What is the history of the Hull House?
Also called: Hull-House Hull House was a settlement house founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889 in Chicago, Illinois. It was one of the first settlement houses in the United States. The building, originally a home owned by a family named Hull, was being used as a warehouse when Jane Addams and Ellen Starr acquired it.
What was the first settlement house in the United States?
Hull House was a settlement house founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889 in Chicago, Illinois. It was one of the first settlement houses in the United States. The building, originally a home owned by a family named Hull, was being used as a warehouse when Jane Addams and Ellen Starr acquired it.
What happened to the Hull House in Chicago?
In the mid-1960s, most of the Hull House buildings were demolished for the construction of the University of Illinois-Chicago. The original building and one additional building (which has been moved 200 yards (182.9 m)) survive today. On June 12, 1974, the surviving Hull mansion was designated as a Chicago Landmark.
Why is Hull-House called a settlement house?
About Hull-House Hull-House, Chicago's first social settlement was not only the private home of Jane Addams and other Hull-House residents, but also a place where immigrants of diverse communities gathered to learn, to eat, to debate, and to acquire the tools necessary to put down roots in their new country.
What was the Hull-House settlement?
Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located on the Near West Side of the city, Hull House (named after the original house's first owner Charles Jerald Hull) opened to serve recently arrived European immigrants.
What is Hull-House in US history?
Hull House, one of the first social settlements in North America. It was founded in Chicago in 1889 when Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr rented an abandoned residence at 800 South Halsted Street that had been built by Charles G. Hull in 1856.
Why was the Hull-House so important?
Hull House was truly a safe haven, where immigrants could find a sense of community. Hull House was the second settlement house to open in the United States, and of the hundreds of similar settlements opened around the country at the time, it was by far the most famous, most influential, and most innovative.
What was the first settlement house in America?
In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr established Hull-House in Chicago, the first settlement house in the United States.
Why did Jane Addams create Hull House?
In 1889, Addams and Starr founded Hull House in Chicago's poor, industrial west side, the first settlement house in the United States. The goal was for educated women to share all kinds of knowledge, from basic skills to arts and literature with poorer people in the neighborhood.
What happened to the Hull House?
Mayor Richard Daley decided to target the removal of Hull House in a plan to develop the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Only the original Hull House was maintained as a museum on the university campus, but the rest of Hull House was demolished.
Does the Hull House still exist?
Hull-House exists today as a social service agency, with locations around the city of Chicago. The University of Illinois at Chicago has preserved a small part of the buildings as a museum, after the University razed many of the original buildings of Hull-House.
What impact did the Hull House have on the community?
Because of its location, Hull House knew what the community needed and it worked to provide as many services as possible, and where it could not provide services for the community, it advocated for change, such as improved labor conditions and improved housing conditions.
How did Hull House help improve city life?
For these working poor, Hull House provided a day care center for children of working mothers, a community kitchen, and visiting nurses. Addams and her staff gave classes in English literacy, art, and other subjects. Hull House also became a meeting place for clubs and labor unions.
What is Jane Addams best known for?
Jane Addams was the second woman to receive the Peace Prize. She founded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1919, and worked for many years to get the great powers to disarm and conclude peace agreements.
What was the Hull House Apush?
Description. A settlement house created in 1889 in Chicago by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to harbor some of the women European immigrants coming to the country. The house was part of the settlement-movement of the late 1800s.
Where is Hull House in Chicago?
June 12, 1976. Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located on the Near West Side of the city, Hull House (named after the original house's first owner Charles Jerald Hull) opened to serve recently arrived European immigrants.
What is the purpose of Hull House?
Hull House became, at its inception in 1889, "a community of university women" whose main purpose was to provide social and educational opportunities for working class people (many of them recent European immigrants) in the surrounding neighborhood.
Why did Jane Addams Hull House close?
On January 19, 2012, it was announced that Jane Addams Hull House Association would close in the spring of 2012 and file for bankruptcy due to financial difficulties, after almost 122 years. On Friday, January 27, 2012, Hull House closed unexpectedly and all employees received their final paychecks. Employees learned at time of closing that they would not receive severance pay or earned vacation pay or healthcare coverage. Union officials said that the agency closed while owing employees more than $27,000 in unpaid expense reimbursement claims. The University of Illinois at Chicago's Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (unaffiliated with the agency), however, remains open.
What was the name of the settlement house that Addams and Starr established in 1889?
Addams and Starr established Hull House as a settlement house on September 18, 1889.
Why did Addams host ethnic dinners at Hull House?
