Jane Addams and Hull House, the Chicago settlement that changed social work

Photo: Moffett, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Jane Addams was born in 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois. Her father was a mill owner and state senator. After college she traveled in Europe and visited Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in London’s East End.

Hull House

In 1889 Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr leased an old mansion on Halsted Street on Chicago’s West Side, a neighborhood full of immigrant families. They called it Hull House.

It grew to more than a dozen buildings. It offered a kindergarten, a day nursery, classes in English and citizenship, a gym, a public kitchen and art and music programs. Residents studied conditions in the neighborhood and pushed for laws on child labor, factory safety and juvenile courts.

Peace and politics

Addams backed women’s suffrage and helped found the NAACP and the ACLU. She opposed American entry into World War I, which made her unpopular for a time. She led the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

In 1931 she became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, sharing it with Nicholas Murray Butler. She died in 1935.

Two of the original buildings survive as the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum on the University of Illinois Chicago campus.