APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XVII.
Headquarters Of The National American Woman Suffrage Association.
During the early years of the movement for woman suffrage the headquarters were in the home of Miss Susan B. Anthony, in Rochester, N. Y. In 1890 her strong desire to have a center for work and social features in Washington was fulfilled by the National Association's renting two large rooms in the club house of Wimodaughsis, a newly formed stock company of women for having classes and lectures on art, science, literature and domestic and political economy, with Dr. Anna Howard Shaw president. It did not prove to be permanent, however, and in two years the association had to give up the rooms and the work went back to Rochester, where much of it had continued to be done.
In October, 1895, when Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt became chairman of the Organization Committee, she opened headquarters in one room of her husband's offices in the World Building, New York City. At the same time Miss Anthony, with a gift of $1,000 from Mrs. Louisa Southworth of Cleveland, had Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, national corresponding secretary, open headquarters in Philadelphia, with Miss Nicolas Shaw as secretary. Both acts were endorsed by the Business Committee of the association. At the next convention Mrs. Avery recommended that the Philadelphia headquarters be removed to those of New York. This was done April 1, 1897; two large rooms were rented in the World Building and all the work of the association except the treasurer's and the convention business was transacted here. For six years the national headquarters, in charge of Mrs. Catt, remained in New York. In May, 1903, they were removed to Warren, Ohio, near Cleveland, and Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, national treasurer, took charge of them, with Miss Elizabeth J. Hauser, executive secretary. Here they were beautifully housed, first in the parlors of an old mansion and later on the ground floor of the county court house where formerly was the public library. In 1909, partly through the contribution of Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont, they were returned to New York City and with the New York State Association occupied the entire seventeenth floor of a large, new office building, 505 Fifth Avenue, corner of 42nd Street. When Mrs. Catt again became president the work of the association had outgrown even these commodious headquarters and in January, 1916, the fourteenth floor, with much more space, was taken in an office building at 171 Madison Avenue, corner of 33rd Street. In March, 1917, the Leslie Commission opened its Bureau of Suffrage Education in this building and the two organizations occupied two floors with a staff of fifty persons. On May 1, 1920, their work was concentrated on one floor, as the great task of securing complete, universal suffrage for the women of the United States was almost finished.
Branch Headquarters: In January, 1914, branch headquarters were opened in the Munsey Building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington for the work