Because of the immigrants' loneliness for their homeland, Addams started hosting ethnic evenings at Hull House. This would include ethnic food, dancing, music, and maybe a short lecture on a topic of interest. Some of the themed evenings were Italian, Greek, German, Polish, etc. Ellen Gates Starr described one Italian evening as having the room packed full with people. One of the ladies who attended "recited a patriotic poem with great spirit" and everyone was moved by it.
What happened to the Hull Mansion?
In the mid-1960s, most of the Hull House buildings were demolished for the construction of the University of Illinois-Chicago. The original building and one additional building (which has been moved 200 yards (182.9 m)) survive today. On June 12, 1974, the surviving Hull mansion was designated as a Chicago Landmark. On June 23, 1965, it was designated as a U.S. National Historic Landmark. On October 15, 1966, the day that the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 was enacted, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places .
When was the Hull House playground built?
At the neighborhood level, Hull House established the city's first public playground, bathhouse, and public gymnasium (in 1893), pursued educational and political reform, and investigated housing, working, and sanitation issues. The playground opened on May Day in 1893, located on Polk Street.
What was the Hull House?
Hull-House was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1966.
When was the Hull House built?
Hull-House expanded from one aging mansion, built by Charles J. Hull in 1856, into a 13-building complex that spanned an entire city block. Its facilities included a gymnasium, theater, art gallery, libraries, pools, classrooms, a kindergarten, and dormitories.
Why did Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr create Hull House?
Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull-House to offer social services to the community. Some of those services included legal aid, an employment office, childcare, and training in crafting and domestic skills. While touring Europe in 1888, Addams and Starr had visited Toynbee Hall in London and been inspired to create their own institution. Hull-House expanded from one aging mansion, built by Charles J. Hull in 1856, into a 13-building complex that spanned an entire city block. Its facilities included a gymnasium, theater, art gallery, libraries, pools, classrooms, a kindergarten, and dormitories.
Why did social reformers establish settlement houses in cities?
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, social reformers established settlement houses in cities to address issues created by urbanization and industrialization, such as housing shortages and unsanitary living conditions. In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr established Hull-House in Chicago, the first settlement house in the United States.
Who founded the first settlement house in the United States?
The first settlement house in the United States, founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr.
Is the Hull House Museum open to the public?
National Historic Landmark. OPEN TO PUBLIC: Yes. MANAGED BY: Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. The content for this article was researched and written by Jade Ryerson, an intern with the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, social reformers established settlement houses in cities ...
When was Hull House founded?
Hull House was founded in 1889 and the association ceased operations in 2012. The museum honoring Hull House is still in operation, preserving history and heritage of Hull House and its related Association. Hull House was a settlement house founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889 in Chicago, Illinois.
Who built the Hull House?
Also called: Hull-House. Hull House was a settlement house founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889 in Chicago, Illinois. It was one of the first settlement houses in the United States. The building, originally a home owned by a family named Hull, was being used as a warehouse when Jane Addams and Ellen Starr acquired it.
What is the Hull House Museum?
It is today the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, part of the College of Architecture and the Arts of that university. When the buildings and land were sold ...
What was the neighborhood around Hull House?
The neighborhood around Hull House was ethnically diverse ; a study by the residents of the demographics helped lay the groundwork for scientific sociology. Classes often resonated with the cultural background of the neighbors; John Dewey (the educational philosopher) taught a class on Greek philosophy there to Greek immigrant men, with the aim of what we might call today building self-esteem. Hull House brought theatrical works to the neighborhood, in a theater on the site.
Why did the Hull House Association close?
The Hull House Association closed in 2012 due to financial difficulties with a changing economy and federal program requirements; the museum, unconnected to the Association, remains in operation.
Who was the partner of Hull House?
Ellen Gates Starr: partner in founding Hull House, she was less active as time went on and moved to a convent to care for her after she was paralyzed in 1929.
Who was the first woman to be in the US cabinet?
Frances Perkins: a reformer working on labor issues, she was appointed in 1932 as Secretary of Labor by President Roosevelt, the first woman in a US cabinet position.
Where is the Hull House?
Hammon Pub. Co. #1877 (c. 1910) Public Domain, via Wikipedia. Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House in 1889 on the South side of Chicago, Illinois after being inspired by visiting Toynbee Hall in London. Situated at 800 S. Halstead Street in the run-down Nineteenth Ward of Chicago, ...
What was the Hull House used for?
