Lucille Raines Residence records

The residence started out in the 1930s as a home for retired deaconesses, located at 1241 North New Jersey Street and between the years of 1940-1968 was known as Esther Hall. In 1969 Nottingham Hotel, 947 N. Pennsylvania Street was purchased and the name changed from Esther Hall to Lucille Raines Residence and became a resident hotel: a home-away-from-home for girls venturing out on their own for the first time. The Lucille Raines Residence was named in honor of the wife of Bishop Richard C. Raines, bishop of the Indiana Area. Then in the late 1970s, when young women ceased to want that kind of structured living, the Raines Residence changed its ministry to match the community’s needs. The residents became women and men who had completed substance-abuse treatment in medical hospitals, people in counseling for emotional and psychological problems, women in work-release programs, women in crisis, and sightless people engaged in mobility training.