample-accommodations. The hospital department, confined to a single room, was far too small to accommodate the afflicted of the Institution' and neighborhood. The chapel ceiling was too low. More dormitories were needed, and a better nursery. An article setting forth these wants, published in the "Monthly Record," the organ of the Institution, brought pledges in a short time to the amount of $10,000, to which one of the trustees generously added another $10,000.

Arrangement was also made with the City Mission and Tract Society, which loaned the House of Industry $20,000 without interest, for the privilege of using the chapel. The trustees then decided to erect on the site of the school-rooms a new and commodious building. The edifice was begun in August, 1869, completed and dedicated in February, 1870. The two buildings, though somewhat unlike in design, form an imposing pile about one hundred feet square. The stairs are fire-proof, the beams are of iron, water and gas are carried to every floor. The chapel, seventy by forty-five feet, is massively pillared, arched overhead, and has stained glass windows. The school-rooms afford accommodations for five hundred scholars, and the dormitories for over three hundred beds. The ground and buildings of the society have cost $125,000.

The whole number received into the House during the sixteen years since its incorporation amounts to over nineteen thousand, and the names of twenty-one thousand children have in the same time been enrolled in the day school, with a daily attendance varying from two hundred and thirty to four hundred and twenty. During this period 4,135,218 meals have been furnished to the poor, and about nine thousand sent to situations.