Hull-House gradually expanded to include about a dozen other buildings used for classes and clubs, a nursery school, the only public library in the neighborhood, a playground and one of the first gymnasiums in the country. Hull-House opened a boarding home for girls, without chaperon or “lady board of managers.”.
What did Jane Addams and Ellen Starr do?
After talking to the visitors from the neighborhood it soon became clear that the women of the area had a desperate need for a place where they could bring their young children. Addams and Starr decided to start a kindergarten and provide a room where the mothers could sit and talk. Within three weeks the kindergarten had enrolled twenty-four children with 70 more on the waiting list. Soon after a day-nursery was added.
What was Florence Kelley's role in Hull House?
It was Kelley who was mainly responsible for turning Hull-House into a center of social reform. The presence of Florence Kelley in Hull-House attracted other social reformers to the settlement.
Who were the three women who were in the Hull House?
In 1890, Julia Lathrop joined Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr at Hull-House. All three women had been students at Rockford Female Seminary together in the 1880s. Lathrop, who had been trained as a lawyer by her father, the United States senator, William Lathrop, was an excellent organizer, and took over the day to day running of the settlement. In the early days of Hull-House, the Christian Socialism that had inspired the creation of Toynbee Hall influenced the three women. This was reinforced by the arrival in 1891 of Florence Kelley at Hull-House. A member of the Socialist Labor Party, Kelley had considerable experience of political and trade union activity. It was Kelley who was mainly responsible for turning Hull-House into a center of social reform.
Who were the working class women at Hull House?
Working-class women, such as Kenney and Stevens, who had developed an interest in social reform as a result of their trade union work, played an important role in the education of the middle-class residents at Hull-House. They in turn influenced the working-class women.
Is the Hull House still in use?
The original Hull mansion remains with much of the furniture used by Miss Addams. South of the original Hull-House is the restored settlement dining hall, one of the first buildings in addition to the main house opened by Jane Addams. University and community groups for meetings now use the hall.
Who founded the Hull House?
In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded the Hull House in Chicago’s near west side. [1] . Inspired by London’s Toynbee Hall, the Hull House broke ground as the first settlement house in the United States. Around the turn of the 1900s, northern cities experienced an influx of immigrants from Europe and a Great Migration ...
What is the Hull House?
Discover more history and culture by visiting the Chicago travel itinerary. Notes: [1] The Hull House was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. [2] Some African American settlement houses were founded with the help of white activists.
What did Emanuel do after the Chicago house closed?
After the house closed in 1912, Emanuel enrolled at the Chicago Hospital-College of Medicine. She graduated as a medical doctor in 1915 and opened a private practice for children and women.
What were settlement houses in the 1900s?
Settlement houses offered social, educational, and welfare services to migrant and impoverished communities. They were generally founded and run by women in industrial cities.
Who was the first African American woman to open a Phyllis Wheatley home?
Elizabeth Lindsay Davis opened the first Phyllis Wheatley Home for Girls in 1908. Davis was a national organizer for the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and a leader of the Ida B. Wells and Phyllis Wheatley Woman’s Clubs. She created the Phyllis Wheatley Home Association because African American women were excluded from services offered at the YWCA. Named after the first African American woman to publish a book of poems, the Phyllis Wheatley Home provided “housing, health, vocational guidance, recreation, and religious education” for Black women and girls.#N#Founded in 1926, the last Phyllis Wheatley Home is still standing on South Michigan Avenue near 51st Street. This property is listed in the Illinois Preservation Services Division’s Historic and Architectural Resources Geographic Information Systems database of historic sites and structures.
Where was Emanuel's office in Chicago?
According to Simms’ Blue Book and National Negro Business and Professional Directory, in 1923, Emanuel’s office was located in the Supreme Life Insurance Company building , which became a Chicago Landmark in 1998. Abraham Lincoln Centre, 1913, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22249976.
Where is Branch Settlement House?
Branch Settlement House near Old Commons, Chicago. The content for this article was researched and written by Jade Ryerson, an intern with the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education. In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded the Hull House in Chicago ’s near west side. [1] . Inspired by London’s Toynbee Hall, the Hull ...
What did Hull House do for Black people?
Although Hull-House and other settlements helped establish separate institutions for Black neighborhoods , pioneered in studying Black urban communities, and helped organize the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Blacks were not welcome at the major settlements.
What was the settlement house movement?
The Settlement House Movement. by John E. Hansan, Ph.D. One of the most influential organizations in the history of American social welfare was the “settlement house.”. The establishment and expansion of social settlements and neighborhood houses in the United States corresponded closely with the Progressive Era, the struggle for woman suffrage, ...
