Women's Industrial Exchange Fund

Details on the Women's Industrial Exchange (WIE) are few, but the organization ran a successful operation in Pittsburgh in the early 19th century, one in a national effort whose goal was "to help needy women help themselves."

The organization was founded in 1880; one of its oldest exchanges was still going strong in Baltimore, Maryland in 2012. WIE was "formed for the purposes of benevolence and charity in furnishing employment to deserving women and providing a place where such women may expose for sale their handiwork and other articles of their preparation and making."

The Pittsburgh exchange had an office at one time at 435 Penn Ave. before it was demolished to make way for the Gateway Center in the 1950s.

The nonprofit was dissolved in 1975 and its assets transferred to The Pittsburgh Foundation for the creation of a fund that supports institutions whose purposes are similar to those of the WIE.