Pastor Bromley Oxnam's All Nations Church 810-816-824 E. Sixth Street

All Nations, in its heyday the largest and most effective social welfare organization in Los Angeles, was begun in 1918 in an east-central section of the city known as "Eastside." Immigration from Europe, Latin America, and Asia into Eastside, coupled with the incursion of wholesale businesses there, led to the departure of the middle class residents of this formerly comfortable community. Local churches, deprived of their original congregations, were dismayed at the prospect of serving this new, needy immigrant population, but the City Missionary Society of the Methodist Church had been looking for just such a settlement opportunity. It sent in a young pastor, Bromley Oxnam, fired with the church's social gospel doctrine to establish a church settlement house in an abandoned church. The collection records the practical energy of Oxnam--later a Methodist bishop--as he gathered donations, organized volunteers, bought land and buildings, equipped gymnasiums, playgrounds, libraries, and clinics for a community where three-fourths of the families were on public assistance. His crowning work in developing the physical facilities of All Nations was the acquisition of a complex of buildings at 810-816-824 E. Sixth Street, in 1927, just before his resignation from All Nations on 1 July 1927 (Oxnam preached his farewell sermon at All Nations on 19 June 1927). Oxnam's successor was the Reverend Robert A. McKibben, whose superior gifts as administrator, social worker, fund raiser, and collaborator with other social welfare agencies, including the Federal and Los Angeles Relief Administrations, and the National Youth Administration, ensured the continued success of All Nations.