Where can I learn more about Hull-House?
/Do you have an upcoming paper or research project about Hull-House, and you just don’t know where to start? Do you want to know more about Jane Addams’ life, or learn more about the other Reformers and Residents who worked at Hull-House? Are you hoping to include fascinating facts about them in your new lesson plan? In this inaugural post of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum blog, “From the Desk of Jane Addams”, we’re going to show you just where to find those answers! We have many different educational resources on our website and to make your research or studies a little easier, we’ve collected them in this post so you can find just what you’re looking for.
The Basics
If you’re looking to start at the very beginning, you should check out our About Jane Addams and Hull-House page. You’ll find an in-depth overview of Jane Addams’ life, as well an introduction to what the Hull-House Settlement was and why it was so important.
Are you wondering what in the world a settlement house is? How Hull-House functioned? Just who was helping Jane Addams put this plan into motion? Find those answers and more on our FAQ page.
You can visit the Museum from anywhere in the world using our Virtual tour. (We recommend checking it out in your pjs from the comfort of your sofa!) It is a 360-degree, room-for-room virtual capture of the historic Hull Mansion, with voiceovers, images, and captions to give you access to artifacts and topics covered in the Museum. And if you’d like a guided virtual tour, you can book an Educator-led presentation for your group or class.
Teaching Materials for Educators
Our Educational Materials page includes activity packets for students based on Hull-House's ceramics, theater, and bookbinding and public health programs. Each guide includes a step-by-step description of how to complete each activity, background on why that activity carries importance to Hull-House history, and how it remains important today. We also have educator’s toolkits on coordinating and fostering dialogues on civil rights issues and movements, incarceration, and education equity (toolkit #1 and toolkit #2, respectively).
Are you going on or did you just finish a field trip to the Museum?
Here are pre- and post-tour field trip activities for your class!
Looking for books about or written by Jane Addams?
Books about Jane Addams for younger readers
Topics and Resources for History Projects (includes questions and guiding ideas for different areas of Hull-House’s history, as well as a selection of books that address each topic)
Hull-House Maps and Papers
In 1893, Hull-House Residents Florence Kelley and Julia Lathrop, along with a team of other Residents and translators, conducted a large-scale survey of the 19th Ward neighborhood to learn more about its demographics, living conditions, and financial situation. These findings led to the creation of several highly-detailed and informative maps of the Ward, and a collection of findings and essays titled Hull-House Maps and Papers, both of which are available through Northwestern University. They also have an in-depth look at Florence Kelley’s life and work.
In-Depth Research and Primary Sources
If you’re looking for letters, documents, and photos from Hull-House’s past, one of the most richly-preserved collections is housed in Special Collections at the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC). Some resources are available online, while others require a scheduled visit for examination with an archivist. UIC’s Department of History offers a collection of writings about the 19th Ward (the neighborhood around Hull-House) and surrounding neighborhoods, which includes many photos and links to documents and essays. UIC also offers the Seven Settlement Houses Photo Database, which contains photos from Hull-House and six other settlement houses around Chicago during the 19th century.
Non-UIC Resources
The Cedarville Historical Society website (in Jane Addams’ hometown) has a virtual walkthrough of their exhibit about Jane Addams' childhood home.
Ramapo University in New Jersey has made available The Jane Addams Papers Project, an open-access, digitized online collection that contains a wealth of primary documents and articles on Jane Addams and her contemporaries at Hull-House and beyond.
Still can’t find what you’re looking for?
We’re starting this blog in hopes of having a place where we can answer questions we receive often, or to highlight parts of Hull-House’s history that are not often discussed in the Museum or on our tours, so make sure to keep an eye on this space as our blog grows. And in the meantime, please write to us any time at jahh@uic.edu!
