“This
book attempts to show the harmonies built up in the
community by the many little groups, through their
sympathetic relations with other groups; and also to
show how effective these group relations often are in
dealing with social problems, which may vary in their
importance at times, but not in their urgency, from
generation to generation.”
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Between
1920 and 1923, Wald suffered several personal losses,
including the deaths of her mother and her longtime friend
and early Henry Street benefactor, Jacob Schiff. In April
1925, her own health began to fail. After suffering a
debilitating stroke in 1933, Wald retired to her
“house on the pond” in Westport, Connecticut. Many national and
international figures, including Jane Adams, Eleanor
Roosevelt, and Albert Einstein, continued to visit her
there. With more time to record her thoughts, Wald
wrote Windows on Henry Street, which detailed
the changes to the Lower East Side and Henry Street over
the decades Wald had resided there. In 1937, Henry Street
celebrated Wald's seventieth birthday by broadcasting a
radio program during which Mrs. Sara Delano Roosevelt
read a letter from her son, President Franklin Roosevelt,
praising Wald for her
“unselfish labor to promote the happiness and
well being of others.”
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