Hull-House

HULL-HOUSE

Laura Jane Addams was born on September 6, 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, into a privileged middle class family. As a young child, Jane, as they called her, knew hardships. At the age of two her mother died. Soon after, Addams had been struck with tuberculosis leaving her with a deformed spine. Still having her father to carry her through, she would try to live life as normal as possible. Jane often would travel to the mills her father owned; playing in the piles of grain in the storerooms. At the age of seven, while on route to one of her father’s mills, she saw a neighborhood that was very impoverished. Addams found out that the world was not all ice cream cones, clean clothes, and having others wait on you. Addams decided at that young age, that she was going to have a “big house” in the middle of a poverty stricken neighborhood.
Addams grew up and attended Rockford Seminary for Females in Rockford Illinois, following in the footsteps of her three sisters in 1877. There she studied religion and how to become a graceful and efficient homemaker. While attending Rockford Seminary, the college curriculum was changed so the women there learned basic college studies such as mathematics, philosophy and foreign language. In 1881, Addams graduated but was not prepared for the choices she had ahead of her. College did not prepare women for an entrance into a man’s work world. At the time, women had the choice of settling down and starting a family, or being single and becoming a school teacher. Addams was not interested in either of these options. Her family was not supportive of her choices. They gave her the option of marrying or settling to help out the family. Addams wanted to put her new knowledge to good use after college.
For the next eight years, Addams drifted, trying to decide on a career choice. She entered a woman's medical college, but dropped out after one term due to her physical disability. Her crooked spine caused her such pain that she was bedridden for six months. In late 1882, surgeons finally repaired her spine, but this left her frail for the rest of her life. When her father died in 1881, the substantial inheritance he left to her gave her enough money to live on. Addams traveled to Europe several different times during an eight year period. During one of these trips, she made a decision on what she wanted to do with her life.
In 1888, Addams and her friend and college roommate, Ellen Gates Starr visited Toynbee Hall in London, England. Operated by Oxford University students, Toynbee Hall served one of London's poorest neighborhoods.1 Toynbee Hall was a community center that offered recreation and educational programs to improve the life of the poor. Addams and Starr left England determined to set up a similar "settlement house" in the United States.
Upon their returned home from their excursion to Europe, the two women began their search for the perfect spot to start their “settlement house.” Searching in the slums of Chicago, they found the perfect building for their project. It was a large vacant mansion, built for Chicago businessman Charles Hull, and was more than thirty years old.2 This building was in Chicago’s Near West Side and had housed a factory, a pre-owned furniture store and a home for the elderly run by Little Sisters of the Poor, prior it becoming a settlement house. There were suspicions of the attic being haunted in this building. As a result the individuals who had lived on the second floor left a pitcher of water on the stairs leading to the attic. Their belief was that the ghost would not pass through running water. Despite the rumors of the alleged ghost, Jane and Ellen, along with Mary Keyser, who did household chores, moved into the Hull House. The owner of the mansion, Helen Culver, allowed them to rent the entire house including the second floor and attic. The building was located near an urban neighborhood with Italian, Irish, German, Greek, Bohemian, Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants surrounding it on all sides. These people had come to America searching for a better life. They worked in the factories nearby earning just enough to feed their families.
On September 18, 1889, Addams and Starr opened the Hull House to the public. Addams used portions of her inheritance to better the building to make it seem homier for those she was expecting to walk through those doors. Addams was intent on improving the lives of the struggling people in the neighborhood. Addams even appointed herself to be the trash inspector. She rose every morning at six and followed the garbage collectors to make sure that they were doing their job correctly. The Hull House started to provide many opportunities for those in the neighborhood who were not fortunate enough to experience educational opportunities. A young Russian boy named Solomon Saranoff, or Solly as he was often called, dearly wished he could play the piano, but he could not do so due to the fact their family barely earned enough money to pay for food. Paying for a piano or lessons was out of the question. Solly’s sister, Rosie, and some friends took him to the Hull House. There at the house Solly found a piano. He was thrilled by this and the sound that they keys made as they were struck. The director of the Hull-House found Solly sitting at the piano and asked if he would like to learn how to play. Solly took piano lessons at Hull House, while his parents learned to speak English in the language class. During a Hull House party, Solly and his family met Jane Addams. Solly's father told Jane that he had never heard his son play the piano. "Well, that is too bad," Addams said. "I must see that you hear him soon." A week later, Solly brought home a card announcing his piano recital at the Hull House Music School. At the concert, tears rolled down Solly's father's face as he heard his son play.3
Stories like Solly’s were the reason Jane Addams wanted to start the House, so that those who could not afford to pay for such luxuries had the opportunity at the Hull House. Starr and Addams furnished the home with items they had collected from Europe, as well as mahogany furniture from their own personal belongings. After they had finished furnishing their building, they forgot to close and lock a side door the first night after the enthusiasm from settling in their new space. The next morning Addams and Starr found the door open as well as unlocked, both were pleased at the honesty of their new neighbors.4
The Hull House also provided the neighborhood with new luxuries such as classes for kindergarten, speech classes and Boy Scouts. The House was also an employment bureau, a library, a gymnasium, theater, art gallery, music school, auditorium, cafeteria, cooperative residence for working women, nursery, post office, meeting and club rooms, art studios, and a dining room and apartments for the residential staff. By the year 1900, there were over 100 of these settlement houses in the United States. Hull House became an alternative for those living on the streets and in the saloons.

