The Women of the Hull-House

     Inspiring women, innovative approaches to living and learning, and pioneering social justice work: sound like something from the #metoo or #TimesUp movements? Maybe, but it was also how women at the Hull-House in Chicago lived and worked over 100 years ago.

Smith Hall of the Hull House, 1910.

     While I was in Chicago in February, I had a chance to visit the Hull-House and be totally amazed by these women, who I already knew a little bit about. Here is a tour and brief history of the settlement house.

     Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr established the Hull-House in 1889, believing that working and immigrant neighborhoods in Chicago needed better access to education, healthcare, and social life. The Hull-House was in the Near West Side (now on the University of Illinois Chicago campus), in a neighborhood of Italian, Irish, German, Greek, Russian, Polish, and Bohemian immigrants. The so-called settlement houses were also a place where young, educated women could put their desire to do social work to use; they were generally expected to just get married and shut-out from many professions. But here, they could teach English, art, and feel like they were making a difference in the community. 

"The original two residents... believed that  the mere foothold of a house easily accessible, ample in space, hospitable and tolerant in spirit,  situated in the midst of the  large foreign colony which so easily isolate themselves in American cities, would be  in itself a servicable thing for Chicago."                  -- Hull-House Year Book 1906-1907

     Jane Addams was from Illinois, and attended Rockford Female Seminary (which later became Rockford College for Women and then Rockford University) but wasn't able to finish medical school due to illness. With her friend (and domestic partner) Ellen Gates Starr, she saw a settlement house in London and thought Chicago needed these types of services too. They started a kindergarten so working mothers had a safe place to leave their children; after-school programs and clubs for older kids; and evening courses for adults. By 1906, the Hull-House was a compound of buildings serving thousands of people. UIC holds the Hull-House collection, which includes hundreds of programs for music, dance, and theater performances in many different languages.

Hull-House Complex, 1906.

Jane Addams c. 1914, Library of Congress.

     Working closely with immigrants, Addams was not a eugenicist and believed that all people were equal. She was very involved in women's suffrage (I found a wonderful story of Addams taking the train  from Chicago to Springfield to advocate for women's right to vote) and helped found the NAACP. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, the first American woman and first openly LGBTQ person to receive the honor.
     She lived in partnership with Gates Starr, and then began a relationship with Mary Rozet Smith (pictured in the portrait in Addams' room below). Although there has been some debate about whether Addams would have called herself a lesbian, she only had these types of romantic relationships with women. 

Coffee House then.

Residents' Dining Hall today.

Jane Addams' room in the residents' house.

     Programming at the Hull-House was offered by the residents, like Addams, who lived on site. Residents were chosen in a very democratic process, staying at the house for six weeks as a trial period and then being approved by the residents for a minimum two-year stay. Julia Lathrop was an early resident of the Hull-House and later went on to become the first director of the United States Children's Bureau in 1912. Florence Kelley was another equally amazing resident; she left her abusive husband and managed to divorce him (no easy task in the late 1880s) before joining the women at the Hull-House and working to improve factory conditions, especially for women.

Profiles of some of the women associated with the Hull-House, and their lasting impact on living and working conditions.

     Jane Addams served as the director of the Hull-House until her death in 1935, but the work of the Hull-House continued. All but two of the Hull-House's 13 buildings were destroyed (along with much of the surrounding neighborhood) when the UIC campus was constructed in the mid-1960s. Today, the main Hull-House is a museum interpreting the lives and accomplishments of those who passed through the settlement, and a space to explore modern social justice issues, like the closing of public schools on Chicago's West Side.

Upstairs at the Hull-House museum.

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