The Early Years
Originally named the Indigent Widows and Single Women’s Society, Ralston Center was founded in 1817 by Sarah Clarkson Ralston and a group of like-minded Philadelphians to provide a refuge for needy women. Nearly 400 citizens of 19th-century Philadelphia contributed to its establishment.*
The Widows Society was located on Market Street west of Broad Street. Residents were provided a comfortable room, meals and support. The Society was managed, operated and supported by its members and a Board of Managers (all women), who contributed annual dues of three dollars or paid a lifetime membership of thirty dollars.
The earliest Minutes of the Society record that the organization “. . . met with the most unexampled success, little more than two months having elapsed since its formation, . . . a [building] has been procured, a Matron provided, the house furnished, and ten respectable aged females comfortably accommodated.”
By 1820, the year of Sarah Ralston’s death, the Society erected a new, larger home at 18th and Cherry Streets to meet the increased demand for its services. The Society relocated again in 1886 to its handsome four-story home at 3615 Chestnut Street.
Recognizing the void in senior housing services for men, Ralston merged with the Tilden Home for Aged Couples in 1962 and began to serve men as well as women. To provide a higher and more sophisticated level of care, a nursing home was built next door to the original building in 1982.
By the mid-1980s, Ralston’s Board of Managers recognized that a new direction for the organization was in order. The Ralston House building was closed as a residence; the nursing home was sold (it is now the Penn Center for Rehabilitation and Care, part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System), and Ralston’s mission was redefined, while maintaining the commitment to serve Philadelphia’s older adults.
Ralston Center Today
Today Ralston Center’s mission is to foster services, programs, education and research that address the health and quality of life of older adults. Ralston House is home to administrative offices for Ralston Center, and the Ralston Wellness Program, founded in 1991, which provides health and wellness programs for older adults. The University of Pennsylvania Institute on Aging and geriatric medicine practices of Penn Medicine are also located in Ralston House.
* The archives of the Indigent Widows & Single Women’s Society
are housed at the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania
1300 Locust Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-732-6200