How did settlements help the world?
It is important to note that settlements helped create and foster many new organizations and social welfare programs, some of which continue to the present time. Settlements were action oriented and new programs and services were added as needs were discovered; settlement workers tried to find, not be, the solution for social and environmental deficits affecting their neighbors. In the process, some settlements became engaged in issues such as housing reform, factory safety, labor organizing, protecting children, opening health clinics, legal aid programs, consumer protection, milk pasteurization initiatives and well-baby clinics. Others created parks and playgrounds or emphasized the arts by establishing theaters and classes for the fine arts and music education. A number of settlement leaders and residents conducted research, prepared statistical studies, wrote reports or described their personal experiences in memoirs (e.g., Hull-House Maps and Papers, Robert Woods’s City Wilderness, Jane Addams’s Twenty Years at Hull-House, and Lillian Wald’s House on Henry Street).
What actually happened to the residents of settlements?
What actually happened was that residents of settlements learned as much or more from their neighbors than they taught them. The “settlers” found themselves designing and organizing activities to meet the needs of the residents of the neighborhoods in which they were living.
How were settlements organized?
Settlements were organized initially to be “friendly and open households,” a place where members of the privileged class could live and work as pioneers or “settlers” in poor areas of a city where social and environmental problems were great. Settlements had no set program or method of work. The idea was that university students and others would make a commitment to “reside” in the settlement house in order to “know intimately” their neighbors. The primary goal for many of the early settlement residents was to conduct sociological observation and research. For others it was the opportunity to share their education and/or Christian values as a means of helping the poor and disinherited to overcome their personal handicaps.
How did the American settlement movement differ from the English model?
The American settlement movement diverged from the English model in several ways. More women became leaders in the American movement; and there was a greater interest in social research and reform. But probably the biggest difference was that American settlements were located in overcrowded slum neighborhoods filled with recent immigrants. Working with the inhabitants of these neighborhoods, settlement workers became caught up in searching for ways to ease their neighbor’s adjustment and integration into a new society. Settlement house residents often acted as advocates on behalf of immigrants and their neighborhoods; and, in various areas, they organized English classes and immigrant protective associations, established “penny banks” and sponsored festivals and pageants designed to value and preserve the heritage of immigrants.
What were the contributions of settlement workers?
At other times, bringing about a change required becoming advocates for a specific cause or acting as spokespersons appealing to a wider public for understanding or support for a proposed civic matter or political measure. From their advocacy, research and sometimes eloquent descriptions of social needs afflicting their neighbors, lasting contributions were made by residents of settlement houses in the areas of education, public health, recreation, labor organizing, housing, local and state politics, woman’s rights, crime and delinquency, music and the arts. Settlements soon became renown as the fountainhead for producing highly motivated social reformers, social scientists and public administrators, including such early notables as
Where is the first settlement house?
America’s First Settlement House. Situated at the corner of Eldridge and Rivington Streets stands University Settlement, a non-profit social justice organization that has a deeply-rooted place in Lower East Side history.
How long has University Settlement been around?
University Settlement’s enduring existence today speaks not only to how vital its work continues to be, but also how it has continually grown and learned from the neighborhood it settled in over 130 years ago.
Why was the University Settlement named after the Neighborhood Guild?
Stover, University Settlement was started to provide resources for the predominantly immigrant residents on the Lower East Side. Settlement houses were named as such because the aim was that their staff and volunteers would ‘settle’ in the community as neighbors.
What was the purpose of the University Settlement?
From its inception, University Settlement offered a variety of services to the surrounding community, including recreational camps and classes for children, resources for residents to advocate for neighborhood issues such as housing or street sanitation, and classes about obtaining U.S. citizenship. By 1911, University Settlement hosted 142 different clubs with over 3000 members, and regularly rented out its spaces for unions and reform groups to hold meetings.
When did Mulberry Settlement House children read?
New York Public Library Archives, The New York Public Library. “ Mulberry Settlement House children reading in Settlement house library, Oct.1920.”: The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1920.
What was the Hull House?
Hull-House remained Addams’s home for the rest of her life and became the center of an experiment in philanthropy, political action and social science research.
Who was the founder of the Hull House?
Jane Addams and Hull House. In 1889, Addams and Starr leased the home of Charles Hull in Chicago. The two moved in and began their work of setting up Hull-House with the following mission: “to provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises and to investigate and improve ...
What did Addams believe about the Hull House?
