Hull-House collection

Biography/Profile

In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr rented the former home of real estate developer Charles Hull and opened Chicago's first social settlement. The Hull-House settlement house offered educational and social activities to the surrounding neighborhood and its pioneering staff used social science research as the basis of a wide range of influential reform initiatives. Hull-House gained local, national, and international attention for its programs and activities. An important leader in the Progressive movement, the settlement house provided a model for other settlement houses throughout the United States. Hull-House operated for 74 years at its Halsted Street location before decentralizing into several neighborhood centers.

Hull-House was located on the Near West Side of Chicago, a port of entry neighborhood for new immigrants in the late 19th century. An 1895 study done by Hull-House residents identified 18 different ethnic/nationality groups living in the area surrounding the settlement. Italian, Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian Jews, Irish, Bohemians, and later Greeks worked in neighborhood sweatshops and in the factories and lumberyards lining the Chicago River. The neighborhood was densely populated and suffered from congestion, inadequate housing, poor sanitation, and one of the highest infant mortality rates in the city.

Inspired by the example of Toynbee Hall in London, the world's first social settlement, Addams and Starr sought to establish reciprocal relationships with the neighbors surrounding their settlement in order to both assist and learn from them. They initially had no formal plan and merely hoped, Addams later reported, that "the mere foothold of a house, easily accessible, ample in space, hospitable and tolerant in spirit, would be in itself a serviceable thing for Chicago. " They began by inviting neighbors for social events, reading parties, and classes in the arts.

Addams and Starr were joined by a volunteer residential staff, which paid room-and-board to live at the settlement. Both male and female volunteers lived at the settlement, many having full-time jobs to subsidize the experience. Residents lived in the original Hull mansion and later, on the top floors of other Hull-House buildings. Living within the settlement in order to respond knowledgeably to neighborhood conditions was a key component of the settlement idea. By 1894, 20 residents were living at Hull-House. Early resident's tended to be middle- and upper middle-class, college educated, and from a wide range of professions. Several women played key roles in early Hull-House efforts: Florence Kelley, Julia Lathrop, physician Alice Hamilton, and labor organizer Mary Kenney. Edith and Grace Abbott, Sophinisba Breckinridge, and Alzina Stevens joined them. Musician Eleanor Smith, artist Enella Benedict, and theater directors Laura Dainty Pelham and Edith de Nancrede were instrumental in arts programming. The settlement became a center for discussions of social reform and attracted well-known visitors and supporters such as architect Frank Lloyd Wright, attorney Clarence Darrow, suffragist Susan B. Anthony, photographers Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine, sculptor Lorado Taft, Fabian Socialists Beatrice and Sidney Webb, and temperance leader Frances Willard.

In March 1895, in order to secure a 25-year lease on settlement land, the settlement house incorporated. In addition to her title as head resident, Addams became president of the Board of Trustees. Board members, appointed for terms of seven years, included Addams's companion Mary Rozet Smith, architect Allen Pond, educator John Dewey, William Colvin, philanthropist Louise deKoven Bowen, and heir to the Hull property, Helen Culver. The charter adopted by Hull-House Association stated its purpose as:

"To provide a center for higher civic and social life, to initiate and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago."

Hull-House programs grew at a rapid pace as settlement residents became more familiar with the needs of the neighborhood. Services for children included a kindergarten, nursery, well-baby clinic, public gymnasium, and playground. In 1907, Hull-House residents founded the Juvenile Protective Association. The settlement included a branch of the Public Library, a Post Office, and a cooperative boarding house for young workingwomen. It acted as a liaison with city charities and social service agencies. Numerous social and recreational clubs attracted both children and adults. Educational programs for adults included college extension classes, lecture series, and vocational training. The arts were addressed through a rigorous Music School program, classes in visual and craft arts, sponsorship of theater groups and productions, exhibits, dance classes, and a collection of artwork for loan to club members. Many activities were geared towards neighborhood immigrants. Hull-House sponsored ethnic festivals and social events, taught English and citizenship classes, helped found the Immigrants Protective League, and in 1900, established the Hull-House Labor Museum to showcase ethnic craft skills. By 1907, the settlement reported 9,000 people attended classes or participated in activities.

Residency fostered the investigation of neighborhood conditions and Hull-House residents explored child labor, tenement conditions, ethnic groups, infant mortality, midwifery, cocaine use, and the causes and prevention of truancy. Many of their findings were published in the American Journal of Sociology. They used this information to lobby for reforms that would counter the conditions found in their neighborhood. They worked for tenement house legislation, the 8-hour day, the right of workers to unionize, compulsory school attendance laws, public health initiatives, and were instrumental in founding the country's first Juvenile Court.

