Our History

In 1889, thousands of recently arrived immigrants lived and worked on the Near West Side of Chicago, which was then the fastest growing city in the world. Czech, German, Greek, Irish, Italian, Polish, and Russian families shaped the life and culture of this densely populated neighborhood, which over the next decades would also be defined by Mexican and African American communities. Here, three women moved into a residence owned by local businesswoman Helen Culver, who would be the settlement’s first supporter.

Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr were college friends, who were inspired by a new idea of public service, to live “with” not “for” other people. Mary Keyser, who handled domestic housework for the Addams family, joined Addams and Starr at Hull-House and became an important liaison with the neighborhood. These three women embarked on “the scheme,” in Starr’s words, to live in solidarity with immigrant communities neglected by the city and exploited by capitalism, who lived in crowded tenements and worked long hours in nearby factories. The ambitious social experiment of Hull-House would transform the lives of both reformers and neighbors as the settlement grew in response to the concerns and aspirations of those it served.

Hull-House became the country’s most influential social settlement, expanding to include thirteen buildings, where Addams and her circle of social reformers provided kindergarten and day care facilities; an employment bureau; an art gallery; libraries; English and citizenship courses; and theater, music, and art classes. They championed immigrant rights and improvements to public health. They worked to end child labor, instituted juvenile justice, supported unions, built playgrounds, and advocated for public housing. Over many decades, Hull-House upheld free speech, dissent, and civil rights.

In 1963, despite powerful resistance from neighborhood residents and activists across the nation, the City of Chicago bulldozed most of the Hull-House settlement and the surrounding neighborhood in order to make room for Mayor Richard J. Daley’s project of “urban renewal,” which included the construction of the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). The remaining two buildings became the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, which is now part of the university’s College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts (CADA).

A National Historic Landmark, free and open to the public, the museum hosts exhibitions and programs that connect histories of social transformation to the present. For UIC and for national and international visitors, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum endures as a site of activism, creative expression, research, and education.  

Our Values
Spring, 2024

The only thing to be dreaded in the Settlement is that it loses its flexibility, its power of quick adaptation, its readiness to change its methods as its environment may demand. It must be open to conviction and must have a deep and abiding sense of tolerance. It must be hospitable and ready for experiment. --Jane Addams

 1.    We believe in working with communities to inform how we tell stories through historical objects and archival collections.

2.    We believe in an ethics of hospitality, of open doors, of making all visitors feel welcome.  

3.    We believe in improvisation, in responding to the needs of the moment, and in the value of changing your mind.

4.    We believe in the value of rest, play, and the imagination.

5.    We believe that democracy relies upon the work of everyone.

6.    We believe in the radical “scheme” of Hull-House as a model for imagining the work of the museum today.

Photograph courtesy of Sarah Larson.