A new social ethic was needed, she said, to stem social conflict and address the problems of urban life and industrial capitalism. Although tolerant of other ideas and social philosophies, Addams believed in Christian morality and the virtue of learning by doing.
What did Addams and other Hull House residents do?
Addams and other Hull-House residents sponsored legislation to abolish child labor, establish juvenile courts, limit the hours of working women, recognize labor unions, make school attendance compulsory and ensure safe working conditions in factories. The Progressive party adopted many of these reforms as part of its platform in 1912.
Where is Jane Addams buried?
Thousands of people attended her funeral in the courtyard of Hull-House. She is buried in her family’s plot in Cedarville Cemetery in Cedarvillle, Illionis. Allen F. Davis, American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams ( 1973);
How did Addams respond to the needs of the community?
Addams responded to the needs of the community by establishing a nursery, dispensary, kindergarten, playground, gymnasium and cooperative housing for young working women. As an experiment in group living, Hull-House attracted male and female reformers dedicated to social service. Addams always insisted that she learned as much from the neighborhood’s residents as she taught them.
Overview
Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located on the Near West Side of the city, Hull House (named after the original house's first owner Charles Jerald Hull) opened to serve recently arrived European immigrants. By 1911, Hull House had expanded to 13 buildings. In 1912 the Hull House complex wa…
Mission
Addams followed the example of Toynbee Hall, which was founded in 1884 in the East End of London as a center for social reform. She described Toynbee Hall as "a community of university men" who, while living there, held their recreational clubs and social gatherings at the settlement house among the poor people and in the same style they would in their own circle. Addams and Starr established Hull House as a settlement house on September 18, 1889.
Hull House neighborhood
One of the first newspaper articles ever written Hull House quotes the following invitation sent to the residents of the Hull House neighborhood. It begins with: "Mio Carissimo Amico"...and is signed, Le Signorine, Jane Addams and Ellen Starr. That invitation to the community, written during the first year of Hull House's existence, suggests that the inner core of what Addams labeled "The …
The building and museum
Hull House was located in Chicago, Illinois, and took its name from the Italianate mansion built by real estate magnate Charles Jerald Hull (1820–1889) at 800 South Halsted Street in 1856. The building was located in what had once been a fashionable part of town, but by 1889, when Addams was searching for a location for her experiment, it had descended into squalor. This was partly du…
Theater
Addams felt that the community benefits from theater plays and thus established an amateur theater in the Hull House in 1899. "The neighborhood Greeks performed the classic plays of antiquity in their own language and the children of European immigrants produced Shakespeare" as well as others. Early one December, the Greeks performed Odysseus in Chicago. The auditorium was filled with a multi-ethnic crowd and packed too close for comfort. The audience …
1930s to 2012
Addams was head resident until her death in 1935. Hull House continued to serve the community surrounding the Halsted location until it was displaced by the urban branch campus of the University of Illinois in the 1960s. Until 2012, the social service center role was performed throughout the city at various locations under an umbrella organization, the Jane Addams Hull House Association. The original Hull House building itself is a museum, part of the College of Ar…
Selected notable residents
• Edith Abbott
• Grace Abbott
• Jane Addams
• Ethel Percy Andrus
• Enella Benedict
See also
• Jane Addams Burial Site
• John H. Addams
• John H. Addams Homestead
• History of social work
• Hull House Music School
Buildings
The Settlement House Project
- The settlement house was modeled on that of Toynbee Hall in London, where the residents were men; Addams intended it to be a community of women residents, though some men were also residents over the years. The residents were often well-educated women (or men) who would, in their work at the settlement house, advance opportunities for the working c...
Hull House Residents
- Some women who were notable residents of Hull House: 1. Jane Addams: founder and main resident of Hull House from its founding to her death. 2. Ellen Gates Starr: partner in founding Hull House, she was less active as time went on and moved to a convent to care for her after she was paralyzed in 1929. 3. Sophonisba Breckinridge: considered one of the main founders of social w…
Others Connected with Hull House
- Lucy Flower: a supporter of Hull House and connected to many of the women residents, she worked for children's rights, including the establishment of a juvenile court system, and founded the first...
- Ida B. Wells-Barnettworked with Jane Addams and others of Hull House, particularly on racial problems in the Chicago public schools.
A Few of The Men Who Were Residents of Hull House For at Least Some Time
- Robert Morss Lovett: a reformer and English professor at the University of Chicago
- Willard Motley: an African American novelist
- Gerard Swope: an engineer who was a top manager at General Electric, and who during the New Deal’s recovery from the Depression was pro-federal programs and pro-unionization.