Settlement FAQs

what is a settlement house hull house

by Mr. Oscar Parisian PhD Published 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago
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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.

Full Answer

What services did the Hull House offer?

What services did the Hull House offer?

  • medical aid.
  • child care.
  • legal aid.
  • food assistance.
  • clothing assistance.
  • financial assistance.
  • clubs and activities for both children and adults.
  • English-language classes.

Why did Jane Addams create the Hull House?

What was the purpose of Jane Addams 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.

Why was the Hull House important?

Why was the Hull House so important? Significance: Hull-House provided numerous services for the poor, many of whom were immigrants, that helped immigrants to learn about American culture and life. The first settlement house in the United States was established in 1889 in New York's lower East Side. Click to see full answer.

What was the purpose of Jane Addams Hull House?

Hull House, founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and others, was one of the first settlement houses in the United States. Its initial programs included providing recreational facilities for slum children, fighting for child labor laws, and helping immigrants become U.S. citizens.

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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.

Was Hull House the first settlement house?

In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr established Hull-House in Chicago, the first settlement house in the United States.

What was the purpose of a Hull House?

Hull House History In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull House as a place to offer accommodation, education and opportunity to the residents of the impoverished Halsted Street area, a densely populated urban neighborhood of Italian, Irish, German, Greek, Bohemian, Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants.

What was Jane Addams settlement house called?

Hull House, Chicago. 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.

What is the definition settlement house?

Definition of settlement house : an institution providing various community services especially to large city populations.

Who made settlement houses?

Stanton Coit, who lived at Toynbee Hall for several months, opened the first American settlement in 1886, Neighborhood Guild on the Lower East Side of New York. In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr launched Hull House in Chicago.

What did settlement houses do?

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.

Who made the Hull House?

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.

How did settlement houses help the poor?

Settlement houses were organizations that provided support services to the urban poor and European immigrants, often including education, healthcare, childcare, and employment resources. Many settlement houses established during this period are still thriving today.

What made the Hull House unique?

Hull-House was unique among settlements- it was not associated with a specific religion, and while it welcomed both male and female residents, the leadership positions were held be a cadre of college-educated women.

What did the Hull House expose?

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.

What was the impact of the Hull House?

The impact rippled across the nation as the work of Hull House and its activists helped establish child labor laws, women's suffrage, workmen's compensation, and other hallmarks of the Progressive Era.

What made Jane Addams Hull House unique?

Hull-House was also special because it had Jane Addams, the best-known woman reformer in the United States. In its first few years, Hull-House offered education and creative programs in reading and the arts. But Addams listened to the needs of her neighbors and worked to understand the challenges they faced.

What was Hull House and who started it?

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.

What was Hull House quizlet?

Jane Addams/Hull House. A famous Settlement House founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in Chicago in 1889. Hull House work focused on the needs of families, especially immigrant ones. The Hull House served as a model for other settlement houses.

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.

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.

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 ...

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, ...

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.

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

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 ...

Was the Hull House segregated?

Indeed, the Hull House was segregated until the 1930s.

Is Elam's house still standing?

This home is still standing due to the efforts of Elam’s niece, Loretta Peyton and Dr. Margaret Burroughs, poet and cofounder of Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History. In 1979, the property was designated a Chicago Landmark, saving it from demolition due to building violations. Frederick Douglass Center.

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.

What was the settlement house movement?

What was the settlement house movement? The settlement house movement was a social movement that supported the idea of creating large housing projects to provide mobility for the working class. It grew out of a desire for reform that had already had effects in several other areas, such as the creation of numerous charities to help people in poverty. Widespread support for this idea began in Great Britain in the 1860s and quickly spread to other Western countries such as the United States and Canada. The Industrial Revolution and its social effects, such as long working hours, the safety hazards of the factory system, and the self-absorption of industrialists, alarmed the idealistic Christian Socialists who desired to help the poor rise above their condition through education and moral improvement.

Who founded the first settlement house in Great Britain?

Samuel and Henrietta Barnett founded the first Settlement House, Toynbee Hall, in Great Britain.

How did settlement houses help the poor?

How did settlement houses help the poor? Settlement houses provided the environment for the poor tenants to create social clubs, community groups, and cultural events. This promoted fellowship between the residents. Education programs were also conducted under the auspices of the houses. For example, the kindergarten program initiated at Hull House served up to 24 students. Adults and youth attended lecture series from community leaders and university graduates and educators.

What was settlement work?

Settlement work was concerned with helping the poor as a social class rather than on an individual basis. It was theorized that if members of the poor working class lived in proximity to educated, refined people, their work morale and education status would improve as well. To aid this, half of the tenants of these houses were ''refined'' graduates of upper-class colleges who lived there to aid the working class by association. House organizers hoped that the sub-culture of higher education would elevate the paradigm of the poor and help them to rise out of their situation.

What did administrators of houses do?

Administrators of the houses and educators worked not only with the tenants of the houses but also with leaders of the community, including factory owners and politicians. Services offered included infant nurseries, job training, and medical care. Although the founders of the houses had high aspirations, many of the workers who had the most interaction with the working class were amateurs who could not have much effect.

What were some examples of settlement houses?

In Cleveland, Ohio, for example, different settlement houses served different immigrant populations. Hiram House, for example, mostly worked with Jews, Italian immigrants, and African Americans. East End Neighborhood House and Goodrich House served east European immigrants.

How successful were settlement houses?

Settlement houses were successful in some ways but not in others. They failed to eliminate poverty and all of its causes, but they were able to alleviate some of them.

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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

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At its height, "Hull House" was actually a collection of buildings; only two survive today, with the rest being displaced to build the University of Illinois at Chicago campus. 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 sol…
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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...
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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…
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Others Connected with Hull House

  1. 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...
  2. Ida B. Wells-Barnettworked with Jane Addams and others of Hull House, particularly on racial problems in the Chicago public schools.
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A Few of The Men Who Were Residents of Hull House For at Least Some Time

  1. Robert Morss Lovett: a reformer and English professor at the University of Chicago
  2. Willard Motley: an African American novelist
  3. 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.
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