Drawing from her experience assisting at a settlement house on the Bowery, Winifred Holt saw a need to create a space of aid specifically for the visually impaired. In 1906, the New York Ticket Bureau for the Blind was incorporated as The New York Association for the Blind. Edith and Winifred's home, at 44 West 77th Street, was "practically given over...\[with] numerous clerks, stenographers, and other helpers in the larger work now in their hands,"wrote the New York Times, who reported on the Association's meeting on January 15, 1907, in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

In the meeting that the Times reported on, Helen Keller, Vice President of the organization, addressed the crowd. An essay adapted from her address titled The Heaviest Burden on the Blind, states the following: The new movement for the blind rests on a foundation of common sense. It is not the baseless fabric of a sentimentalist's dream. We do not believe that the blind should be segregated from the seeing gathered together in a sort of Zion City... America is a democracy, a multimonarchy, and the city of the blind is everywhere.

She continued: \_To paraphrase Mr. Kipling, we are not heroes, and we are not cowards, too. We are ordinary folk limited by an extraordinary incapacity. If we do not always succeed in our undertakings, even with assistance from friends, we console ourselves with the thought that in the vast company of the world's failures is many a sound pair of eyes! I appeal to you, give the blind man the assistance that shall secure for him complete or partial independence. He is blind, and falters. Therefore go a little more than halfway to meet him. Remember, however brave and self-reliant he is, he will always need a guiding hand in his.\_

For some years, the New York Association for the Blind was headquartered at the Sol and Lillian Goldman Building. It relocated to 65th Street after merging with Jewish Guild Healthcare and later moved to 250 West 64th Street, where it remains today.

Women in the Association for the Blind learned how to prepare handcraft items, acquiring skills that could later secure employment. Additionally, business and sales trades were also taught in the Association.

Thousands of New Yorkers learned valuable trades under guidance of teachers who were also visually impaired.

Children's care and education was also part of the Association's program.

In addition to creating an organization that pioneered in the care of the visually impaired, Winifred Holt persuaded the New York Department of Education to admit blind and visually impaired children into public schools for the first time.

While Holt's residence was the first to be converted into a workshop, this building on East 35th Street soon expanded the program's reach. This facility was outfitted to serve as a workspace for men creating wares to be sold on their behalf.

The workshop, known as the Bourne Workshop, was funded by a generous donation by Emily Bourne in 1912.

Men learned how to construct "marketable products," such as brushes, brooms, and chairs. The workshop expanded, eventually moving to Long Island City as "Lighthouse Industries."

With the onset of World War I, and, seeing the success of the program in New York City, Winifred Holt worked to expand the Association onto the world's stage. Le Phare de Bordeaux was opened in France in 1915, as were offices, or "Lighthouses," in Paris, Rome, Warsaw, China, Japan, the Middle East, India, and South America, thus making the Association an international foundation. The New York Association for the Blind took on the name Lighthouse Incorporated in 1989 and was later re-named Lighthouse International. In 2005, the Guild celebrated its centennial.