Jane Addams, Hull House, and Chicago's Nineteenth Ward

In the fall of 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull House on Chicago’s Near West Side, full of good intentions to help the poor people of the neighborhood. They were a force for good, providing education, cultural enrichment, and workforce development, while fighting for protections for women and children. But because of their backgrounds, they also missed important cultural dimensions of their immigrant neighbors and feuded with the ward’s Irish Catholic alderman. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Terrence J. McDonald, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of Nearly Neighbors: Jane Addams, Johnny Powers, and the Progressive Political Imagination.

Our theme song is “Frogs Legs Rag,” composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is “Chicago (That toddling town),” composed by Fred Fisher and performed by the Georgians on November 29, 1922, in New York City; the audio is in the public domain and is available via the Library of Congress National Jukebox. The episode image is a photograph of Jane Addams from circa 1896; the image is in the public domain and is available via the Swarthmore College Jane Addams Collection.

Additional Sources:

• Jane Addams Papers Project, Ramapo College of New Jersey
• Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
• “Jane Addams,” The Nobel Prize
• “Jane Addams: Together We Rise [video],” Chicago Stories, WTTW, October 20, 2023.
• Ellen Gates Starr papers, Smith College
• The Life and Times of Florence Kelley, Northwestern University School of Law
• “JOHN POWERS DIES AT 78.; He Served 38 Years as an Alderman in Chicago,” The New York Times, May 20, 1930.
• “Government, City of Chicago,” by Loomis Mayfield, Encyclopedia of Chicago.