Abstract
The St. Nicholas Welfare Center stood in the heart of Harlem. Located in a multistory brick office building on 125th Street, it had a well-worn, kind of grimy atmosphere, with grey metal desks and institutional green walls. Inside, it was not a place of joy; on one floor, plodding and perpetually glum caseworkers sat mostly bent over piles of case folders, and on another milling and quarrelsome clients impatiently awaited their turn to be interviewed. The sounds and sights outside were those of a poor section of the city. Most of 125th Street was a shopping strip where inexpensive furniture stores jostled for limited business with shoe outlets and small-scale groceries. On the surrounding side streets solid tenements were crowded with large families and grim-faced transients. In front of them, brownstone stoops led down to asphalt roadways lined with automobiles and sidewalks that hosted a sporadic pedestrian traffic.
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Notes and References
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(1999). Idealism on Trial. In: The Limits of Idealism. Clinical Sociology: Research and Practice. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-585-29601-2_1
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