The settlement physically grew to accommodate added programs. In 1895, the original building was enlarged and by 1907, there were 12 additional buildings. Designed by architects Irving and Allen Pond, they included: the Butler Gallery (1890), the Gymnasium and Coffee House (1893), the Children's Building (1895), the Jane Club (1898), an Auditorium (1899), a Men's club (1902) and 3 story Apartment building (1902), a Women's Club building (1904), a Music School (1905), a Boy's Club (1906), Dining Hall (1907) and the Mary Crane Nursery (1907). In 1912, Louise DeKoven Bowen donated land in Waukegan to develop the Bowen Country Club, a summer camp for children and adults.

Helen Culver, heir to Charles Hull, provided free rent during the settlement's first four years and Addams's family inheritance provided the initial funding for settlement operations. To meet growing expenses, in 1893 Addams created the House Committee for the collection of living expenses from residents. The Ten Account, begun with ten initial donors, raised funds for routine operating expenses. Although prominent Chicago businessmen made contributions, the bulk of financial support came from wealthy Chicago women. Mary Rozet Smith, Helen Culver, Anita McCormick Blaine, Mary Wilmarth, and Sara Hart contributed. Louise deKoven Bowen was the single largest contributor to the settlement and after she was appointed treasurer of Hull-House Association in 1907, she assumed much of the responsibility for fund-raising strategy.

The ethnic composition of the neighborhood changed after World War I, as immigration quotas cut off the flow of European immigrants to the U.S. In the 1920s, Mexicans began to move into the area south of the settlement and later, African Americans moved to the south and west. Addams, a pacifist, spent increasing amounts of time away from the settlement traveling to promote her ideals. She was a founding member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and in 1931, received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jane Addams death in the spring of 1935, after surgery to remove an intestinal blockage caused by cancer, led to a crisis at the settlement. Louise deKoven Bowen became the new President of the Hull-House Board and a committee of residents ran the settlement while a successor was chosen. After Alice Hamilton and Grace Abbott declined the position, the Hull-House residents petitioned the Board of Trustees to appoint long-time resident Adena Miller Rich as the new Head Resident. Rich, who was Director of the Immigrant's Protective League, agreed to take on the unpaid position on a half-time basis. Rich recruited new residents to replace a staff dwindled by death, illness and retirement. By 1937, 71 people (not counting the Jane Club) were residing at Hull-House. The Jane Addams Memorial Fund, Hull-House's first professional fund-raising campaign began to solicit funds to replace those formerly contributed or raised by Addams. Hull-House also accepted Chicago Community Fund monies, something Addams had resisted during her tenure.

Based on her interest in issues of immigration, Rich established a new Department of Naturalization and Citizenship to deal with immigrant education and liaison with the Immigrants Protective League. She also created a Committee on International Relations and a committee to improve housing and sanitation in the surrounding neighborhood. To deal with the aftermath of the Great Depression, a new emphasis was placed on recreational programs for the neighborhood. With Addams gone, the Hull-House Board took on a more assertive role. Rich eventually resigned under pressure to become full-time and accept a salary.

After Rich's departure, Kennicott Brenton, the House Secretary administered Hull-House until a replacement was found. In 1937, Charlotte E. Carr left the directorship of the New York City Emergency Relief Bureau to assume the lead role in the settlement. With a new title of Director (rather than Head Resident), Carr initiated reorganization to formalize the settlement's structure. Many volunteers were replaced with paid workers and professional staff were appointed to head each department. The settlement also made use of skilled workers supplied from the Works Progress Administration (WPA; later Works Projects Administration) and the National Youth Administration (NYA).

Most neighborhood residents were no longer foreign-born and Carr added two departments to reflect what she believed to be the new needs of the neighborhood. The Community Service Department formed community-based clubs and supported better housing, cleaner streets and improved schools and recreational facilities for the neighborhood. Naturalization and Citizenship classes were transformed into the Workers' Education Department to educate first-generation Americans in labor law and collective bargaining. Concerned that the settlement was not responding to African Americans who were entering the neighborhood in large numbers, Carr recruited journalist and public housing advocate Dewey Jones and his wife Faith Jones as residents.

Carr's changes to settlement programs and her political activism created tensions with the Board and with residents that led to her departure in January 1943. Ruth Orton Camp was Acting Director until Russell Ward Ballard, the first male Director, was appointed in September 1943. Ballard was a graduate of the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and had been superintendent of the Illinois State Training School for Boys before the Hull-House Board recruited him.

The settlement responded to World War II by offering first aid, home nursing, Americanization classes, and physical training for military service. It also housed the community headquarter of the Office of Civilian Defense. Ballard appointed Elaine Switzer program director in 1945 and new program policies began that focused on neighborhood services. Latvians, Hungarians, and Greeks displaced by the war and Japanese Americans released from relocation camps joined the neighborhood population in the post-war years. In the 1950s, services were also extended to Puerto Rican newcomers. "The Hull-House Credo and Its Practice: A Re-Definition by the Board of Trustee's, 1952" described the mission of the settlement: Hull-House offers "constructive recreational and cultural opportunity for leisure time of all ages, races, creeds. It provides hospitality for neighborhood and civic groups and participates in efforts for community betterment. " Departmental revenues, rentals from residents, endowment earnings, individual donations, and the Chicago Community Fund financed programs.

