Hull House - the First Settlement House in the United States

Part 3 of the Jane Addams series on womens' issues

Jane Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr co-founded Hull House in 1889. The settlement immediately began taking in European immigrant women. The settlement house was constructed in Chicago and still stands today. It was declared a national landmark in 1974.

The original Hull House came from the inspiration of Toynbee Hall in East London and was occupied by a community of 5 university educated women who lived on the premises. Their mandate was to provide social, educational skills, and opportunities for working class women who would also live at Hull House. The original Hull House housed mostly Italian immigrants but with the expansion of other buildings to the settlement the immigrant population diversified.

The name of the settlement house was taken in honour of the Charles Hull, the man who built the house in 1856. Jane Addams funded the project with the $50,000 inheritance she received after her father's death.

Later, funding was obtained through Jane Culver the woman who sold the building to Jane and Ellen. The establishment of Hull House, was Addam's way of getting out from the middle class social mores of her time by doing something that was both innovative and worthwhile. Hull House was a woman's centered institution providing education for the family.

Jane and Ellen were the first two people to live there. Later the house would house 25 women. When Hull House was at its best, it provided a kindergarten, night school for adults, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, library, bookbindery, coffeehouse, bathhouse, gymnasium, music school, drama school, and workshops. Many of the women who graduated from Hull house become prominent women in their Chicago community.

Jane Addams and Ellen Star provided a myriad of services for the women residents. When they were not able to attract doctors to the project, Addams and Starr, provided health care, delivered babies, prepared burials, took care of battered women and so on.

Montreal's McGill University is an ivy league University and Concordia University specializes in Women's Issues.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_house http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Addams

http://womenshistory.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=womenshistory&cdn=education&tm=40&f=21&tt=14&bt=0&bts=0&st=31&zu=http%3A//www.ux1.eiu.edu/%257Ecfjab/addams_h.html**-