The Hull House

Jane Addams and Ellen Starr moved into Hull House on September 18, E. Starr J. Addams

WHY? Immigrants coming to America low wage working families the needy children of Chicago

Hull House was situated at 800 S. Halstead Street in the run-down Nineteenth Ward of Chicago.

Most of the people living in the area at the time were recently arrived immigrants from Europe, including people from Germany, Italy, Sweden, England, Ireland, France, Russia, Norway, Greece, Bulgaria, Holland, Portugal, Scotland, Wales, Spain and Finland.

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.

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. Many of the neighbors came to the center for weekly baths.

Coffee House "Seven female social activists sitting and standing at a long table in a room," was taken by a Chicago Daily News photographer in Social Events Womens Club Naturalization Club

Hull House Activities learning to make shoesmens wrestling cooking classes womens bowling

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. 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.

petrifying to confound with fear, amazement, or awe

impressive having the power to affect the feelings or sympathies

possessed to have and hold as property; to own

appealed to produce an interested response

immigrant a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence

illegal not authorized by law