Jane Addams and Hull House

City Slums
American Landscape and Architectural Design, 1850-1920

Social reformer and pacifist Jane Addams was born on September 6, 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois. After graduating from Rockford College in 1881, Addams left her native Illinois for Philadelphia where she enrolled at the Woman's Medical College. Forced by poor health to abandon her studies, Addams spent the next two years as an invalid. After regaining her strength, she embarked upon a tour of Europe. It was there that she found the inspiration for much of her work in social reform.

London's Toynbee Hall was the world's first settlement house. Operated by founder Samuel Barnett and resident university students, Toynbee tackled the problems of urban poverty by providing social services to residents of the city's deprived industrial district. Toynbee's success prompted Addams and her traveling companion, Ellen Gates Starr, to plan a similar center for Chicago. In 1889, the two women purchased a large vacant residence, the former Hull mansion, on Chicago's industrial west side and opened their doors to the neighboring, mostly immigrant, community.

Starr and Addams's Hull House initially provided welfare assistance to needy families and recreation facilities for slum children. The center eventually expanded to offer a wide array of services including boarding rooms for female workers, a nursery, a community kitchen, academic courses, social clubs, and meeting space for union activities. Today, Hull House continues to build on the enduring vision of Jane Addams through a rich array of services serving several hundred thousand people in Chicago.

Hull House's social services and cultural opportunities dramatically improved life for Chicago's poor. A model institution, the center also served as an important training ground and meeting place for social reformers. Investigations into every social problem took place at Hull House and national campaigns were developed there for labor rights and women's suffrage.

Addams lived and worked at Hull House until her death in 1935. Just four years earlier, in 1931, she had received the Nobel Peace Prize—the first American woman so honored. Her dedicated work towards peace included serving as an outspoken member of the pacifist movement which protested World War I, chairing the Woman's Peace Party, and organizing and directing the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Addams's other notable accomplishments included helping to organize the first White House Conference on Children (1909), serving as the first woman president of the National Conference of Social Work (1910); and, serving as the first president of the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers (1911).

• Read personal accounts of immigrants who knew Jane Addams and participated in Hull House activities. Search on Hull House in American Life Histories, 1936-1940.
• Learn more about women's suffrage, one of the many causes championed by Addams, in these collections:
  • "Votes for Women" Suffrage Pictures, 1850-1920
  • Votes for Women: Selections from the National American Woman Suffrage Association Collection, 1848-1921
  • Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929
• Search on the keyword Hull House in Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943 to see two colorful posters which advertise arts related events held at the settlement house during the Depression era. (Hull House had a strong art studio program and commercial kiln operation as far back as the 1890s.) See, for example, Poster Show at the Hull House.

President McKinley Assassinated

Assassination of President McKinley,
photograph of wash drawing by T. Dart Walker, 1905.
Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-present

On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shot while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Leon Czolgosz, a Polish citizen associated with the Anarchist movement, fired two shots at McKinley who was greeting the public in a receiving line.

McKinley died September 14, whispering the words of his favorite hymn, "Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee." He was succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt.

Czolgosz's execution in an electric chair was reenacted in a short feature shot by Edwin Porter and released, along with films of the World's Fair and the McKinley funeral, by the Edison Company in 1901. Porter began making films for the Edison Company in 1900. He introduced important innovations to the new art of filmmaking including the practice of continuity editing that quickly replaced the earlier technique of stringing together a series of static scenes.

Execution of Czolgosz,
Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 1901.
Last Days of a President: McKinley and the World's Fair, 1901

• Porter's Panorama of Esplanade by Night uses time-lapse photography to capture a panoramic view of an electrical illumination. Another Porter film, The Martyred Presidents is an unusual tribute to Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, and McKinley. The Edison Company marketed it as a "most valuable ending" to the funeral series.
• Find more Porter films, including footage of McKinley's second inauguration and funeral. Search on Porter in Last Days of a President: McKinley and the World's Fair, 1901.
• See more motion pictures produced by the Edison Company. Visit the collection Inventing Entertainment: The Edison Companies.
• Learn more about the life and death of President William McKinley. See the list of American Memory collections with relevant items for William McKinley in Presidents in American Memory, a feature presentation from the Learning Page.
• Search on the term McKinley in Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times to see two 1901 films related to McKinley, footage of his inauguration and his funeral.