The Hull-House neighborhood was also physically changing. In 1938, the Jane Addams Homes, the city's first public housing development, was built southwest of the settlement. Hull-House established a Branch Center in the development with a full-time Spanish-speaking volunteer. In the 1950s, parts of the neighborhood were razed for industrial use and to accommodate the new Congress and Dan Ryan expressways.

After the war, state legislation concerning "blighted areas" prompted Near West Side neighborhood residents to form the West Side Community Committee. In 1947, its members met with Director Ballard to discuss what the neighborhood could do to influence its own future. With assistance from Hull-House, a Temporary Organizing Committee was formed. Headed by Eri Hulbert, great-nephew of Addams, the sixty-five-member committee was composed of neighborhood residents and representatives from business, industry, social, civic, religious and educational institutions. At a public meeting attended by over 500 residents on June 15, 1949, the Near West Side Planning Board (NWSPB) was established to ensure neighborhood participation in urban renewal decisions for the area. With funding from Hull-House, the Field Foundation, the Wieboldt Foundation, The Emil Scwartzhaupt Foundation, and other foundations and individuals, the NWSPB worked with neighborhood residents and businesses to create a plan for the rehabilitation of the neighborhood. The NWSPB successfully lobbied for three urban renewal ordinances in the City Council. One designated a part of the neighborhood as a conservation renewal area; another allowed for the creation of the first shopping center in the midst of the Jane Addams Homes. The third decreed the fifty-five acre Halsted-Harrison neighborhood as a "slum and blight" area for clearance and residential redevelopment. In 1957, after the Hull-House Board withdrew Schwarzhaupt Foundation funds in order to establish the alternative Hull-House Citizens Participation Project, the NWSPB effectively ceased functioning. Their report, prepared by Paul B. Johnson, a professor at Roosevelt University, was not published until 1960.

The NWSPB's plans for the neighborhood had already been challenged, however. Returning GIs had put a severe strain on the temporary campus established by the University of Illinois at Navy Pier in 1946. The University began to look for a new home in the Chicago area. When several suggested sites fell through, Mayor Richard J. Daley formally proposed the fifty-five acre Harrison-Halsted site and 90 surrounding acres as a new potential location. The area included the Hull-House complex of buildings as well as many still-standing neighborhood homes and businesses. President of the University of Illinois, Dr. David Dodds Henry and the Board of Trustees accepted the new site on February 15, 1961 and plans for the campus were passed by city council ordinance on May 10, 1961.

Neighborhood residents who would be displaced by the new campus protested. The Harrison-Halsted Community Group was formed headed by neighborhood resident Florence Scala. Its executive board consisted of neighborhood residents, primarily women, and several Hull-House residents including long-time resident Jessie Binford. The Harrison-Halsted Community Group held protest marches and took their fight to the City Council, the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, the Illinois Housing Board, the State Legislature, and the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency. When these efforts were ineffective, they filed suit in state and federal courts, finally losing their appeal in the Illinois and U.S. Supreme Courts in 1963.

On March 5, 1963, the Hull-House Board of Trustees, which had been spilt by the controversy, accepted an offer of $875,000 for the settlement buildings. On March 29 and 30, a sale of Hull-House furnishings occurred and the settlement was vacated April 1, 1963. That year, all but two of the Hull-House buildings were razed.

In response to community and nationwide pressure, the University of Illinois agreed to preserve two of the original Hull-House buildings as a memorial to the settlement. Funded by a campaign of the University's Board of Trustees and the University of Illinois Foundation, the original building in which the settlement had been founded and the Residents' Dining Hall building were restored by Frazier, Raferty, Orr, and Fairbank. They were opened to the public and declared a national historical landmark in spring, 1967.

After moving from the Halsted street site, Hull-House decentralized into several centers. Some of the centers were new; others were already-existing organizations that affiliated with Hull-House Association. Several also had satellite programs. Designed to respond to individual neighborhoods, each had its own board, director, and program. Residency was dropped and staff members no longer lived at the site. Paul Jans, who replaced Ballard in 1962, presided over the move and reconfiguration of the settlement.

Bibliography:

Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes. 1910. Reprint. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Bryan, Mary Lynn McCree and Allen F. Davis, eds. One Hundred Years at Hull-House. Rev., expanded ed. of: Eighty Years at Hull-House, 1969. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

Rosen, George. Decision-Making Chicago-Style: The Genesis of a University of Illinois Campus. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980.