Figure 1.--This photo is undated but was obviously taken in the 1920s. It shows a group of children at Hull House in Chicago practicing for one of their numerous musical concerts. .

Another charity institution of importance is the settlement house. The most famous settlement house is Hull House located on Chicago's Near West Side. It was founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr and housed originally in an old mansion. Hull House operated educational, athletic, musical and other programs for inner-city children. By the 1920s the physical plant had spread out considerably and included a complex of thirteen different buildings, almost a city block, with a staff of at least sixty-five people. It catered to children of the surrounding imigrant neighborhood. It produced a number of very successful people and many professional people contributed their services--doctors, lawyers, college professors, school teachers, social workers, students, musicians, actors, writers, poets, artists and politicians. Hull House is well known for its pioneering and imaginative innovations in service to the children of the American underclasses. Hull House is one of the earliest American institutions to cultivate and promulgate social and philosophical diversity.

Image

The photo is undated but was obviously taken in either the late 1920s or early 1930s. It shows a group of children at Hull House in Chicago practicing for one of their numerous musical concerts. The two boys in the foreground, both of them about eight or nine years old, are dressed very differently. The boy on the left playing the violin wears a long pants sailor suit. The boy standing next to him to the right wears a light weight cotton short pants suit with button-on shorts, long plaid stockings held up by hose supporters, and high-top shoes. His clothes look a trifle large for him (the short pants are rather blousy and the stockings sag just a bit as though they were also a size too big for him). He wears patterned (in this case plaid) long stockings. Possibly his clothes were donated to Hull House, a social service organization for the underprivileged, or hand-me-downs. The girl on the right (foreground) wears her long stockings rolled down below the knee probably secured by round garters. This may have been a style she liked or perhaps she didn't have any proper supporters for her stockings.

The Settlement House

Another charity institution of importance is the settlement house, an important element of the Progressive Era. Settlement house are today better known as community or neighborhood center. A settlement is a neighborhood-based social services organization. The early settlement houses provided services and activities designed to help the urban poor who in America were primarily immigrant families, many of whom could not speak English and therefor found it difficult to do evven the most basic activities in their new country. It was women in America that founded most of the settlement houses. The first settlemenbt houses ws founded in England (1884), but was soon adopted in the United states (1886). A number of young, white, middle-class men and women enpowered by the Progressive Movement and were motivated by idealistic social and religious concerns. These idealistic socialreformers left comfortable homes and moved into poor neighborhoods in large cities to attempt to improve living conditions and meet the the needs of immigrants and other working-class people. One of their major efforts was to set up neighborhood centers called "settlement houses", meaning to help settle new immigrants in Aamerica. Most American settlement houses were were modeled on Hull House. The focus of these settlement houses was on "Americanizing" immigrants.

Women's Role

Women's leadership at a time when women did not normally take leading roles was notable from the outset. This occurred as, with the case of Jane Adams, when the first significant group of women graduates emerged from women's coleges in America. Many of these wmen were very idealistically motivated and this combined with the unwillingness of industrial companie to hire them directed many into social work like settlement houses.

Jane Addams

Laura Jane Addams was born during 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois. She grew up in a wealthy family, the youngest of four surviving. Her father of John Huy Addams, owned a prosperous grist mill owner and Illinois state senator (1854-1870). Her mother was Sarah Weber ( -1863). Jane's mother died when she was only 3 years old. He father married Anna Hostetter Haldeman the next year and there two step-brothers added to the the family. Jane was given a first class education by her father, not that common at the time. She was an able student. Addams went to Rockford Female Seminary (Illinois) and in 1881 graduated as valedictorian. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1882. After finishing school, Jane traveled widely in Europe (1883-1885 and 1887-1888). She of course was an avid tourists, but she noticed more than just themain tourist attractions. She noted the urban poverty and efforts to address the needs of the urban poor. She was especially impressed with Toynbee Hall. After returning to America, Addams and an associate, Ellen Gates Starr, in September 1889 founded Hull-House to serve the immigrants in Chicago's 19th ward, one of the poorest secions of the city. The two women by 1893 had create an institution that offerred clubs, functions, classes, and a wide range of activities for the people in the neighborhood. Addams herself made Hull House her residence and lived there for 40 years. Hull House received international attention. Adams used Hull House not only to aid the poor, but to promote a range of social welfare policies, including immigrant issues, child labor laws and recreation facilities for children, industrial safety, juvenile courts, trade unions, woman suffrage, and world peace. Addams used her substantial inheritance as well as her income from books and articles to help finance Hull House. One of her best known books was Newer Ideals of Peace (1907) in which she promoted pacifism. She was criticised after the United States entered World War I (1917). Public opinion changed strongly to pasifism and isolationism after the War. Adams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Nicholas Murray Butler (1931). By then, her reputation as the Mother of the World was firmly established. Addams died of cancer and was buried in her birthplace Cedarville, Illinois (1935).

Services

Settlement Houses offered a wide range of services to immigrants. The services were intended to help immigrants adjust and integrate into American society. The integration factor was not always readily apparent. But proiding the type of cultural and entertaiment activities that Americans engaged in helped to promote integration, especially because the language used at the settlement houses was English. (Immigrants from different countries had to use English to speak with each other.) There were classrooms to teach a range of subjects, often focusing on English and domestic skills like cooking and sewing. There were shelters for the homeless or abused women. There was also a strong cultural component. Plays were organized as well as orchestras. Here we see children at Hull House preparing for a concert (figure 1). There were also other entertaiments for children as well as sports activities sponsored.

Specific Settlement Houses

We are collecting information on individual settlement houses.

Toynbee Hall

Hull House (Chicago, Illinois)

The most famous settlement house is Hull House located on Chicago's Near West Side. It was founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr and housed originally in an old mansion located in one of the poorest sections of the city. Hull House operated educational, athletic, musical and other programs for inner-city children. By the 1920s the physical plant had spread out considerably and included a complex of thirteen different buildings, almost a city block, with a staff of at least 65 people. It catered to children of the surrounding imigrant neighborhood. It produced a number of very successful people and many professional people contributed their services--doctors, lawyers, college professors, school teachers, social workers, students, musicians, actors, writers, poets, artists and politicians. Hull House is well known for its pioneering and imaginative innovations in service to the children of the American underclasses. Hull House is one of the earliest American institutions to cultivate and promulgate social and philosophical diversity.

Lennox Hill (New York, New York)

Lennox Hill was one of the first settlement hiuses opened in New York FCity.

(The) Neighborhood House (Dallas, Texas)

The Dallas Free Kindergarten Training and Industrial Association founded the Neighborhood House in Dallas, Texas (1900). It was one of the first such institutioins in Texas. The Texas settlement houses tended were often a joint effort young college-educated women and older married women who wereless well educated, but had experience in charity work. The settlement houses were associated with private efforts to create kindergatens. The efforts were directed at mostly immigarants and poor whites. Little effort was goven to the needs of blacks by h Texas sttlement houses. Other programs there included a boys' club, a girls' club, cooking classes, a sewing school, a weekly rummage sale for the poor, and a playground. A resident nurse provided basic medical attention

Community Centers

The settlement house eventually evolved into what is now commonly called a community center. They were very similar to settlement house, but as immigrants brcame increasingly assimilated into the American mainstream, there was less need to focus on immigrants. This may expalin why thgey became knowwn as Community Houses. Quite a number of these community centers were oarganized and continue to operate operate theoughout the

Created: September 17, 2003
Last update: 4:55 AM 10/8/2020