The Hull-House is one of the greatest achievements by Jane Addams By these efforts, Addams and the Hull House helped to pass new laws. One law that The Hull House and Addams help with was in 1903, Illinois passed a child labor law. This law limited how long a child could work. Due to this law another was passed saying that children must go to school until the child reached a certain age. In addition from her leadership with the Hull House, she helped to get women’s work days shortened to eight hours. Along with this new laws were passed that helped to aid workers who were sick and or hurt on the job.6
The Hull-House played a vital role in redefining American democracy in the modern age. Addams and the residents of Hull-House helped pass critical legislation and influenced public policy on public health and education, free speech, fair labor practices, immigrants’ rights, recreation and public space, arts, and philanthropy. Hull-House has long been a center of Chicago’s political and cultural life, establishing Chicago’s first public playground and public art gallery, helping to abolish slavery in the Chicago Public Schools, and influencing philanthropy and culture.
During its first two decades, Hull House attracted a remarkable group of residents, most of them women, who rose to prominence and influence as reformers on the local, state, and national levels. In the neighborhood, these residents established the city's first public playground and bathhouse, campaigned to reform ward politics, investigated housing, working, and sanitation issues, organized to improve garbage removal, and advocated for new public schools. These residents helped establish the first juvenile court in the United States, fought for neighborhood parks and playgrounds, advocated for branch libraries and initiated housing reform. Also, Hull-House residents initiated and lobbied for protective legislation for women and children, child labor laws, occupational safety and health provisions, compulsory education, protection of immigrants, and Illinois' pioneer mothers' pension law. Hull House residents joined with settlement house leaders and reformers nationwide to fight federally for national child labor laws, women's suffrage, the establishment of a Children's Bureau, unemployment compensation, workers' compensation, and the many other reforms that made up the progressive government agenda in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The Hull House received recognition as the best-known settlement house in the United States and became the forerunner of a movement that included nearly five hundred settlements nationally by 1920. 5
Hull House continued to be active in its location on Halsted Street until the 1960s, when it was replaced by the University of Illinois' new urban campus. Due to the fact the Hull House had not been run by charging the residents, the House had kept open as long as it could without income until the House finally had to close its doors and file for bankruptcy. The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities then turned the building into a museum. The Museum is located in two of the original settlement house buildings. The Hull Home and the Residents' Dining Hall, a beautiful Arts and Crafts building that has welcomed some of the world's most important thinkers, artists and activists thus becoming a National Historic Landmark. Today it continues under the name of Jane Addams Hull House Association, an organization composed of several social service centers across the city. The Museum and its many vibrant programs make connections between the work of Hull-House residents and important contemporary social issues.
Jane Addams had put faith, money and a large portion of her life into the Hull House. The Hull House was not just a place where those who were not fortunate enough to have enough money went; it was a safe haven for those in desperate need of help and shelter. Addams had been an advocate for all those who had walked through the doors of the Hull House. Caring for so many influenced her to become a sociologist. Addams work around man different ethnic groups and cultures exposed her to different human behaviors, leading her take on other sociological challenges.