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Selected Timeline
1870 - Bishop William Bacon Stevens found The City Mission.
1871 - Church Home for Children opens to provide shelter for orphans including many orphaned by the Civil War.
1886 - The Home for Consumptives opened in Chestnut Hill to care for TB sufferers.
1898 - "Family War Relief" provided aid to the families of soldiers fighting in The Spanish American War.
1906 - City Mission gained its third and current home at Old St. Paul's, 225 S. Third St.
1920 - Society for the Promotion of Church Work Among the Blind established.
1930 - First foster care program organized.
1958 - Board of Council renamed The City Mission "Episcopal Community Services".
1967- All Saint's Hospital established as an 82-bed rehabilitation hospital for the elderly (operated by ECS until 1987).
1981 - Home Care program for frail homebound elderly established.
1987 - ECS was awarded the city's first contract to provide home care to people with AIDS. ECS continued this program until advances in treatment made it unnecessary.
1996 - ECS establishes a staff chaplain at the Youth Study Center, the juvenile detention center in Philadelphia.
1999 - St. Barnabas Mission for the Homeless merged with Episcopal Community Services
2003 - Urban Bridges merges with Episcopal Community Services
2005 - ECS FAST Housing established through funding from federal and local funding to provide housing and case management to chronically homeless families with multiple needs.
What's Your Legacy?
Members of the ECS City Mission Legacy Society have expressed their commitment to ECS through a very special form of financial support, planned gifts. There are many creative ways to leave your legacy, including gifts that can benefit you and your loved ones today and help ECS forever. Read more.