Returning to Boston in July 1832, Howe began receiving a few blind children at his father's house in Pleasant Street. He gradually developed what became the noted Perkins Institution. In January 1833 the funds available were all spent, but so much progress had been shown that the legislature approved funding, later increased to $30,000 a year, to the institution on condition that it should educate gratuitously twenty poor blind from the state. Collections of funds were also contributed from Salem and Boston. Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins, a prominent Boston trader in slaves, furs, and opium, presented his mansion and grounds in Pearl Street as a location for the school in perpetuity. This building was later found unsuitable and Colonel Perkins consented to its sale. In 1839 the institution was moved to the former Mount Washington House Hotel in South Boston. It was henceforth known as the "Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum (or, since 1877, School for the Blind.")