Pittsburgh’s Orphans and Orphanages

June 10, 2025
Speakers: Jim Wudarczyk and Joann Cantrell, co-authors.

Jim Wudarczyk and Joann Cantrell, co-authors, will discuss their recently published book, Pittsburgh’s Orphans and Orphanages. Their research showed that in the early 1900s, orphanages in the United States housed more than 100,000 children, thousands of whom lived in Pittsburgh. Buildings that became group homes were constructed through churches and fraternal organizations. For the orphans living in such homes, everything was communal and privacy was nonexistent. Some children still had a living parent, but due to dire circumstances of the times, their fate was in the hands of those who operated the orphanage.